MSI GL62M 7RDX review – gaming on a budget – features vs. compromises

Recently we reviewed a lot of MSI gaming notebooks and every each of them had a distinctive feature that speaks for the device in general. For example, the Stealth Pro (GS63 review/ GS73 review) is chiefly characterized by a super light and thin form factor, while the Raider series adds a better cooling to the equation. On the other hand, GL62M 7RDX doesn’t have anything that particular. It is on the more affordable side and while the company has made some cuts to keep the price down, they also tried their best to provide a good quality product.

We are going to discuss a configuration that features Intel Core i7-7700HQ and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. You should know that if you ever opt to buy a laptop with GTX 1050, you should go for the 4 GB version, even if it’s at the expense of a little slower CPU. This is because modern day games tend to use more and more GPU memory due to the larger size of the textures. Anyhow, the display of choice here is once again a TN panel, branded as an IPS-level, and you’re going to see why in the “Display quality” part of this review.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: http://laptopmedia.com/series/msi-gl62m/

Contents


Specs Sheet

MSI GL62M 7RDX technical specifications table

Acer
Not available
Display
15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), TN
HDD/SSD
1TB HDD, 7200 rpm
M.2 Slot
1x 2280 PCIe NVMe (M key) See photo
RAM
8GB DDR4, 2400 MHz
Dimensions
383 x 260 x 27 mm (15.08" x 10.24" x 1.06")
Weight
2.40 kg (5.3 lbs)
Body material
Plastic / Polycarbonate (Matte black plastic)
Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A 2.0
  • 2x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI 1
  • Displayport mini
  • Card reader SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet lan 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • Audio jack 2x 3.5 mm jacks for headset and external microphone
Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera 720p HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Speakers 4 x 2W
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

The first thing we see when we open the box is the GL62M 7RDX itself. Underneath it, neatly put inside a cardboard square you can find a bag with some manuals and a driver disk. In the other compartments are located the two parts of the 135 W charging adapter.


Design and construction

MSI GL62M 7RDX is built solely from hard plastic. It has a matte paint finish which is a huge fingerprint magnet. We can describe the design as rather incognito, although the surface seems to be pretty hospitable for stickers. This notebook measures at 383 x 260 x 27 mm (15.08″ x 10.24″ x 1.06″) and weighs 2.40 kg (5.3 lbs) – nothing spectacular. However, we like how MSI has decided to keep things simple instead of reinventing how a laptop should look. Like some other companies… *gasp* Dell *gasp*.

The lid of this notebook needs the help of a second hand to get open. This reveals a red painted full-size keyboard. Its backlight is also in the distinctive of MSI red color. It is better for gaming than it is for typing as key travel is long enough but the mechanism is quite soft. On the top right corner of the surface are located those famous three MSI buttons. This configuration is identical to what we saw in MSI GP62M. Underneath the keyboard is the touchpad with dedicated keys. It’s not very large and there is also a thin strip right over the buttons that is not touch sensitive.

Aside from the boring look on the surface, on the bottom things get more interesting. A good bouquet of drills and vents provides a peek inside the machine, with all the heatpipes and both fans being visible.

Portwise, the left side of the laptop is a bit overcrowded, compared to the opposite one. There is an RJ-45 connector, followed by a USB 3.0 Type-A port and two video connectors in the face of an HDMI port and Mini DisplayPort. Next, we have another USB 3.0 Type-A and one Type-C port. They are joined by two 3.5 mm jacks. While on the right we can see only a charging port, SD card reader, and single USB 2.0 Type-A port. We can say that this is reasonable enough, especially for people who use external mouse quite often.


Disassembly and maintenance

As most MSI devices we reviewed recently, GL62M 7RDX doesn’t offer upgrade through a dedicated service panel, so you need to remove the whole bottom plate of the device. However, this is fairly easy as you “only” need to remove 16 Phillips head screws. We like that all the screws have the exact same size, so you won’t need to lose extra time organizing elements. In the top middle part of the laptop is located the tiny (for this type of notebook) 41Wh battery.

