The laptop equivalent of a sporty crossover SUV
MSI GE62 Apache Pro-001 - Having cHoice can be a great thing. Much like the world of automobiles, laptops come in all shapes and sizes. Do you want a gasguzzling truck for off-roading, an exotic sports car, a family vehicle like a minivan, or something with great gas mileage? All of these can be had, but in every case there’s a trade-off being made. For laptops—and gaming laptops in particular—the biggest decisions you’ll face are in the areas of graphics performance, screen size, and battery life.MSI’s GE62 aims to be an everyman gaming notebook. It’s not too big to carry around, but it’s still big enough that you won’t end up squinting at the screen when using the native 1080p resolution. Performance is good, with a GTX 970M being a nice fit for 1080p gaming, and that in turn helps to keep the price from climbing too high. It’s always fun to take the latest and greatest hotrod notebooks out for spin, but not everyone wants a muscle car.
If that sounds a little dull for your tastes, rest assured that the GE62 isn’t a weak budget offering. You get a full keyboard with dedicated 10-key, multi-colored backlighting, multiple video ports, and high-speed connectivity courtesy of Killer Networking. Throw in an IPS display, and there’s lots to like—there’s even an M.2 PCIe x4 Gen3 slot with NVMe support. Unfortunately, the M.2 slot was occupied by a mediocre M.2 SATA drive from Toshiba. There’s also no Thunderbolt 3 or G-Sync support, the latter being mutually exclusive with dynamic switchable graphics, which the GE62 supports.
Think of the GE62 as something of an affordable sports car, and you’re not far from the truth. It’s never going to take down a Ferrari or Hellcat, but it’s got plenty of pep. Compared to our twoyear- old zero-point, CPU performance has only improved around 5–15 percent, but graphics performance is a gigantic leap forward, blasting through games at roughly 2.5 times the performance of the aging GTX 765M. Unfortunately, battery life also takes a hit, ultimately falling short of three hours of video playback, though in lighter use (surfing the net, for example), you can hit five hours.
LIMITED TRUNK SPACE
Overall, the GE62 performs admirably, particularly when it comes to gaming—in our extended online test suite, it averaged 114fps at 1080p Medium, and 43fps at 1080p Ultra. With such a great foundation, the storage configuration still leaves us flummoxed. We haven’t used DVDs or Blurays for years, but the GE62 still includes an optical drive—great if you need it; wasted space if you don’t. Supporting NVMe but shipping with a 128GB SATA drive, paired with a 1TB HDD, is even more perplexing. Give us a 512GB or 1TB 2.5-inch SSD and leave the M.2 slot open for future expansion, even if it costs extra. Frankly, 128GB for an OS drive has been limiting for several years, and even 256GB is questionable. You can upgrade later, but we’d rather get a good SSD from the start. 2014 called; it wants its SSD back.But despite a few oddities in the storage department, overall there’s plenty to like. The GE62 runs as fast as everything else using the GTX 970M, and it does it in a package that weighs and costs about half as much as the extreme GTX 980 notebooks (see MSI GT72S, Holiday 2015). There are much faster notebooks, and there are thinner and lighter gaming notebooks as well. However, thin plus gaming often equals hot and noisy—the laws of thermodynamics are a harsh mistress—and the GE62 strikes for more of a middle ground. If you’re looking for a gaming notebook that functions as a jack-of-all-trades, the GE62 Apache Pro hits most of the right notes. Just don’t be surprised when the inevitable update comes along with a new GPU that uses less power and runs faster. –Jarred Walton
SPECIFICATIONS
- CPU Intel Core i7-6700HQ
- RAM 2x 8GB DDR4-2133
- GPU GeForce GTX 970M 3GB
- Display 15.6-inch, 1920x1080 Matte IPS
- Storage 128GB Toshiba M.2 SATA, 1TB HGST 7200rpm HDD,BD-Combo
- Connectivity 1x Mini-DP, 1x HDMI, Killer Ethernet and 802.11ac, SD reader, 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1x USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0
- Dimensions 15.08 x 10.24 x 1.06 inches
- Weight (Lap/Carry) 5.32/6.80 lb
