MSI GS60 Ghost Pro laptop review

You're looking at the "world's lightest gaming notebook." At least that's what gaming hardware vendor MSI claims, pegging its brand new GS60 Ghost Pro at around four pounds. I had the chance to play around with a prototype unit of the company's latest thin and light gaming laptop - the same one that I saw, but couldn't touch, at this year's CES.

"But, MSI already released its GS60 Ghost," you say? You're right, the company just launched its first 15.6-inch thin and light gaming laptop, the GS60 Ghost, packed with an FHD display and Nvidia's latest 800M series GPUs. But remember: MSI hinted during CES that this machine could go as sharp as a 3K resolution at launch.
Today, the GS60 Ghost earns the "Pro" moniker, thanks to a 2880 x 1620 WQHD panel. Behind that super sharp screen on the model that I tested out is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M with 6GB of GDDR5 RAM. Backing up that beefy video card are Intel's quad-core, 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ and 16GB of DDR3 RAM at 1600MHz.
Between those guts and a 128GB SSD-1TB HDD storage combo, I'm not at all surprised that MSI projects that this beast will cost around $2,000 (about £1,194, AU$2,128) upon release later this April or in early May. And the company may even boost the available storage and RAM capacity. That might be overkill.

Super sharp shooting

To show off just how well Nvidia's GPUs can handle beyond-HD resolutions, MSI had the GS60 Ghost Pro running Metro: Last Light. Even almost a year after its release, Last Light is still one of the most demanding PC games around, a fine benchmark for 3K gaming.
While I didn't have time to get into a firefight in the tunnels beneath a nuclear Russia, I witnessed zero frame rate dips while walking around a militia headquarters. That was with the game running at the laptop's native pixel count, the detail settings set to normal and anti-aliasing set to 4X with vertical sync disabled. That said, screen tearing was evident throughout. Perhaps if you were to bring anti-aliasing down a notch, you'd be able to activate v-sync without issue.

Regardless, it's official: At least for Nvidia, mobile hardware has officially caught up to the next leap in PC gaming. Considering how demanding of a game Last Light is, I imagine that less graphically intense games will run at higher settings behind 3K.

Got a light?

If you don't, then MSI has you covered … and then some. The company's collaboration with SteelSeries lives on in the Ghost Pro. That means you'll get a SteelSeries-made keyboard with some crazy backlighting and configuration options.
Using the included SteelSeries Engine software, you can light this laptop's keyboard up like a vivid rainbow or even localize lighting to specific keys, like the WASD area. Plus, you can program macros and lighting configurations for each game with application profiles.
MSI couldn't help itself with the lighting, as the front of its brushed magnesium frame features blue indicator LEDs for several statuses. Even the power button light changes from blue to orange when the 870M kicks in through Nvidia's Optimus graphics switching tech. (It's pretty useful, honestly.)

Early verdict

At just about four pounds and with the power and features it offers, the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro stands to give rivals like the Razer Blade a worthy challenge. Aside from some keyboard flex at the G and H keys, there isn't much to complain about yet with this mobile gaming rig.

A free six months of X-Split, a popular gaming streaming software and service, only sweetens the deal. PC gaming has officially pushed beyond HD, and mobile rigs will not be left behind. I'll show you exactly how far they've come once we score a GS60 Ghost Pro for review later this spring.