As you see from the image below, there is a lot of headroom in terms of GPU cooling. Those three large heatpipes you see in the middle are connected to the GTX 1050. A smart decision was made to separate one of them and send it to the other fan, thus giving the other side more space to breathe. Actually, one would think that this is an overkill for this GPU, but keep in mind that GL62M comes also with the more powerful GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060.

Here you can see a total of two RAM DIMMs, of which only one is occupied in our unit. You can also have a look at the Wi-Fi adapter, located in the top right part of the image.

In the next photo, the focus is on storage options. While it has an M.2 slot that supports NVMe devices, our unit is only equipped with a 1000 GB HDD, rotating at 7200 rpm.


Display quality

MSI GS63VR 7RF is equipped with a Full HD (1920×1080) TN panel with 15.6-inch diagonal, 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch and 142 ppi. The panel has a model number N156HGA-EAL and can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from at least 60 cm.

As can be expected from a TN panel, viewing angles are poor.

This panel is relatively dim as the peak brightness we recorded was 230 nits in the center of the screen and 311 nits as an average across the surface. Maximum deviation is 13%. The correlated color temperature at maximum brightness is colder than the 6500K sRGB standard – 7340K. Furthermore, at the grey scale temperatures are even colder – 11000K. However, this can be corrected by our profiles. You can see how these values change at 140 nits (56% brightness) in the image below.

The maximum color deviation dE2000 compared to the center of the screen should be no more than 4.0 and if you are planning to do color-sensitive work, it should be lower than 2.0. Contrast ratio is mediocre – 330:1 (280:1 after calibration)

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec. 2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

This screen appears to be appropriate for gamers at it can display every color, found on the Internet and HD TV. It also covers 96% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, providing punchy and saturated colors.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 nits luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 17 ms


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes.
You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

There isn’t any serious PWM-adjustment here. The display uses this technology to control brightness levels up to 60 nits and moreover, it does it at high frequency, thus being not particularly harmful in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

MSI has equipped GL62M 7RDX with a typically gaming display. It has its bright sides, but also some setbacks. While the color coverage spreads to DCI-P3 territories with 96% of colors being able to be reproduced, it has a poor contrast ratio, which takes a bit from the eye candy. And although PWM-adjustment is not particularly harmful (you can get rid of it with our Health-Guard profile) Luminance uniformity is not quite good at the same time. In addition to that, viewing angles are poor, but we have to note, that almost every drawback of this screen shouldn’t bother gamers.

Buy our profiles

MSI GL62M 7RDX configurations with 15.6″ N156HGA-EAL (FHD, 1920 × 1080) TN screen and the laptop can be found at: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

MSI GL62M 7RDX sounds well and loud, with low, mid and high frequencies being clear from severe noise.


Software

As always, MSI has provided a disk with all drivers and features you need for the GL62M 7RDX. However, if you lose it or you can’t find a magical way around not having an optical drive, you can find everything you need on MSI’s official support page: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GL62M-7RDX.html

Battery

As always, the battery tests were run with Windows power saving setting and Wi-Fi turned on, and the screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits. This device is equipped with a 41Wh 6-cell battery. Our tests concluded that this battery is insufficient for a laptop of this type. Although you can get around 4 hours and 22 minutes of web browsing and a little over 4 hours of video playback, there is one thing that is most setting back – merely 30 minutes gaming on battery power. However, this is probably due to not very good optimization and we think that future updates are going to fix that.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

We use F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.


