The Best Gaming Laptop of 2023 - MSI Raider GE76 2023 Full Review

At first look and touch, it looks and feels almost exactly the same as the previous MSI GE76 Raider that I reviewed before which is made out of a combination of aluminum and hard plastic materials with an accent RGB light bar on the front side looking above. We have a pleasantly looking cool-toned aluminum cover with subtle chrome MSI logo right here and some interesting polygonal design around the hinge.

Looking on its front side, we have the said RGB light bar that spans across the entire width of the laptop and has this soft and diffused illumination on the left side, we have exhaust ventilation, a small LED indicator, a Type A USB 3.2 Gen2 port, a Type C USB 3.2 Gen2 port that also doubles as a display port 1.4 port, a 3.5mm audio combo jack, and the side-firing speaker on the other side, we have  another exhaust ventilation,2 Type-A USB 3.2 Gen1 ports for  peripherals, an SD card reader, and another side-firing speaker for a total  of 4 including 2 on each side of the keyboard.

And what I like about this is that most of the longer and thicker cables are located at the back like the mini Display port, thunderbolt 4, the Ethernet port, HDMI, and the power port. It makes cable management and ease of use a lot better. I also appreciate that it has an SD card reader and pretty much all the necessary IOs for productivity and content creation.

In terms of cooling solution, we have a total of 4 exhaust ventilation around the corners of the laptop and a bunch of intake ventilation at the bottom speaking of the bottom. We have the iconic dragon armor carving design with the said intake ventilation and you can see a little bit of the fan blades and heat pipes inside here for the cooler boost technology that allows the MSI Raider Ge76 to perform at its highest peak during load. We also have a good amount of rubber feet to keep this thing stay in place and a nifty reset pinhole right here.

Going back on top, the lid can be opened easily using one hand thanks to the sheer weight of the bottom half of the laptop upon opening the lid, you'll see the full-size keyboard with dedicated arrow keys, Num-pad, and function rows albeit smaller than the other keys. The control key is also wider than usual targeted towards gaming as well as the overall fonts and look of the keyboard. It features per-key RGB lighting and is highly customizable via the Steel Series GG application.

The keys themselves have a decent amount of tactile and bouncy feedback and it also has a substantial amount of travel for the actuation and doesn't feel that mushy or particularly loud either. I also like the design of the illumination here compared to their older pudding-like key caps, albeit quite dim for my preference as you can see here in a fairly dim environment. I also would have preferred if we have a dedicated power button with an integrated fingerprint reader here. Now on the sides of the keyboard, we have a couple of upward-firing speakers that when partnered with the side-firing speakers make up for a full listening experience for both media consumption and gaming. Here's a quick sound test for you guys, The track pad is kind of small for my liking  but at least it has a solidly built surface with a good amount of tactile feedback  and is quite accurate and reliable.

Now, moving towards the display, what we have here for this particular variant which is the MSI Raider Ge76 12UHS to be exact is a 17.3" UHD 120 Hz IPS level panel, that's portable 4k gaming for you guys. Depending on your region this should also be available in QHD 240hz and FHD 360hz variants. As you can tell, the bezels are quite thin especially on the sides with a thick bottom bezel.

Up top, we have a fairly thin bezel while also accommodating the microphone array and the Full HD webcam. Here's a quick look at the webcam's quality. Now, as per testing, the display has 98% SRGB coverage, 67% NTSC, 73% Adobe RGB, and 72% p3 color gamut. In my opinion, that is good enough for most productivity applications, especially for web and social media postings. The display has good colors, contrast, and sharpness and can get substantially bright with decent viewing angles. Unless you force yourself to look at a very extreme angle like this, for the most part the 4k display panel is pretty good.

Although honestly, if I have to pick again, I would rather go for the QHD 240hz variant for a good balance between resolution and refresh rate for both productivity and gaming.

Thanks to the powerful hardware inside and the crispy 4k resolution display, 

I've actually never seen Cyberpunk 2077 this good. so I really had a great time gaming on this  laptop with a very outstanding visual experience.

Now, as we move towards the hardware under the hood, let me break down the 

key specifications of the top-of-the-line 2023  variant of the MSI raider Ge76 gaming laptop.

What we have here for the 12UHS variant is a 12th gen intel core i9-12900HK processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 4800 Memory, 2TB of super-fast Samsung Gen4 NVME SSD, 17.3" 4K 120hz IPS-level panel, wifi 6E, a bunch of necessary input and output ports, 4-cell 99.9 whir battery with a 240 or 240W AC adapter though what I have here is actually a 330W power brick. So as you can tell, the MSI Raider GE76 2023 variant is definitely one of the top gaming laptops this time of the year and with a good amount of input and output ports partnered with a fully unlocked processor and graphics card in terms of power draw, this is definitely an uncompromised piece of technology. Now, what I like about the MSI Raider GE76 software-wise is the revamped MSI Center which is a sort of all-in-one application to fully take advantage of this laptop's performance. 

Not a lot of people that will get this are very technical so I appreciate the fact that it has a smart auto feature that will automatically adjust the performance modes depending on the demand and unlike previous versions of the Silent mode, which just keeps the fan at its slowest speed compromising performance, the new ambient silent AI mode matches the level of the ambient noise allowing the laptop to perform better while still relatively quiet given the amount of ambient noise around. So if it's noisy, the fan can ramp up the speed to match that. Now, there are still a lot of features this gaming laptop has that I can't possibly tackle moving on, let's finally head into our performance benchmarks so that you can have  an idea of how this top-of-the-line  gaming laptop from MSI performs.

