MSI GL66 Gaming Laptop: 15.6″ 144Hz FHD 1080p Display, Intel Core i7-11800H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Win10, Black (11UGK-001)
Original price was: $1,499.99.$1,249.00Current price is: $1,249.00.
Last updated on August 28, 2024 1:20 am Details
Aaron –
This laptop has an 85W 3070 that performs similar if not worse than a high power 3060. The spec sheet for this model states that it has a 130W max 3070. I spoke with MSI support and the going theory is that there’s a typo on the spec sheet. I will be returning this and replacing with a laptop with a higher performing 3070.
Edit: MSI has corrected the spec sheet and it now lists 3070 max 85W.
Beyond the mix up with the GPU max power, the build quality of the laptop is decent if not good. The keyboard feels nice enough to type on and the backlit keys look good. The screen is nothing to write home about but is adequate. No mux switch. The cooling is decent, although fans are of course loud – during combined stress test with looping fire strike extreme, in extreme performance mode in MSI center with fans on auto, the CPU rarely dropped below 4500Mhz and the GPU only throttled slightly at around 81-82C. Fans showed 50dB on an android sound meter app. The battery is on the small side, so I only saw about 3.5 hours of charge on battery saver and lower brightness / turning off keyboard backlight.
Changing my 1 star review to 3 stars because the laptop isn’t terrible, I just don’t appreciate being misled on such an important spec.
shasta –
It’s smaller than my last one, so it fits my cooling board. I love that the keyboard can change color. The screen has no glare which is amazing. Never had a laptop that didn’t have glare. My games look fantastic, it’s almost like starting a new game. I haven’t done a lot with is yet, but its worth the money. Very happy I didn’t go with the other laptops I was looking at. This is by far the best one I have owned. I love how loud it can get. My last laptop even with the sound all the way up I can’t hear the games or shows. Very happy with this laptop. It loads things very fast which is nice. It’s much lighter than my last one, so it’s easier to move around. Not big and bulky. Very excited to have this. It has an extra fan you can turn on and off if it gets hot as well.
shasta –
Keyboard is kinda small, touchpad is horrible and the fans can get loud. GPU is only 85W and not 130W as advertised at MSI website but conviently amazon didnt list the specs so theres nothing we can do. Otherwise than that runs quickly, screen is okay but kinda wobbly.
K. O. –
I purchaseed this laptop because MSI and Amazon advertised it as a gaming machine for $1500 with RTX 3070 with a 130watt tgp.
After I received it i found out that my laptop was missing a factory seal on the bottom, I also found out that the “130w tgp” was a “misprint” and that the graphics card (rtx 3070) ran at the lowest possible wattage, “up to 85 watt with boost”. The ONLY reason for buying this laptop was gone. In addition to this blatant and very obvious marketing trick (see “false advertisement”) I also found out that this 2021, modern ‘gaming’ laptop was not equipped for VR, could not connect two external monitors, the HDMI rating went from 2.1 to 2.0 (another so-called misprint), which meant 4K ran at 60hz, 8k wasn’t possible at all and, thanks to absence of video/thunderbolt support usb-c there was no way to ever connect a decent VR headset, which meant that if I ever wanted to use HP Reverb 2 I would have to buy a new pc.
In addition, there are other issues: the usb rating (usb 3.1 gen 2) is a rebranded, confusing way of saying that this, again, 2021 gaming laptop only has an old USB 3.0 without video, no displayport, the 180watt power supply gets very hot, same as the motherboard and the ssd, there is no sata port (blocked by a poorly placed battery), no Dolby (they use something called Nahimic, it’s horrible), the display has a native refresh rate of only 100hz and needs overdrive enabled to run at 144, it’s also of a very poor quality and mainly displays blue colors, making everything look very unnatural.
Lastly, something that forced me to return it, was the fact that, in the middle of the game or when downloading many files, the system would just shut off on its own!!! I suffered 20 or 30 shutdowns before I called amazon and set up the return. Seriously, how cheap do you have to be to remove a feature from the Usb-c port that even my old Lenovo has? My Lenovo isn’t a gaming laptop and yet, being 5 years old, it can easily connect two additional monitors and display images on ALL OF THEM! Which isn’t something I can do with MSI.
I know they did this to distinguish this budget, bargain-basement model from their higher-end offerings but why make it in the first place? Also, what kind of a marketing team you have that allowed for misrepresentation of the very reason your end users would buy this laptop?! Msi should have known that almost every person who ended up finding out that the graphics card can’t go naive 70 watts would return the laptop, which meant reselling it as used, aka losing money on every single one sold.
Thank you for wasting my time, msi, I really appreciate the opportunity to buy and then return a semi-functioning laptop that never panned out.
Other issues is thag its very noisy, very loud, processor throttles early and doesn’t ever reach maximum frequency, plasticky, flimsy build, the TouchPad is difficult to operate, the rgb keyboard brightness can’t be adjusted nor can ever be used effectively, it’s also brighter than the very dim display. The display is NOT HRD, with about 58% srgb coverage, very poor quality.
Comes with a slow-usb Kingston ssd, ram is fast but has high latency for some reason, the clock can’t be adjusted because the BIOS is a pure mess.
I can go on and on but, all I can really say is this: don’t buy it! Spend couple of hundred dollars more and buy a vastly superior QHD HP Omen 17, with a potent 140watt 3070, gorgeous qhd screen, fully enabled 11800h, better ram, thunderbolt/usb/pcie4.
Amazon said they won’t charge me anything to return this piece of you-know-what, can’t wait to see if they told the truth.
I won’t buy another msi product ever again. The first msi laptop with GeForce 1070 almost burnt down my entire house, when it shorted and caught fire… This one is just a big disappointment.
Amazon Customer –
Very fast shipping to Chile, about 1 week, I am very happy with this product, all the games I have tried have had an excellent performance, including games like “Control” and “R6”.
It is a lightweight and very powerful computer with a high quality screen.
It has a unique and beautiful design. The price I find is according to the power that is delivered.