MSI Katana GF66 review: excellent gaming performance within a budget
The MSI Katana GF66 is not only one of the best gaming laptops on the market, but also one of the best student laptops on the market-suppose you are a student with a good budget and like to do some things to play regularly.
Of particular note is the 11th generation Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU that we have installed in this laptop, which means that even the most demanding tasks can be quite fast. Run and run the latest games PC games can provide.
Whether you are interested in the battery life or typing experience of the MSI Katana GF66, our review should answer all your questions and help you determine whether this economical gaming laptop from MSI should be your next computer upgrade.
MSI Katana GF66 is equipped with a bright and clear 15.6-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels and a refresh rate of 144Hz. It does the job well whether you are playing games, making spreadsheets, streaming movies, or anything else-although there are definitely better panels out there, it is more than enough for the price you pay. A thick chin at the bottom, but the side and top bezels are quite thin, and there is an integrated webcam above the screen.
As far as the overall design is concerned, this is one of the lowest-profile gaming laptops you will encounter, with black plastic dominating, with almost no lighting or any aesthetic prosperity. The keyboard only emits one color-red-so if you want something you can really delve into in terms of customization (this will sync with your other gaming accessories in terms of lighting), then you might want to look for you elsewhere Next laptop.
With dimensions of 359 mm x 259 mm x 24.9 mm (14.1 inches x 10.2 inches x 0.98 inches) and a weight of 2.25 kg (nearly 5 pounds), it is more portable than many gaming laptops, and we can imagine taking it with us to carry a very comfortable Backpack. Perhaps the gorgeous design style is the use of raised grilles below to help airflow, but you won’t see them often. There are more vents on the sides and back.
In terms of ports and connections, laptops have many options: an Ethernet port, a 3.5 mm combo headphone and microphone jack, a USB-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 1), a USB-A port (USB 2.0), two One USB-A port (USB 3.2 Gen 1) and one HDMI output, up to 4K resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. This should satisfy all your peripherals and accessory requirements, although we also want to see a fingerprint sensor to make it easier to log in to Windows.
MSI Katana GF66 is equipped with some impressive internal structures: three configurations are available, and our evaluation unit is equipped with the 11th generation Intel Core i7-11800H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, 8GB RAM, and 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD. RTX 3050 and RTX 3060 options are also available, but any GPU option can provide you with the latest ray tracing technology and Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) feature, which uses artificial intelligence to increase the frame rate.
This laptop can comfortably play the best games at 1080p resolution, albeit at a different frame rate than more expensive and more powerful laptops. For example, after Red Dead Redemption 2 is set to use almost all 4GB of graphics RAM, we get about 40-60 frames per second. For everyone except the most demanding gamers, it has enough charm under the hood, and the stereo 2W speakers also do a good job of adding audio.
In the famous Time Spy 3DMark benchmark test, this laptop scored 5,440, slightly lower than the average 5,730 points of gaming laptops-this is not excellent performance, but you are not paying for it. You really get very good performance, and the price is very favorable; coupled with some of the latest Nvidia graphics technology, can achieve a smooth and clear gaming experience. In addition, this laptop can remain relatively cool and quiet while playing games, and overall, it is an attractive package.
Although you will never buy a gaming laptop because of battery life, the MSI Katana GF66 performs well in this regard, with a drop of about 30% per hour when streaming video at maximum brightness-so you will get a total of three hours of Movies and shows, but when you start running some high-end games on it, this will obviously drop sharply. We do not intend to use this particular laptop to leave the power outlet for too long.
