MSI is taking a page out of Razer's design playbook (in turn cribbing liberally from Apple's), but as it turns out, they may have beaten Razer at their own game and produced both a more desirable and more affordable Blade. iBuyPower sent over their version of MSI's GS70, dubbed the Battalion M1771, and it's an almost surprisingly fantastic piece of gaming kit.

It wasn't that long ago that I reviewed the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition and came away...less enthusiastic. The GT70 Dragon Edition was a fairly bulky notebook, typical of gaming hardware, but the overall design and the places MSI chose to invest were somewhat questionable. Three mSATA SSDs in a striped RAID are great for the marketing department but of little tangible value to the end user, while a single fan cooling 140W+ of hardware in a chassis that size is less than ideal for noise and thermals. While the GS70 isn't perfect, it's a pretty impressive step forward and I think it does a good job of stealing the Razer Blade Pro's thunder. If you're not interested in blowing $2,299+ on a thin and light gaming notebook and don't care about the Switchblade UI, MSI probably has exactly what you're looking for.

iBuyPower's had the M1771 available for a little while, and our configuration is the higher end of the two they make available. Since this is a thin and light gaming machine, sacrifices were made in its configuration; specifically, there's very little the end user can do to upgrade or customize this notebook. It's disappointing but not unusual given the notebook's dimensions.

Aiding the ultrathin nature of the GS70 (and thus heavily integrated nature therein), MSI leverages one of the advancements of Intel's Haswell architecture by using an MCP version of the Intel Core i7, the i7-4700HQ. The 4700HQ runs at a nominal 2.4GHz and is able to turbo up to 3.2GHz on three or four cores, 3.3GHz on two cores, or 3.4GHz on one core, and it features a 47W TDP (though that includes the PCH on-package.) For some users this is going to be a little bit of a drag; this entry-level quad core is only 100MHz faster than the Ivy Bridge generation's entry-level i7-3610QM, and Haswell's IPC gains can actually be mitigated in mobile systems by its heat envelope. Haswell has proven to be progress of a different sort, though, aiming to improve both power consumption and overall integration and ultimately allowing for notebooks exactly like the GS70.

More interesting is NVIDIA's Kepler-based GeForce GTX 765M. I reviewed this chip in the 14" Razer Blade and I remain fairly enamored of it. Sporting 768 CUDA cores clocked at a nominal 797MHz with 2GB of 4GHz GDDR5 strapped to a 128-bit memory bus, it's not the most beastly piece of gaming kit but that's not really its reason for being either. What makes the 765M compelling is its ability to fit into form factors like this one; Razer includes it in both their Blade notebooks and I suspect this is as good as it's going to get for thin and light gaming machines until Maxwell. It's not bad, though, essentially comparable to a slightly slower desktop GTX 650 Ti. During testing I saw the boost clock hit as high as 900MHz, and thermals were almost comically low at just 62C.

The primary differentiators between the two configurations of the GS70 are the memory and storage; you pay a $430 premium to add two 128GB mSATA SSDs and 8GB of DDR3L. The 1TB mechanical storage is standard across the two models, though iBuyPower has since boosted the stock drive from 5,400-RPM to 7,200-RPM. $430 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of solid state storage feels a little like highway robbery, but it's unfortunately a chargeable premium, at least for the memory. Nearest I can tell, the memory is soldered to the motherboard, though the mSATA and 2.5" drives are accessible (as is the WiFi) if you're willing to void your warranty. It leaves me in an uncomfortable limbo; at $1,489, the base model should really have an SSD standard, but $1,919 is still a bit onerous and only really justifiable when you look at the ridiculous premium on the competing Razer Blade Pro. We're also missing 802.11ac connectivity; this is something iBuyPower can and should fix.

On the display side we at least have a 1080p matte panel; IPS would admittedly be preferable but the TN panel isn't a dealbreaker. It's easy to argue that a higher ppi density panel would be appreciated, but 1080p is even pushing it a bit for the GTX 765M.

It's true the iBuyPower Battalion M1771 (MSI GS70) cribs from Razer's playbook (in turn cribbing very liberally from Apple's), but it's also a smart choice on MSI's part. Even if you're not among the Apple devoted (and happily I'm not), it's difficult to find too much fault with Apple's industrial design on their notebooks. Lifting that, painting it black, and sticking it on a gaming notebook is a pretty solid plan, all things considered.