First, I set the power mode in windows to Best performance and turn off battery saver and sleep. Next, since I want to push this laptop to its peak, I chose to use the Extreme Performance Mode, Crank up the graphics core clock and VRAM clock offsets to 200mhz and enable the Cooler boost option. I also made sure that the discrete graphics card option is enabled to take full advantage of the RTX 3080Ti. This should allow this gaming laptop to perform at its highest but in return, will get super loud like a jet engine with that being said, let's head into the results of our benchmarks 3DMark, and PCMark that you can possibly compare with your system if you're interested. I also did a couple of benchmarks  for the 2TB Samsung Gen4 NVME which is absolutely snappy when opening applications, transferring files  generating thumbnails, and scrubbing  through the timeline when editing videos.

Speaking of editing videos, the MSI Raider GE76 2023 edition was able to export our standard 4k 13.92-minute project using the Adobe Media Encoder for just under 8 minutes which is quite fast especially, if you want to edit videos on the go.

When it comes to gaming, as expected, it wasn't a slouch either, well, if you have the top of the line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080Ti and a 12th-gen Intel Core i9 processor you shouldn't expect less than a smooth gaming experience even at 4k resolution which  our variant definitely support at 120hz. I'm not going to lie, I definitely enjoyed my time playing valorant on this laptop at any resolution even at 4K, but I tend to lower it down to 1440p for that sweet spot between performance and visual fidelity. Besides, most competitive FPS gamers still prefer lower resolution either 1080p or 1440p that's why I mentioned earlier, that If, I have to choose again, I'd rather get the 1440p 240hz variant of this laptop. As you can tell, the MSI Raider GE76 2023 edition is kind of overkill for valorant at any resolution even at 4K. So even if you choose the 1080p 360hz variant this laptop can definitely handle that high refresh rate display. The same story can be said in CSGO  with up to 557 FPS in Full HD resolution  and even at 4k, we're getting around 302 FPS.

Pretty much most competitive FPS esports games are playable at 4k resolution including Rainbow Six Siege which is not a surprise since these games are quite easy to drive. I don't think you'll have to worry about competitive gaming here. Except maybe for ergonomics given the form factor of a laptop of course, not everyone likes competitive FPS games, some just like a more laid-back adventure or strategy games enjoying some visual fidelity.  And while cyberpunk 2077 isn't necessarily the most laidback RPG game, it is definitely one of the most gorgeous looking games ever produced with crispy details, high definition visuals, and effects as long as your computer can handle it, especially with Ray tracing and as you can tell, the MSI Raider GE76 can fairly keep up with it with Ray Tracing Ultra and DLSS. Granted the FPS  is below 100 in any resolution but with the right tweak on the settings, you can definitely enjoy 4K  gaming with Ray Tracing enabled in Cyberpunk 2077.Overall, it's safe to say that gaming with the MSI Raider GE76 should not be a problem  at all. Again that should be expected given the top-of-the-line specifications.

Moving on to the thermal performance, while our 12th-gen intel core i9-12900HK spike a bit hot,  for the most part, it is relatively  cool averaging around 37 to 53 degrees  while maintaining the expected benchmarks results. The same thing when it comes to gaming for our CPU. It was able to average around 57 to 67 degrees while maintaining competitive frame rates at all resolutions.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is also relatively cool throughout all our testing. Averaging only around 48.2 to 64.7 degrees and like I said earlier, the MSI Raider Ge76 2023 edition's processor and graphics card are fully unlocked when it comes to power delivery  allowing its full potential to be unleashed.

Using a dedicated wattmeter in between the 330W power brick and the power outlet, we're drawing around 234 to 254 watts depending on the load and lastly, in terms of battery life, with a 4-cell 99.9 whir battery, we're getting about an hour when gaming and extreme performance mode is enabled, just short of 3 hours for productivity applications, 2 and a half hours for video playback, and around "to follow" when idle but the display is turned on. So around 1 to 3hrs gives or takes depending on the use case. Now, to wrap this up, let me give you a breakdown of all the things that I like and didn't like about the MSI Raider Ge76 2023 edition.

I like the fact that you can take full advantage of the hardware inside especially the CPU and GPU and that you have a very nifty MSI center that includes some. Start auto features for those who don't like to tinker much about the technical stuff. I also like the fairly large 17.3 inch 120 Hz IPS level display with decent color reproduction. I also appreciate the overall design and construction of this laptop has a good balance between gamer aesthetic and minimalism that you can even bring to professional meetings and stuff. The RGB lining in front is also a nice accent which compliments well with the RGB of the keyboard, albeit quite dim and lastly, I also appreciate that we pretty much have all the input and output ports that every gamer and creator needs including a full-sized SD card reader on the other hand, I don't like that we don't have a dedicated power button with a fingerprint reader, I don't like that the full HD webcam doesn't support windows hello.

While the thermals are pretty decent and still allow the laptop to perform well at everything, it could've been better to be honest, especially during prolonged load other than that, I strongly feel that the MSI Raider GE76 2023 edition is one to beat at this point of the year when it comes to top-of-the-line gaming laptops. I think this is good for those who really need a powerful desktop replacement computer for on-the-go gaming and productivity like seafarers, work-from-home professionals, overseas workers, and the like.