MSI GS30 Shadow with Gaming Dock review

[Administrator]

Imagine a laptop with the footprint and weight of the MacBook Air, packing a full quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Iris Pro 5200 graphics, RAID-0 SSDs and a 1080p 13.3-inch PLS display. For many - us included - it sounds like a dream come true: a truly portable form factor combined with processing power that's a substantial leap beyond the standard ultrabook. Now imagine that when you get home, you can place the unit into a bespoke dock that comes complete with Nvidia's GTX 980 graphics card, turning a humble notebook into a thoroughbred gaming powerhouse. It all sounds too good to be true, but that's exactly what MSI's fascinating GS30 Ghost offers.
It seems that MSI is on a mission to integrate a first class PC gaming experience with a mobile form factor. We've already seen the brilliantly insane GT80 Titan SLI - a monstrous 18.4-inch laptop with enough gaming power to take on a Titan X-based desktop PC. This approach is somewhat different, essentially allowing you to decouple the laptop from the high-end GPU, whereupon it becomes a more traditional ultrabook-style offering - albeit with class-leading processing power in a 13.3-inch form factor. The question is whether this curious arrangement actually works.
There's clearly much to commend about the laptop itself. Initial impressions suggest a slightly thicker MacBook Air, and weight-wise they're pretty much like-for-like. Build quality is decent, if not spectacular - a mixture of black metal and plastic, with the usual chiclet-style keyboard. The 1080p screen is bright and vibrant with decent viewing angles (though Windows 8.1's DPI scaling still looks pretty poor, resulting in ugly-looking fontography), while the trackpad is above average, responsive enough to the lightest touch. Audio is a little disappointing though, with little bass and speakers mounted on the bottom of the laptop, meaning that sound reproduction is permanently muffled. Ports selection is decent though: we have an SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port and gigabit LAN.
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