The GS70's chassis is all black brushed aluminum, and it's a fairly smart and sleek design. MSI says it's styled like a stealth fighter; however they want to qualify it, it's in the right direction. It's also actually ever so slightly smaller in every dimension than the Razer Blade Pro, and lighter too. This is no mean feat; Razer's engineering on the 2013 Blade Pro is pretty impressive in its own right. Given the near identical specs between the GS70 and the current Blade Pro, it's not hard to imagine this notebook as a torpedo aimed squarely at Razer.

Where the bag mixes is the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard features subdued user-configurable RGB backlighting and has decent enough response if a little mushy and with poor travel (par for the course in a notebook this thin); while I don't like that MSI is continuing to use exactly the same chassis for international and North American notebooks and thus has a slightly awkward and fouled up keyboard layout, it's at least livable. I just wish they'd do a better job adapting the layout, since that's something that can be handled in software. Having Home and End shared with Page Up and Page Down is frustrating for people who do a lot of writing, especially when we have literally no use for Scroll Lock or Pause/Break.

The clickpad, while attractive with its silver aluminum trim, is nigh unusable. Response and traction are poor. This is something that could have and should have been a homerun; the Switchblade UI is a decent amount of the cost of the Razer Blade Pro and its placement on that notebook is awkward. If you're not a fan of it and wanted a more traditional keyboard and touchpad with a physical 10-key, MSI could've nailed it, but the poor quality touchpad could be enough to drive you back into the Switchblade's arms.

While MSI and iBuyPower don't expect you to crack open the GS70, it can be done with a modicum of patience. There are 17 screws on the bottom of the GS70 that have to be removed before you can take off the shell. You get a good idea of the smart internal layout, though; the fans intake air from the bottom and exhaust it out of the sides, cooling the GPU and CPU separately, and it's actually remarkably quiet given the dimensions of the notebook. MSI also makes effective use of internal real estate; by having moved the keyboard down slightly they placed all of the hotter components above it where they can get a little bit more headroom. The battery and 2.5" bay then live in the wrist rest, keeping it cool.

The iBuyPower Battalion M1771 isn't going to have the absolute best performance, but given its relative form factor, the fast Intel i7 quad core processor and solid GeForce GTX 765M should allow it to at least throw some of its modest weight around.

Before we get into gaming testing, though, it's worth at least seeing how it stacks up in relation to other current generation (and a couple of older generation) gaming machines in most basic disciplines. The Razer Blade 14 can exist as a reality check in games excepting the CPU which is the slightly slower i7-4702HQ; the Blade 14 has basically the same hardware as the Blade Pro, which is in turn almost identical to the M1771 (MSI GS70) internally.

The M1771 has the fastest storage subsystem of the lot but only just barely; despite the two SSDs in RAID 0, its theoretical performance advantage proves to be academic in practice. Meanwhile it bounces a bit over the map in PCMark 8, posting a slightly anemic performance in the Home test. It's not horrible and exists essentially as an oddball outlier.

PCMark 7 is kinder, and the M1771 posts a strong performance bolstered by its CPU and fast SSD storage subsystem.

Meanwhile, performance in the 3DMarks is excellent. The 765M is a strong piece of kit, able to use raw clockspeed to essentially make up most of the difference in CUDA core count between it and the powerful GTX 675MX. The Blade 14 trails it slightly, probably owing to the 200MHz difference in base clocks and reduced turbo bins of the i7-4702HQ. Meanwhile, check out the lead in 3DMark 11 over the former heavyweight GTX 580M.

The 4700HQ is modestly generationally faster than the 3630QM, in line with the difference in IPC as the two have identical clocks and turbo bins. It's also notably faster than the 2720QM, but Ivy proved to be a much bigger boost to mobile performance over Sandy than Haswell is over Ivy. The M1771 is essentially where it needs to be, performance-wise.

While synthetics are good for a reality check, the iBuyPower Battalion M1771's reason for being is gaming. The GeForce GTX 765M is capable of producing performance that's at least, in synthetics, not too far removed from last generation's second best, the GTX 675MX.

Since this is a higher end gaming system I'm omitting the Value benchmarks, but you can still find them in Bench for comparison's sake.

Performance is basically where it should be, but it's interesting to see where bottlenecks shift depending on the game. The GTX 765M's primary weakness is its 128-bit memory bus; even with 4GHz GDDR5, the GPU is still somewhat starved for memory bandwidth. So while the 765M can produce a stellar performance in synthetics against the GTX 675MX and GTX 580M, once that memory bandwidth limitation kicks in it starts to tumble.

