MSI GE73 Raider RGB 8RF Review
Up Close
If you regularly read our laptop reviews then the MSI chassis won’t be a massive shock. It follows their well trodden path of matte black brushed aluminium, red Dragon logo and dual fans for cooling that exhaust at the back corners. One area where the newer MSI models win out over the older ones is the movement of the various ports from the rear around to the sides. It might be a small thing but it just makes the usability a little easier. The RGB part of the Raider name is the two V-shapes either side of the MSI logo, which we’ll see at the bottom.
The anti-glare coating on the Raider is very good indeed and works well with the quality of the display to give you rich colours even with fairly direct lighting. Obviously if you plan on having the screen tilted back in the midday sun then some issues are to be expected, but for average corner of a coffee house or kitchen table usage the vibrancy and uniform brightness of the screen is excellent.
Our review model had been around the block a little bit as you can see from the amount of finger marks on it. That’s always the price you pay on brushed finishes but if you pay a little more attention to the cleanliness of your hands it should be easily wiped off. We think whomever had this before us must have been eating doughnuts whilst testing. The keyboard is the almost MSI standard Steelseries chiclet style with RGB lighting. We can’t remember a laptop they’ve sent us for review that didn’t use the Steelseries number, so it is fortunate that it is of a high standard with crisp response and comfortable typing.
The majority of the connections are on the left hand side, RJ45 LAN port, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort, USB in both Type-A and Type-C as well as the regular headphone and mic jacks. The right hand side contains a memory card reader and two USB ports, with the circular charging port tucked away at the rear corner.
The keyboard lighting will be familiar to anyone who has read our MSI reviews before and the Steelseries RGB lighting is never anything but excellent. The lighting on the rear around the MSI logo looks much richer and heavily saturated in the flesh than it does in our photograph. In fact we’d say the image at the top of the page is a clearer representation. As you would expect all of the colours and effects are fully customisable.
