Razer Blade 15 Vs MSI GS65: Which One is Winner?

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Here we are comparing Razer Blade 15 and MSI GS65 to find out which one is best for all over performance.

Razer Blade 15	MSI GS65
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Excellent gaming performance. Huge battery life improvement. Windows Hello camera included.	Great overall and graphics performance. Slim, beautiful design. Impressive battery life
CONS	CONS
Awfully expensive. Somewhat goofy keyboard layout.	Gets hot while gaming.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

Razer Blade 15:

Looking at the exterior of the base 15, it looks just like the regular Razer Blade, so this is the new squared off design, which I really enjoy. I think this is just a smarter and more modern look. You still get the snake logo on the back. It does glow, so, nothing unique there. You do pick up a little bit of fingerprints on the exterior. It’s not too bad, though.

MSI GS65:

The build quality on this new design is good. It feels slightly better than the Razer Blade 15 to me. It has no red on it at all. I think this is the very first gaming laptop from MSI that wasn’t black and red. It actually looks really good. You can bring it to work or a coffee shop, and no one would think anything of it. It’s super stealth, it honestly looks like a premium black and gold laptop. The logo up here is completely flush to the surface. The hinge is on each side, so it doesn’t run along the whole length. But it actually feels really wellbuilt, and this kind of hinge aesthetic is just not something we’ve seen from MSI before, I really like it.

KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD

Razer Blade 15:

Alright, now looking at the keyboard, and we do see some design changes here. So overall, the look and feel of it is very similar to an Advanced. It’s a very good keyboard. You do get the full arrow keys too. Again, super important for gaming laptops. You do get a single zone lighting system here, so if you’re into the Chroma stuff, you know, it looks great, but you can’t do individual keys.

Trackpad is one of the largest you’ll find on any laptop. At least a Windows one. Still pales compared to a Mac. Very good track pad. I kinda wish this track pad would just be in all laptops. Precision, smooth, massive, good palm rejection. I’ve had no problems with this track pad.

MSI GS65:

It’s pretty much your standard MSI keyboard. It’s SteelSeries backlit. But the keys have this layout that takes a little bit of time to get used to, once you do, you’ll be comfortable on it.

The trackpad is, well technically it’s a Windows Precision trackpad It’s running Windows Precision touchpad, but it’s using Synaptics software underneath. It feels good, it’s just not perfect. Gestures are on point, but there’s something with the tracking that feels off to me. It’s like the acceleration It’s just a little bit too fast. It’s good Just not perfect. The button mechanism is a little stiff But it’s tactile and I like the feel of the trackpad overall.

DISPLAY

Razer Blade 15:

It’s a 15.6 inch full HD display. It is matte. Non-touch, as Razer only has touch in a 4K model, which is going to be the Advanced. Now, this is a 60 Hertz panel. That bothers me a little bit. I get it; it’s the base model. If you want higher 144, you have to get the Advanced, but I feel like 60 Hertz, especially in the more premium laptops, it’s getting a little old for gaming. But it’s a very good display. You’re talking around 94% SRGB, which is pretty good for color accuracy, and around 72% for Adobe RGB. Brightness is very even. And you do get those nice thin bezels in this new modern design. You do get a web camera on top here. No Windows Hello built into this.

MSI GS65:

The display is excellent, I really like it. It’s bright, it’s fast. It’s 144 Hertz excellent color gamut. There’s nothing I really have to complain about it. The top bezels are thin, the side bezels are really thin There is a bit of a chin. Webcam’s is on top, Image quality isn’t amazing, but at least the angle is good. One thing to note though, this display does not have G-Sync.

SPEAKERS

Razer Blade 15:

You do get nice large speakers that flank the keyboard. And, you know, I really like this design. Razer’s always been pretty good with audio here. And as far as gaming laptops go, this is, in my opinion, one of the better audio systems you can get. Having said that, it’s not really perfect either. So the mids and highs are very good on this, but there’s really no subwoofer built into this, so you don’t get a lot of good lows.

MSI GS65:

The speakers are located on the bottom. And I wish they weren’t located on the bottom because they actually sound “okay”. They get really loud just the location is really poor when you have these things playing in a normal position the audio gets really flattened out by the table or the desk. It just Loses so much clarity because of its position.

PERFORMANCE

Razer Blade 15:

You’re getting an Intel Core i7 8750 each. It has a Coffee-Lake processor. It’s a little bit old, but boy, it’s a performer. It is six core, and it does exceptionally well in our benchmark tests. The GTX 1060, however, is a Max-Q design. It’s still a really good GPU, and you’re gonna be able to get some really good graphics performance here for pretty much all the main video games out there.

MSI GS65:

The performance on this laptop is straight-up excellent. It’s the six core i7-8750H and you’re gonna see great performance numbers. For multi core applications, it’s a big step up from last gen. The GPU is awesome, 1070 Max-Q really good performance for basically any kind of game at 1080p and you’ll be able to take advantage of that 144 Hertz screen. So, It’s a really good combination.