Probably owing to differences in drivers, performance jumps around the map a bit. For some reason, performance in StarCraft II takes a bath, but everything else is about where it should be. 1080p with AA (or in the case of Tomb Raider, TressFX) is a bit too much for the limited memory bandwidth of the 765M, but if you're willing to kill the AA it should edge performance up into playable territory. That excludes Metro: Last Light, which beats up on the GTX 765M in general.

Display Quality

I'm happy to be at the point where I can actually be critical of a 1080p matte display on a notebook instead of merely being thankful that it even exists. The Chi Mei TN panel that MSI employs for the iBuyPower Battalion M1771 has a slightly high amount of grain in the coating, but it's actually pretty stellar for a non-IPS display, at least in objective measurement.

Color reproduction is good, but not great. Where the panel excels is in its overall contrast ratio and brightness. Most users should be very happy with the panel in the M1771.

Battery Life

I'm mystified as to why this is the case, but nonetheless: the Battalion M1771's battery life is, in a word, horrible. I can't pin down exactly what the efficiency issue is, but whatever it is, it's absolutely killing running time off of the mains.

Normalize the battery life and it doesn't look as bad, but it's hard to ignore that the M1771 is both using a battery that's probably too small for it and is just plain lousy on running time. This is half the efficiency of the Razer Blade 14, or worse, despite a substantially smaller gulf in overall performance.

Heat and Noise

Despite the thin chassis, the M1771 is actually a pretty good citizen where noise is concerned. Unfortunately, there does seem to be some cost exacted for that.

While the GTX 765M doesn't get especially hot, the i7-4700HQ gets extremely toasty. Haswell runs hot in general and it's pretty evident here. MSI could probably tune the fan profile to be more aggressive on the CPU side, but part of Haswell's problem is the same thing that plagued Ivy Bridge, I suspect: high heat density. The 765M is a healthy sized chip that draws a lot of power, but that also means there's a much larger surface area to dissipate all that heat. Integrating the voltage regulation on the 4700HQ is really only going to amplify the heat density issue. Performance is fine, but those thermals would give anyone pause.

It's rare that I'm legitimately sad to have to send back a review unit, but sure enough, that's where I'm at with the iBuyPower Battalion M1771 (nee MSI GS70.) This notebook practically exists on the opposite side of the spectrum as the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition I reviewed; where the Dragon Edition was almost all disappointment, the M1771 is a sleek and (mostly) efficient piece of gaming kit that I would only be too happy to cart with me to LAN parties. I still love my Alienware M17x R3, tricked out with a GTX 680M, SSDs, and 16GB of DDR3, but it's tough not to want to stray with this thing.

Repeatedly carting my 10-pound land monster M17x R3 to and from friends' houses has given me a newfound appreciation for the concept of a thin and light gaming notebook, something Razer pioneered with their original Razer Blade and have since been refining. MSI took the ball and then ran with it; the GS70 is ever so slightly thinner, ever so slightly smaller, and ever so slightly lighter, while still offering the same performance, a fully user-configurable RGB-backlit keyboard, and a more traditional keyboard and trackpad arrangement.

Where MSI misses the boat mildly is the keyboard layout, compounded by the unresponsive clickpad and poor battery life. They got essentially within striking distance of the Blade Pro, but what I wanted from them was a notebook that was definitively superior for anyone who doesn't care about the Switchblade UI. I got most of that notebook, with a better price and arguably better chassis, but the user experience needs to be refined a bit more. Whenever a notebook aims high and fires wide like the GT70 Dragon Edition did, it's an easy evaluation. When it's a narrow miss like this, it's much more heartbreaking.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the M1771's pricing; the two models available on iBuyPower's site are straddling the model I really want: 16GB of DDR3L and one SSD, possibly an SSD and mechanical drive. Incidentally, that's the notebook AVADirect is offering here. At $1,626 for 16GB of DDR3L, a 128GB SSD, and a 750GB HDD, it is an extremely attractive offering. You're still paying a premium for the form factor, but this is a lot of gaming power for being under six pounds.

What we're left with is confirmation that the idea of a thin and light gaming notebook is a sound one and an excellent, more affordable alternative to Razer's notebooks. If you put the Blade Pro and GS70 in front of me and asked me to choose, I'd actually be more liable to take MSI's offering. Put the Blade 14 in front of me, though, and it'd be more difficult; the Blade 14 has a lousy screen, but the rest of the user experience is better, and the notebook is even lighter to boot. iBuyPower whiffed a bit on available configurations, but AVADirect picked up the ball. If you were eyeballing the Razer Blade Pro for any reason other than the Switchblade UI, now you have a fantastic alternative.