MSI C Series CX61 0NF-258US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Brown)

I chose this laptop over a few others for it's value and for the potential of what it can do with a few extra additions to the computer.

DESIGN

The design of the computer is excellent. It has a smooth metal brownish-grey finish, full size keyboard with numpad, and a nice responsive trackpad that is easy to use. The keyboard is chiclet style, and is easy to type on and responsive. One downside is that the keyboard is not backlit, but at the price this should be expected.

SPECS

It's important to note that the processor specs listed on Amazon at the time of this review are incorrect. As listed on MSI's website (and what came with my laptop), the processor is a Intel i7-3630QM, not an Apple A4 (do PC's even come with Apple processors?). The 3630QM is a quad-core processor at 2.4ghz, with a max turbo of 3.4ghz. The laptop also has a max RAM capacity of 16GB (only comes with 6GB, however), and has SATA3. These were both important factors for me for future upgrades to the laptop.

The resolution is 1366x768, so you do give up some screen space, but again at this price that is to be expected as well.

FUNCTION

The laptop comes with surprisingly little bloat, with a few MSI utilities and Winzip, of all things. I found the computer to be quite responsive, even with the 5400rpm drive. Gaming is nice with the 645M Nvidia card. I play a lot of SWTOR and Guild Wars 2, both of which worked well.

One thing to note on this laptop is that MSI puts a tamper sticker right over one of the screw holes on the backplate of the laptop, so that putting in upgrades will essentially void your warranty (the sticker states that warranty is void if sticker is tampered with). It's a risk you will take if you plan on upgrading right away.

The machine doesn't come with recovery disks, but it does have an MSI utility to burn recovery disks on the desktop.

The screen quality is good, not great. I wouldn't put it up there as the best, but it is quite clear with good color representation. Viewing angles are not great, as the color washes out quickly as you get at more of an angle. This has been my experience with most laptops.

All in all I feel this is a great value for the money. It features several mid to higher end pieces that will allow you to have an above average laptop to do some gaming on, especially with more RAM and an SSD upgrade. As is, it still can handle current games (but surely not as well as a high end laptop or desktop).