How good are MSI laptops?

Hello all,

I am interested in the GT725 but haven't heard of MSI before. How good is their quality and their warranty. Have you had any major problems with your MSI laptops? How about customer service, are they decent?

Model GT725 has caught my attention and it seems to be a pretty good deal for the price. About $1600.00 at Newegg. I have also been looking at HP, Dell, Sony, and Asus, but they don't offer what the GT725 offers for the money. Thanks for your advice.

 

i dont know about the warranty but imo the quality is great as good as sager or any other good notebook. imo ive owned everything from dell, hp, toshiba, sager, alienware etc and imo msi is one of the better build ones ou of all of them.

 

its about average

 

MSI (company) was founded in 1986.

 

From what i hear they have fantastic build quality as well as superb price (In comparing this to other seriously high priced laptop, i find this is true), they have superb cooling and the new 725 to 727 feature one hell of a crazy graphics card.

 

Sounds like the GT725 is going to be my next lappie then. I wonder though if I should wait about a month to see if MSI decides to put the ATI 4860 instead of the 4850 in this lappie. Dunno if it will be faster though since notebookcheck lists the 4860 as having 128 bit bus compared to the 256 bit bus of the 4850. Decisions decisions...

 

How does the 725 compare to asus GT50VT-A2?

 

MSI have been in business for over 20 years so that should tell you they've "been around" and aren't some fly-by-night operation. My first laptop was a monochrome sub-notebook from "Micro-Star" as they were commonly referred to back then. Their motherboards were known for offering the consumer "value" compared to the more well-known brands like Asus and Gigabyte.

YZFR1CEX

 

Yes, it said MSI on alot of chipsets and motherboards back in the day. I dont know if they have left that business but at least I dont see it as often now. Well established company anyhow.

 

Basically, with MSI, you don't have to overpay for marketing and brand. Main stream companies spend a ton on marketing. Plus, they don't manufacture the laptops themselves (mostly)

 

I can only tell you about their NETBOOK MSI WIND. It's totally brilliant; light, fully-loaded, easy to use. The website is very poor; I haven't needed it yet, but when I looked, I was disgusted. However, the machine (2 gig special from the Netherlands laptopshop.nl) is perfect-no integral DVD though. Cost: 419 euros, less in UK. I liked being able to have it with XP-not VISTA.

 

My GT725 build quality is WAY WAY WAY better than their GX620/GT627/MS-1651 was, BUT ATI GPU driver support is tanking big time, as in unless you plan to buy something new in about 2y stay the hell away from an ATI GPU... i.e. get the GT627 as nVidia supports their GPUs way in the hell back...

 

lol you really don't like ATI, do you? Posted pretty much same ATI-hating message in 3 threads

 

Not since AMD/ATI's idea of marketing and support is kneeing their customers in the nuts... (oh well, last AMD/ATI product that I'll ever own regardless of what their tiny sandpiles do, w/o support they're just a pile of sand...)

 

Wait till ATI Matures, then the performance shall rise even more on the gt 725 =)

 

GT725 compare to asus GT50VT-A2?

 

The 3dmark06 i got from my GT725-074 is 9070 stock. with updated drivers turbo mode and slight overclock i got 10173. whats the asus's 3dmark score?

 

Don't know, just wanted to know on build quality, support

 

build quality is decent. LCD portion is thin. prone to wiggle when moving laptop.
just like a macbook air. Speakers are good. Realtek HD control center has no graphic equalizer like my other realtek audio powered laptops. Cooling is excellent. With a zalman NC2000 my temps are 42c CPU 62-64c under full Gaming load. Keyboard has no flex. hate the cramped keys on the right side and arrow keys. zero stuttering or pauses in any games i have played. everything loads fast plays smooth. LCD is kinda dimmer than my ASUS G2P's even at max lcd brightness. viewing angles are good. no bleed noticed at bottom. Zero dead pixels. I have undervolted to 1.0125 cpu and downclocked GPU by 50gpu and 50 memory to keep things cool. 3dMark at this setting is 8400 roughly and i happy with this. since it runs very cool for long periods. before downclocks and undervolting temps were 48 CPU and 72 GPU with fan kicking on every few minutes. now my fan never kicks on. fan is barely audible when running at full tilt when stressing the cpu/GPU before i tweaked it down for cool running. Overall I am very happy with my purchase. Vista is ok so far not as good as XP but doable. the cramped keyboard to me is the major turn off for this laptop. Unreal Tournament 2004 never goes below 58 with VSYNC on (hate screen tearing so i always have vsync enabled) Everquest 2 plays around 20-50fps at 1680 or 1650 resolution which is really good for the laptop with settings set at high quality. the new expansion area frames hit 17-24 fps but this is always a bad zone. disabling shadows pops it back to 24-30. have yet to try any 2008 games. next purchase i am going to buy steam valve pack for $100 and have some good fun. The ASUS G2P had a more solid feel to the build but also was bigger and heavier by a large margin. For its price i feel its an exceptional deal for what your paying. if you wait for Asus model you will pay more but it will probably have a more solid build. I would be very surprised if the cooling system would be as good as the MSI's is currently. Support is pretty much worthless. I would buy from exoticpc or RK and pay the few extra dollars to have them cover the warranty if this a concern for you. MSI webpage is rarely updated with drivers or bios. but then again this is the same way for the ASUS G2P drivers. they never got updated since release. MSI forums tells you to use mobility mod tool to mod your own drivers to get updates.

 

Thanks for the help, comparing it to the asus g50vt-a2
Don't know if I will like the smaller screen on the asus.

 

After more than a week with mine, I'm still impressed with the build quality!

 

Ditto! its a smooth fast little beast. Its just the squished keys annoy me. i would gladly give up my number pad for a full size keyboard. but that is my only gripe. for $1349 its the best money i ever spent on a laptop.