CPU – Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Core i7-7700HQ is Kaby Lake’s top-shelf direct successor to the Skylake Core i7-6700HQ offering slightly higher clock speeds on the almost identical architecture and TDP. While Intel markets Kaby Lake’s architecture as “14nm+”, the Core i7-7700HQ is still on the same 14nm node with the only significant update being in the iGPU department. That’s why the slightly altered clock speeds (2.8 – 3.8 GHz vs 2.6 – 3.5 GHz) bring not more than 10% increase in performance compared to the Core i7-6700HQ. We still have the supported Hyper-Threading technology with 4/8 – core/thread design, the same 45W TDP, and 6MB cache.

However, the Kaby Lake generation boasts an updated video engine for the iGPU, although, its performance is just about the same. Branded as Intel HD Graphics 630, the GPU offers slightly higher clock speeds (350 – 1100 MHz vs 350 – 1050 MHz) compared to the Intel HD Graphics 530 and support for H265/HEVC Main10 profile at 10-bit color depth and the VP9 codec for full hardware acceleration. In addition, the HDCP 2.2 is also supported allowing Netflix’s 4K video streaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/


GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (4GB GDDR5)

The GeForce GTX 1050 GPU for laptops is part of the latest NVIDIA Pascal lineup of GPUs featuring a brand new architecture design but on contrary to the rest of the GPUs from NVIDIA’s lineup, the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti feature a Samsung-made FinFET 14nm chip instead of the TSMC 16nm found in the GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080. The graphics card is based on the GP107 chip paired with 4GB of GDDR5 memory via a 128-bit interface.

Since the GTX 1050 is quite dependent on the cooling design, its performance may vary but if the laptop handles the GPU well and shouldn’t be much different from its desktop counterpart. Anyway, the GPU operates at relatively high frequencies (1354 – 1493 MHz) but incorporates the same amount of CUDA cores (640) while the memory is clocked at 7000 MHz (effective). These specs ensure a huge performance boost over the previous generation of Maxwell GPUs. For instance, the GTX 1050 performs better than the GTX 960M and can be compared to the GTX 965M’s capabilities while running at similar to the GTX 960M’s TDP of around 40-50W.

However, along with all the power consumption and performance improvements, the GPU now supports essential features like DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, HDR, improved H.265 encoding, and decoding.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/


Gaming tests

MSI GL62M 7RDX with a GeForce GTX 1050 manages to get some good framerate even in Full HD resolution and medium eye-candy. In GTA V we saw respectable minimum fps as the GPU never got tired, nor too hot, thus performing homogeneous. However let’s not forget that we’re on the budget side of gaming here, so titles like Tomb Raider won’t be very playable at high graphics settings.

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS114 fps55 fps34 fps
Min FPS59 fps35 fps18 fps

Far Cry PrimalFull HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS52 fps45 fps37 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS80 fps52 fps24 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS39 fps36 fps32 fps
Min FPS33 fps30 fps26 fps

Temperatures

The temperature tests go this way. We use Prime95 and FurMark to torture the CPU and the GPU respectively. This won’t give real-life representation but with our methodology, we try to give you the most optimal results.

The first values from the test are from the 30th second of running the Prime95 stress test, which simulates a heavy task run on your computer (usually lighter tasks take from a part of the second up to a couple of seconds). Next, we take the ones from the 2nd-minute mark, which imitates a very heavy task, run on the CPU. The last values we give you are the ones at the end of the test, which is 15 minutes, simulating the CPU load when rendering a video, for example.

0-15 min. CPU torture test

We measured an idle temperature of 41°C of the Core i7-7700HQ of this unit. In the first 30 seconds of testing under extreme load with Prime95 we notice the frequency being relatively stable around 3.3 GHz. Meanwhile, temperatures were rising steadily and at the end of the first checkpoint they hit 92°C.

Cores frequency (0 – 00:30 sec.)
CPU Temperature (0 – 00:30 sec.)

Temperature growth transitioned into second checkpoint territories as they reached 95°C, which resulted in clock speeds dropping by 400 MHz for each core. After that, we saw fluctuation of the frequencies between 3.0 and 3.1 GHz.

