MSI GT60 2PE Dominator Pro Review

Written by Antony Leather

March 12, 2014 | 16:08

Tags: #4k #gaming-laptop

Companies: #msi

The trackpad isn't the largest we've seen at only 77mm across, which does feel a little cramped on a laptop of this size. That said, its brushed aluminium surface is a joy to use and it's very responsive too.

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The button is a single piece affair that's finished in glossy chrome, which makes it something of a finger print magnet. It's fairly easy to press at the edges but the force needed increases a lot as you move towards the centre. This can be a pain if you're used to two separate buttons as we found ourselves hitting the inside edge of the right button a lot, which either had no effect, or made out thumb sore after several tries. It's likely something you'd get used to, though, if indeed you even use the trackpad.

The keyboard isn't likely to disappoint though. Made by Steelseries, the chiclet keys have a slightly textured coating and have superb feedback and travel. The layout wasn't quite as top-notch, however, with the American-style tiny enter and right shift keys catching us out on occasions. MSI doesn't seem to offer a UK layout, which is a real shame.

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The keyboard's main shouting point is it's full RGB backlighting, which can be controlled using software to illuminate different sections in different colours, simply toggle between colours for the whole key set or apply animations effects or different profiles that can be switched between using the keyboard depending if you're gaming or word processing for example.

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The lighting isn't overpowering and is really looks the part in a darkened room with very little overspill around the edges meaning the lettering is clearly visible and not drowned out. Whether you're after a subtle shade of blue or vivid red or green, the colour is totally customizable although sadly there's no per-key tweaking - only vertical areas can be adjusted through different colours.

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Speaker-wise, thanks to a dedicated subwoofer on the underside, the Dominator Pro is easily one of the best-sounding laptops we've come across. That's not a difficult task of course given that most laptops have dire audio quality, especially bass, compared to even a cheap set of desktop speakers. However we were pleasantly surprised here and found it would certainly suffice for spouting a little music during web browsing sessions or an open-ear gaming session round a friend's house.
Discuss this in the forums

Posted by Hustler - Wed Mar 12 2014 16:42

I suppose it has it's niche...hooked up to a 1080p monitor with USB KB and mouse, it's a nice little mid-high range PC, with the ability to take it with you and play games at non-native 'blur vision' resolutions.

but £2000, ouch!!...you can get so much more for your money buying dedicated stuff for each thing this can do.

I'd far rather have a £1200 gaming PC and £800 laptop...much better value for money.

Posted by bawjaws - Wed Mar 12 2014 16:47

What's the point of paying through the nose for a 3K screen on a gaming laptop if it doesn't have enough grunt to provide playable framerates at native resolution? I'd rather buy a decent gaming laptop that could produce the goods at 1080p and save myself hundreds of pounds.

Posted by Shirty - Wed Mar 12 2014 17:02

Somebody explain something to me. If you take a 4k screen and increase the pixel size fourfold (i.e. four actual pixels make up a single "virtual" pixel), whilst effectively quartering the resolution, would it not just be perfectly mapped to 1080p? Or am I missing something?

If I'm correct then you could switch on 1080 mode when gaming and back to 4k mode for everything else. I'd lust after a laptop that could do that. Of course, I'd lust after a laptop or even desktop that was natively able to power through games at 4k, but that's still a few generations off.

Before anyone says anything, I know this isn't a 4k laptop. It just seemed as good a place as any for my theorising :p

Posted by Hustler - Wed Mar 12 2014 17:28

bawjaws
What's the point of paying through the nose for a 3K screen on a gaming laptop if it doesn't have enough grunt to provide playable framerates at native resolution?
Lol..i learnt this lesson in 2001 when I bought a Dell laptop with the then state of the art Geforce 2go mobile GPU, the screen had a resolution of 1600x1200, this was when 1600x1200 was a big deal...

It also had funky changeable coloured palm rest inserts...yellow was my favourite..:)

I really enjoyed playing games on it though....at 1024x768.
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