‘Electronic Sports’ (eSports) is becoming a big thing and with our government setting up a body to regulate it, there’s belief that the industry will gain traction. While traditional PC gamers prefer more powerful gaming notebooks, those who enjoy eSports titles can play their usual games with any decent one. That’s where MSI’s GE72 Apache will shine.

Like many MSI notebooks, this one has that brush black aluminium frame with the MSI Red Dragon logo etched on the lid. If that’s not enough style for you, it also has a multi-colour backlit keyboard. Carrying it wherever you go is easy, since the GE72 is really light for a 17in as it only weighs in at 2.7 kg. Build quality is quite similar to the other models churned out by MSI despite being a mid-range gaming laptop.

There’s enough to keep the casual gamer happy. From a non-reflective 17in Full HD screen that is great for videos and games, to the full-sized Chiclet Steelseries keyboard, and a lot of I/O ports like audio jacks, as well as a Gigabit LAN and a Display Port. Additionally, there’s a button for the Cooler

Boost 3 feature to improve thermal reduction and one for Shift mode. If you shift to ‘Sports’ mode, you’ll likely need the fan boost too since it’s basically a CPU plus GPU overclocking. The hum of the fans does become more noticeable, though. Thus, you might want to put on headsets when that happens.

The GE72 features NVIDIA’s new GTX 965M GPU under the hood. Well it does performs rather well (check the benchmarks), but if you’re looking for more power than we would suggest the GTX 970M. Even so, it’s more than enough for titles like CounterStrike and DotA 2 or regular PC games on lowered settings. As for battery life the GE72 lasted just a little over three and half hours on a full charge. This is mostly with watching YouTube and using Microsoft Office. When long hour gaming is required, it’s better to have a power source and the AC adapter on hand.

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PRICE

TOTAL 8.6