BATTERY

Razer Blade 15:

Well, the battery’s gonna be smaller, so instead of an 80 watt battery, you’re getting a 65 watt in this version. That’s a pretty good size. You’re not gonna get a ton of battery life out of this. They’re saying around six hours. It’s actually a little bit less than that in real world usage. So this is mostly gonna be something you’re gonna want to use plugged in.

MSI GS65:

Tthe battery inside here has been Significantly upgraded from the previous generation, it’s now 82 watt hours. It’s a six hour battery for regular use with the screen at 250 nits. The AC adapter is 180 watts, Nothing special kind of like your standard MSI adapter.

PORT SELECTION

Razer Blade 15:

You do get a full ethernet port, which is actually really nice to have in a 15-inch gaming laptop, something you don’t get in the Razer Blade Advanced. It does get two USB type As, a headphone jack, and a barrel charger.

Looking at the right-hand side, you get a Kensington lock, mini display port, HDMI, USB-A and a USB type C with Thunderbolt 3.

Looking at the bottom here, a very clean design. Two intakes for the fans, which are very visible. And you do have the exhaust over here on top.

MSI GS65:

On the left there’s a kensington lock, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks.

On the right there’s a third USB 3.1 Type-A port, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, mini DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI port, power input, and another air exhaust vent.

Underneath there’s some air intakes towards the back to keep everything cool, as well as some rubber feet that run along the back and front and do a good job at stopping the laptop from easily moving around while in use.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Razer Blade 15:

The dimensions of the laptop are 35.5cm in width, 23.5cm in depth, and just 1.7cm in height, so quite thin considering the specs. Razer list the blade as weighing 2.1kg and my unit was just under this. With the 230 watt power brick and cable for charging the total weight increases to around 2.9kg.

MSI GS65:

The physical dimensions of the laptop are 35.7cm in width, 24.7cm in depth, and just 1.79cm in height. The total weight of the laptop is listed at 1.88kg, and mine weighed just slightly under this. With the 180 watt power brick and cable for charging, the total weight increases to 2.4kg.

WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD BUY?

In the end, both laptops are powerful, light, thin, decent battery life, and choosing one of them is a difficult choice.

Razer Blade 15 the better build quality and it is easily upgradeable. On the hand, the MSI GS65 has a better design, full HD display and keyboard.

However, I will choose MSI GS65 because it has better design and slightly better Full HD display. But I want to tell that Razer Blade 15 has great build quality.

Expert Reviews For Razer Blade 15:

By Techadvisor
The Blade 15’s big changes for 2019 come on the inside, and they’re mostly successful. The 240Hz screen offers incredible speed and good quality, and the refresh rate is great for esports. The RTX 2070 Max-Q has the pace to handle esports titles at this…

By GoodHouseKeeping
The Razer Blade 15 Advanced RTX 2070 is an impressive piece of kit. There isn’t much that it can’t cope with and especially thrives at gaming. As well as that, photo editing and word processing is a breeze, and you won’t be disappointed by how fast it…

By Techau
The Razer Blade Advanced 15 is seriously one of the best examples of engineering I’ve seen. The body is so well refined, it feels like every mm has been painstakingly analysed and agonized over, like the designers were true craftsman that took ultimate…

By TechTeamGB
Everyone on earth seems to be absolutely in love with Razer’s Blade laptops, especially this one, the 2019 “Advanced” model, with an RTX 2070 Max-Q, but for the life of my I can’t figure out why.A perfect example here is the storage. This is a £2,200…

By Verge
The The past couple of years have been good for gaming laptops. They’ve gotten lighter, thinner, and ridiculously more powerful. But while all of those advancements have been extremely welcome, most gaming laptops are still heavily compromised for…

Expert Reviews For MSI GS65:

By IGN
The GS65 Stealth looks amazing, inside and out, but at $3,400 its performance leaves a bit to be desired since there are gaming laptops that perform just as well for a lot less.

By PCGamer
Seeing how it radiates wealth (it’s literally a gold and black laptop), the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin could be a lot more expensive than it is. Somehow it tucks an Intel Core i9 processor, RTX 2080 graphics, 32GB of RAM and a huge 1TB hard drive into a sub-0.7-inch frame. Needless to say, I’m cheering it along.

By PCWorld
The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 9SD has a tradition to uphold. Its predecessor, MSI’s GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE, was the laptop that changed our perception of just how much real gaming performance you could pack into a thin-and-light gaming laptop. With the next generation, we find essentially the same winning laptop design, stuffed with the latest toys from Intel and Nvidia.

By PCMag
MSI’s GS65 Stealth delivers better-than-60fps gaming performance and a premium, portable build with long battery life. With no real flaws, an appealing price, and power topped only by pricey alternatives, it’s our top midrange gaming laptop.

By NotebookCheck
Despite its drawbacks, the MSI GS65 remains one of the best slim gaming notebooks currently available. Today’s updated, less expensive configuration ($1,849) features a Core i7-8750H, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1060, and 256 GB NVMe SSD. How does it stack up?

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.