MSI Vector GP68 HX Overview: Great Power At The Cost of Great Battery

The MSI Vector GP68 HX 13VE in many ways feels like the quintessential gaming laptop. It has some of the best functionality for PC gaming, it’s powerful, has a good display, and runs most AAA titles at a crisp resolution and smooth frame rate.

That being said it also has a lot of the trappings of many gaming laptops, with an incredibly short battery life and a bulky design that lacks portability despite being a laptop. Whether the advantages overcome the drawbacks is up to you, but there’s still a lot of value for what’s on offer.

Design

Many gaming laptops have a flashy design with lots of RGB lights with the Vector GP68 HX MSI has made an effort to tone them down. This is especially evident in the all-black design while retaining the sharp angular shape at the top and back along with showing off the cool ventilation system. The Black color also complements those designs and gives this laptop a stealthier appearance.

Being such a powerful laptop, it’s a pretty big and heavy machine with almost desktop-class-performing components inside. The machine weighs in at about 2.67 kg and has the following dimensions: 357 x 284.05 x 22.20 x 28.55 mm. Additionally, it also means there’s enough room for ports.

There are ports on the left and right sides, as well as the back, just like most gaming laptops. For me, the Vector GP68 HX has the widest range of I/O ports to accommodate any type of peripheral, accessory, or output for a display, giving us maximized flexibility in using the laptop.

• 1x Type-C (USB3.2 Gen2 / DisplayPort)
• 1x Type-C (USB / DisplayPort / Thunderbolt™ 4)
• 1x Type-C (USB3.2 Gen2 / DisplayPort) with PD charging
• 1x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1
• 1x Type-A USB3.2 Gen2
• 1x SD Express Card Reader
• 1x HDMI™ 2.1 (8K @ 60Hz / 4K @ 120Hz)
• 1x RJ45

Other cables include a Gb LAN (Up to 2.5G), 802.11 axes Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth v5.3

Take care when holding the lid, though. It easily picks up oil and fingerprints from my hands. I also learned that the laptop is not fully aluminum. The Vector GP86’s bottom is made of plastic. I had anticipated all aluminum, but given the numerous ventilation holes at the bottom, I can see how this plastic material might aid in cooling.

Keyboard and trackpad

A gaming laptop isn’t complete without an RGB keyboard and I was happy to see it here, complementing the exterior minimalist design. The power button, arrow keys, and WASD keys all have translucent keycaps, giving the keyboard a futuristic appearance and allowing users to see the key even when playing in low light.

The keyboard layout (made by SteelSeries) was created with gamers in mind. With enlarged arrow keys and control keys, that can be pressed more comfortably while playing and working. 

MSI has also cooperated with SteelSeries for the software. Using the SteelSeries GG software, gamers can customize the color of the PerKey RGB keyboard and provide a fully customizable Macro Key that could launch certain functions or applications, or shortcuts of serial actions in games, which effectively saves a lot of time hitting double keys or even triple keys.

Moreover, the Game Sense in SteelSeries GG software will show the real-time status on the keyboard like the health, and the bullets left in selected game titles. If your HP is low, then your keyboard will also change to red to indicate danger.

The trackpad under the keyboard, however, is way too big. You’ll never run out of room when scrolling through web pages however because it’s so big, it might be a problem for users with smaller hands who might find it unwieldy and accidentally touch it by accident. It’s a minor issue but worth keeping in mind. 

Display and sound

The MSI Vector GP86 is not a laptop that is focused on HD visuals. Alternatively, it puts speed before everything else with the resolution being only 16″ FHD+(1920 x 1200), 165Hz, IPS-level, and 16:9 aspect ratio.

Having a refresh rate of up to 165Hz makes the display excellent. In FPS games, I experienced incredibly fast response times. While playing open-world action games, everything appeared to be very alive on the screen, and my actions were instantly and accurately reflected on the screen.

Unfortunately, the laptop’s multimedia capabilities are lacking. I watched some YouTube videos, and the pictures lacked a lot of details. It was not nearly as sharp as I wanted it to feel. This laptop’s 1080p panel is better for fast-paced gaming than it is for productivity.

Moving on down to the 2x 2W stereo speakers, they produced a great, accurate sound. The speakers are clear and loud enough for most environments, but there’s little bass present. Accompanied by the loud fans (I’ll explain below), it’s not the most comfortable. I would suggest just picking up one of the best gaming headsets to get the best audio you can.

Gaming Performance

The standout feature of the MSI Vector GP86 HX is its performance. It offers insane CPU and GPU specifications which includes 13th Gen Intel Core i7 13700HX 2.10 GHz, RTX 4050 graphics card, 32GB of physical DDR4-3200 RAM, and 2TB of storage.

Those are some of the most powerful latest-generation chips and seem like overkill for gaming at 1080p resolution but that’s what we want, absolute performance. The laptop excels in giving players a high-fidelity performance at a smooth framerate. 

Battery and Thermal

The MSI Vector GP68 HX includes a 4-Cell, 90 Whr battery, and 330W adapter. But like with many gaming laptops, there’s always a problem.

The laptop uses a lot of power, which makes productivity even worse. With the screen at extremely low brightness, and set to a battery-optimized setting, I hardly made it to 4 hours of continuous productivity. Gaming on the battery was even worse. It only lasted about an hour before I had to recharge. Without intensive labor, I bet it can reach 6-7 hours of battery life. As such you’ll always need it plugged into a charger whenever you’re using it for games. 

That being said, despite how powerful the laptop is, it never got hot. not even warm. Whatever cooling system the MSI Vector GP68 HX is using, it works. I did some research and found that MSI added dedicated thermals for both the CPU and GPU, with two fans and six heat pipes. The heat pipe which is attached to both CPU and GPU can overall improve the thermal capability, especially for releasing our gaming performance! With MSI Cooler Boost 5, we can game longer at max output.

But there’s always a con. The fans are super loud when you toggle on “extreme” performance mode, although the noise can be toned down a bit with Smart Auto and Silent modes but it’s still bothersome overall. 

Additional gaming features

The exclusive MSI Center helps you control and customize your MSI laptop the way you want. In “Performance Analysis”, you will get the usage rate of CPU, Discrete GPU, RAM, and Disk, and analyze the performance status. In “Hardware Diagnosis”, you can check the status of the hardware and find the problem that you may face.

The “Smart Auto” features detect the current scenario by AI calculation, and automatically adjust the system into different modes, offering the best suitable experience. For example, the “Smart Auto” will actively sense the game is launched, and automatically switch to Extreme Performance Mode, enhancing system performance for a better gaming experience.

Then, there’s MSI App Player which is an Android emulator that was developed by MSI and BlueStacks, which could be used to download and run the Apps from Google Play store through your MSI laptop.

You could play Android games by mouse and keyboard and through the latest version, you’re able to play by the controller through Console Mode. The full-screen interface makes every game much sharper and since we are playing it on PC, the graphics all get pushed to High so you can play games like Genshin with no problems whatsoever.

Closing Thoughts

The MSI Vector GP86 XH offers gamers a lot of what they want in terms of gaming performance, a great keyboard, a fast stable 165hz display, and a super cool thermal solution. Of course, it isn’t perfect. The battery life is short, and fan noises are loud but all these are common problems with high-end gaming laptops.

If you can acknowledge its few drawbacks, the rest of the package offered is solid and delivers an excellent experience. With this kind of specs insurance, you won’t have to worry about changing laptops for a long time.

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