Hands on with MSI's GT660 gaming laptop, featuring a Dynaudio sound system

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 5

Gallery

Posted on 24 May 2010 at 14:37

MSI has teamed up with high-end speaker maestro Dynaudio to develop the GT660 gaming laptop, which promises premium sound in one of the lightest 16in laptops we’ve seen to date. We spent some time with the GT660 at a press conference in Amsterdam, hoping to understand what all the fuss is about.

However, at 3.5kg, it’s definitely not a feather weight and its striking design is unlikely to be to everyone’s tastes. To keep the weight down, MSI has opted for an all plastic shell, most of which is glossy and likely to be a candidate for finger prints. The wrist rest is textured and shouldn’t attract finger prints in the same way.

The keyboard uses the Chiclet-style keys and there’s an included number pad. It’s good to see it included, but it does make typing feel a little strange at first, as you’re typing off-centre and so the screen isn’t comfortably in front of you. It felt fairly positive to type on with reasonably good feedback from the keys.

On the lid, MSI has sculpted an interesting design with the centrepiece being a back-lit MSI logo. It’s a bit of a finger print magnet, but it does make the GT660 stand out.

Dynaudio said that the speaker design was factored in from the start of the GT660’s development and have been optimised for the best acoustic performance. The speakers have been positioned so that they manage to fill the area in front of the laptop with sound. There's also a sub-woofer built into the base.

From the brief demonstration we had, the audio quality appears to be very good, but we’ll reserve our final judgement for when we get a sample in the Expert Reviews labs, though. There was a lot of background noise during the demonstration, which made it difficult to quantify how good the sound system is.

MSI has not only gone all out to deliver a premium audio experience though, it has also packed an impressive amount of power inside the GT660. With a mobile Core i7 (quad-core) processor, a GeForce GTX 285M 1GB and 6GB of RAM at its heart, it’ll outperform most desktops, never mind laptops.

It also includes space for two 2.5in 500GB SATA hard drives, although only one is included in the base specification. You can configure the drives in a RAID 0 array and there’s also the option to upgrade both disks to SSDs for an even bigger performance improvement.

On the right hand edge, there are four 3.5mm audio jacks, a USB 2.0 port and the DVD drive. On the left hand edge, there's another USB 2.0 port, along with two USB 3.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader and an ExpressCard slot. On the rear, there are Ethernet, VGA, eSATA and HDMI connectors as well as a Kensington lock slot and power socket. The edges of the laptop are also lit with rather garish light strips - the good thing is that these are configurable and can be turned off completely if desired.

The GT660 will be available in July, starting from £1,499 inc VAT.

Author: Tim Smalley in Amsterdam