The GT70's keyboard and trackpad layout is typical of most laptops. The keyboard includes a full number pad, and since the touchpad is centered to the standard portion of the keyboard, it ends up sitting slightly to the left on the palm rest.
The palm rest itself is clad in the same brushed red metal as the exterior cover, giving it a solid feel.
The GT70 Dragon Edition’s trackpad is a Synaptics model. The left- and right-click buttons have a textured finish that feels sturdy. The tracking surface works well, and is also textured, facilitating good control over the cursor. Compared to trackpads on other notebooks, the GT70's is slightly compact, especially next to the giant clickpads found on Ultrabooks. Nevertheless, it gets the job done.
One thing we noticed during the course of our testing was that the default setting for Synaptics' PalmCheck feature was too high. At this level, the touchpad is effectively disabled any time the keyboard was in use.
Setting the sensitivity of PalmCheck to Minimum fixed the issue, allowing us to use the trackpad and keyboard at the same time (sort of important for gaming, right?).
There is also a dedicated button above and slightly to the left of the trackpad that allows you to disable it quickly. This becomes useful when you're typing for an extended period. With PalmCheck set to Minimum for gaming, it’s much easier to accidentally move the cursor with your palm or thumb when typing.
Below the trackpad are indicator lights for (from left to right) Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, battery charge status, sleep mode, and hard drive activity.
The island-style SteelSeries keyboard is a full-sized 103-key model featuring a numpad.
Keys have a textured finish that contrasts well with the slick surfaces surrounding the keyboard. The keyboard itself responds well if you type with medium or light force. However, if you tend to press hard into keys, the keyboard flexes a bit. Like most notebooks, the GT70's chiclet-style keys don’t have much in the way of travel depth, but they do have a good tactile feel.
The keyboard's backlighting is particularly unique, featuring three independent zones that can be assigned one of 24 colors.

You also have five operational modes: normal, gaming, breathing, wave, and dual-color. The gaming setting shuts down all of the backlighting except for the WASD area. Meanwhile, the breathing, wave, and dual-color modes are essentially cool little light shows.
Let’s move on to the row of custom buttons and indicators above the keyboard.
To the left of the power switch are controls for Media Player, fan speed, and keyboard backlighting. Media Player is supposed to enhance the playback quality from the display and sound system. Fan speed switches between 100% duty cycle and the quietest mode available for the current system temperature (this was among our most-used control). The keyboard backlighting button simply turns the feature on and off.
To the right of the power switch are controls for Wi-Fi, built-in display, and a G-Panel button, along with caps and num lock indicators. Having the Wi-Fi switch top-and-center, without the need for any combo keys, is certainly nice. Likewise, the display control switch is also convenient to have. The G-Panel button brings up the Windows 8 Mobility Center.
- MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2: A Gaming Notebook For The One Percent
- GT70 Dragon Edition 2 Exterior: Design And Features
- Keyboard And Trackpad
- GT70 Size Comparison And Included Software
- GT70 Dragon Edition 2: Teardown Images And Components
- Test System Specs And Benchmark Suite
- Results: 3DMark
- Results: Real-World Productivity And Media Apps
- Battlefield 3, BioShock Infinite, CoD: Black Ops II, And Crysis 3
- DiRT: Showdown, Hitman: Absolution, And Sniper Elite V2
- Tomb Raider, Total War: Shogun 2, And WoW: Mists Of Pandaria
- Turbo Boost Behavior And Throttle Testing
- Synthetic Heat Run And The Impact Of MSI's NOS
- Battery Life, AC Draw, And Charge Rate
- Storage And Audio Performance
- Brightness, Contrast, White Point, Viewing Angles, Uniformity, And Gamma
- Color Gamut, Color Accuracy, Monitor Rating, And Calibration
- Is Xotic PC's Tuned-Up MSI GT70-Based Platform Our New Performance Champ?












How about that for bragging rights!
It is unfortunate. What if I want to crunch on the high-end CPU and the GPU 24/7 for some reason? Can't do it with a 180w AC adapter.
To those thinking that the built in single fan isn't good enough, it is a 12V fan! I have never seen a 12V fan in a laptop before but this one has it. The Coolerboost feature ramps up the fan RPM to maximum and really keeps the temperatures down.
There are some reports of bad paste jobs so if you are having high temps, that may be the reason. Call up MSI to verify that your warranty will not be void and then repaste it. MSI is cool in that they'll usually allow you to take off the heatsink whereas Asus won't.
