MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro 4K Gaming Laptop Review

Specifications can be found here – https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GT62VR-7RE-Dominator-Pro.html#hero-overview

Some may feel that £2200 for a gaming notebook or laptop dependant on what you call it is a somewhat extravagant expense. This certainly isn’t the case if you’re limited on things like space or you spend most of your time on the go, traveling and working between different locations etc. Different features generally come at different costs and the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro has a considerable amount of worth about it…

Performance

Although the GT62VR from MSI has a myriad of high-quality components and features, in our testing as you can see by the above video review, a GTX 1070 isn’t enough to power games at 4K without sacrificing frames; especially not enough to run at 60fps average. If you’re willing to drop the settings down to high however, you will have much better frame rates. In relation to the rest of the laptop, the Intel Kaby Lake Core i7-7820HK processor and 32GB of DDR4 memory are perfect for content creators on the go; things like photo editing and video editing are a breeze, not as good as a desktop, but what do you really expect? Storage performance isn’t blistering as a SATA3 SSD has been used, but MSI had to cut something out of the equation to keep the price/spec ratio down and it appears that an NVMe has been missed out; not necessarily a bad thing, but some may look at £2200 as too much to pay without one.

Design

Two of the biggest elements of the GT62VR’s design is the 15.6″ UHD 4K display IPS panel and of course, the subtle and sleek chassis. MSI Gaming notebooks usually have a very uniformed look across the entire range and the new GT62VR doesn’t break the mould in this regard; if it’s not broken, there is no need to fix it! That being said, the chassis is just under 40mm thick and weighs just shy of 3KG which isn’t the heaviest option around, but it’s certainly not as slim as the GS models, nor would you expect it to be.

MSI include many usable and useful features with their notebooks and some of the more notable ones included with this particular model are MSI Dragon centre, XSplit Gamecaster, Cooler Boost 4 and the SteelSeries Engine 3 (for the keyboard). A copy of Windows 10 Home is also pre-installed onto the GT62VR and as the model suggests, is 100% ready and VR compatible/capable.

Value

The way I look at the value when a product costs as much as £2200 is slightly different to how I would with a product costing £30 or so, but the value element should always remain the same? If that makes sense…True value is different to respective value and very respectively, the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro might not be the most cost effective laptop in the price range, but it’s certainly worth the money. I will go on record stating that if this particular model had an NVMe capable SSD instead of a regular SATA drive installed, it would be 5/5 in my opinion. Looking at what it actually does have, the overall package from presentation, looks, features and of course performance for the price tag isn’t all that bad and it scores pretty well in my opinion. It is certainly easy to understand why MSI Gaming notebooks have done so well over the last couple of years and why many users, new and old are in praise of them.

Final Thoughts

Overall and taking everything into consideration from the performance, design and value aspects of the review, I believe the MSI GT62VR 7RE deserves our gold award. Yes, one could say that 60fps wasn’t achieved at the maximum settings in the games we tested, but this notebook is far more than just about gaming, it has the performance that content creators on the go need with the Intel i7-7820HK processor and 4K UHD screen, while maintaining a strong heavy feature set for even the most hardcore of gamers. I believe if you’re budget is strictly limited to £2200 and you want something with a 4K IPS screen as opposed to a 1080p variant, then this is the model to go out and buy. You can purchase the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro from Amazon UK by clicking here!

Big thanks to MSI Notebooks UK for sending the GT62VR Dominator Pro gaming laptop in for review.