[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Â Closer Look
When you first receive your GT70 2PE Dominator Pro it will most likely come in a bog standard brown box. I chose to just throw that to the side as it wasn’t much fun! Opening it up however revealed a bit of a treat, inside were 2 black boxes and a backpack to help carry your new GT70 when travelling; very handy for the mobile or LAN gamer.
One box is home to the notebook and nothing more, the other box has a lot of goodies in it; goodies which MSI were lucky I sent back to them in the end! There is plenty of paperwork to cover anything you should have questions about but more importantly there are some nice peripherals including a mouse, mouse pad, headset and a monstrous power supply to keep the beast that is the GT70 powered up; this notebook is a beast!
As I previously said, the notebook comes in a box all by itself. It comes wrapped in cloth which in turn is also wrapped in plastic and has a couple of nice foam pads on both ends to make sure it gets to customers in the best physical shape possible. MSI have taken great precaution to make sure the GT70 arrives to customers unharmed and we would surely hope so given the price tag it carries.
On the bottom there is plenty ventilation for airflow and this thing is a beast so it is going to need all the help in regards to cooling it can get. This is also where customers who dare can remove the bottom panel and gain access to the internal components such as the GPU, RAM, SSDs and hard drive. Â The battery is also easily removable should the need arise.
The top of the lid has a nice metallic red brushed aluminium look to it with the MSI logo right in the middle and a nice dragon right behind.
Taking a glimpse at the rear IO and we have HDMI/Mini DisplayPort/VGA outputs, E2200 LAN port and the power connector. To the right you will also see an exhaust port to help keep the GT70 cool.
Panning around to the right hand side and there isn’t a whole lot going on here, there is a BluRay combo drive and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.
Switching over to the left side of the laptop and there is another exhaust port, 3 x USB 3.0 ports, a SD card reader and the 7.1ch audio jacks powered by Audio Boost.
Opening the laptop up and we get our first glimpse at the 17.3″ screen. We can also see the inbuilt webcam with mic just to the left of it and also a nice cloth covering the keyboard to help make sure everything stays in tip-top shape.
Across the front of the laptop just under the touch pad are some LED indication lights so users will know if things like Wifi and Bluetooth are connected.
Removing the protective cloth from the keyboard and there is quite a bit going on. At the top, on either side are two fairly big speakers as far as notebooks go. In the middle of the speakers are some touch sensitive buttons to turn adjustable things like fan speeds and airplane mode on and smack dab in the middle is one of the biggest power buttons I have ever seen on a notebook personally.
We can also see the SteelSeries branded keyboard and while it may not look much more than an OEM job, it does have some nice features including zone controlled LEDs. Just below the keyboard on the left is a small SteelSeries logo which isn’t overdone and is more than welcome in my opinion. The wrist rest is the same red brushed aluminium as the top and also features a dragon on it.