Thanks Tom's for making a much better review than what Anand did!
So on page 14, the max power draw from the battery when the laptop is unplugged and you are gaming is only 85 watts? That must mean that the dedicated graphics is shut down and the HD4600 is only on? Can you have the 780m when on only battery power?
for those talking about its not for hardcore gamers... I think they are wrong because i can't take my cosmos II tower with the 3930x and my titan on my back when i visit my girlfriend on train a 300km away from my home... and not everybody can have two of those beasts.. the desktop is always better but you can't drag it always with you to trips...
for the one talking about being scared of being robbed... I don't know why he walks on the streets wearing a wallet you COULD be robbed... or a plane could crash on your head.... ¬¬ then nobody would buy an smartphone. because to use it indoor and using outdoors and old nokia because if it is robbed its not an expensive lose....
if you at least talked about the processing power lose when not wall plugged or so that would be a reasonable comentary...
For all those bucks, it needs a 120Hz refresh
If you have multi-colors, use them to some utility. Make the Numpad blue, and numbers and function buttons green with the rest red or something useful. Ideally, alternating number colors would be great. Or maybe the whole keyboard red except for green AWSD and Shift keys.
Not decals. The graphics are etched into the red anodized metal. I tried to capture them in the photos, but they still look better in person.
And it looks like you put Anandtech`s review to shame.
Good job guys
First, lets get rid of the CONS:
-The screen is too heavy for the plastic covering it, this can cause a lot of problems. In reality, if you dont open and close the lid with both hads carefully each time, you are almost guaranteed to break the union point of the plastic surrounding the screen.
-Loud. The fan is good and quite eficient but its loud. I dont know why they decided to use 1 fan instead of 2 (one for gpu other for CPU), but i guess its for more features.
-Thin plastic covers. Some parts of this laptop feel weak, especially the botton part of it. Ive iopened the laptop around 3 times for mods and thermal paste change and each time i was SURE id braek that cover. It hols dor now thou.
-Keyboard. While the keyboard is definitly above average. However, you need to press quite hard to make sure it registers. This is ok with the keyboard as its quite sturdy (1.5 years in, no issue whatsowever ), but bare in mind you will need strong actuation force to use this keyboard correctly.
-Touchpanel( i dont mean the one used as mice, but the one at top for turn on, etc): The touchpanel is usefull, however it can become unresponsive at times (lucky they aded a Blue ray open button). The worst part is that it feels very fragile and cheap. It will do its job, but since the rest of the laptop is build very well, this feels out of place.
-Trackpanel (the one used as mice): At laeast in my laptop its fairly unaccurate. Its not a problem for me as i would not game with it, but at times it is bothering.
-Um, oh and... yeah, this thing is heavy. If you get the laptop+the charger+some mice+some cds.... you can end up carring around 8-10 KG
Now to The PRos:
-The screen is amazingly good (dont expect to use it outdoors, but its quality is some of the best in the market).
-The sound is decent (I am an amateur audiophile and this thing sounds awsome for a laptop, and its totally pasable for regular use).
-The performance and temperatures are great. Granted my verion is not so packed as it runs a i5-2340M//GTX670M, but my temps after changeing thermal paste to arctic silver 5 at 30 C ambient never surpased 70 C at load (thou this was a short test to check if i applied the thermal paste correctly, so it will vary im sure).
-The gimiks are fairly cool. The MSI logo is not too chessy, the beyboard lighting system is feirly nice and usefull, and in general it does not seem that they added this just to justify the price.
-Button to instantly turn off trackpanel. This is just nice.
-Good overall conectivity (many usb) and also a decent webcam.
Now the only thing that could be a deal breaker for me is the fact that this is a machine you need to be very carefull with.
I highly recommend this laptop chasis (MSI actually sold the patent to a few competitores on the chasis, so its very good), and any model using it, but i STRONGLY suggest to anyone that buys it to use a very good carring case.
The laptop dosent lay well in bags. Allow me to explain: Most bags dont carry laptops in horizontal but in vertical. In most cases, the thiner part of the laptop goes down, and the wider up. This will make the pressure of each step you make impact the screen, as the screen gets all the pressure if you put the laptop downwards that way.
In other words, without a carring case that will keep the laptop well safe, sooner or alter the screen will suffer, and also most likely the conectors between the screen and the rest of the laptop.