Cores frequency (0 – 2:00 min.)
CPU Temperature (0 – 2:00 min.)

That fluctuation continued until the end of the test, hence the average clock speed is around 3.05 GHz. However, temperatures grew even further, reaching the former highs of 95°C. This is quite hot and keeps in mind that all our tests are conducted at a room temperature of around 21°C. However, Prime95 tests the components under extreme conditions that are unlikely to happen in real life, so don’t worry.

Cores frequency (0 – 15:00 min.)
CPU Temperature (0 – 15:00 min.)

0-30 min. GPU torture test

Although CPU temperatures were pretty high, we saw something quite contrary with the GeForce GTX 1050. Not only the maximum temperature it reached was just 64°C, but the GPU clock speed never fell under 1500 MHz. It’s interesting because the actual maximum boost frequency should be 1493 MHz. This assures that you get 100% (and even more) performance out of the GTX 1050.

Surface temperatures were reasonably warm. There was some heat in crucial places like the middle of the keyboard and surprisingly – the touchpad. Of course, they won’t burn you, but keep in mind that it’s going to get quite warm on your hands.

41.0°C
47.9°C
38.8°C
39.1°C
45.5°C
35.1°C
33.1°C
36.9°C
24.9°C

Verdict

There are a lot of budget gaming devices on the market these days. Be they the popular faces of Lenovo Legion Y520 and Dell Inspiron 15 5567, or some lowkey newcomers like the facelift Nitro 5 with the brand new AMD combo. The MSI GL62M 7RDX offers a lot for the money, while keeping the design neutral, if not boring. Of course, there is a lot more than performance that defines a gaming notebook, but that’s a good starting point.

MSI GL62M 7RDX has one of the best price/performance ratios in this category. It utilizes the GTX 1050 fully while keeping temperatures low and noise levels relatively quiet. The CPU in this machine has already been proven in battles, although it can get quite warm, especially compared to the Nitro 5 low-voltage Ryzen 7 2700U processor that barely warms up. However, titles like GTA V and Far Cry Primal won’t be any trouble for this device even at medium-high settings.

We also like that there are upgradeability options right out of the box. First, there are two RAM DIMMs that support up to 32 GB of memory and on the storage side, we have an M.2 slot that is NVMe enabled. On the other side, if you don’t need that fast storage, you can just settle with an HDD, like the configuration we used.

Now we move to the most controversial part of this gaming notebook – the screen. While the company offers IPS screens, the cheaper choice will be a TN panel, branded as “IPS-level”. Beware of that by the way, because there are a lot of retailers that falsely mark the TN panel as an IPS one because of that door left open by MSI. Anyhow, this screen is a jewel for gamers as it is relatively fast and reproduces 100% of sRGB and 96% of DCI-P3 color gamut. Sadly it comes with some setbacks like poor color accuracy and cold color temperature (both fixable by our profiles). Also, we can’t overlook the poor viewing angles and mediocre contrast ratio.

Another feature we think MSI could have done better is the battery performance. It’s both too small (41Wh) and has terrible optimization as we got a hair over 30 minutes of gaming on a single battery charge – horrendous. Web surfing and video playback times were not very impressive either at 4 hours and 20 minutes and 4 hours and 5 minutes respectively. In this area, the GL62M is humiliated by the Acer Aspire VX 15 that offers around 3 times more battery life when gaming.

Tell us in the comments what your thoughts on this device are. Do you prefer slightly better performance or you’d spend your money on something with a bigger battery potential?

Pros

  • Reasonable price tag
  • Screen with exceptional color reproduction capabilities (100% coverage of sRGB and 96% of DCI-P3)
  • Uses the most of the GTX 1050, while keeping it cool enough
  • Backlit keyboard
  • PWM-adjustment is not particularly harmful to the eyesight (our Health-Guard profile eliminates this completely)
  • NVMe SSD support


Cons

  • Mediocre contrast ratio and poor viewing angles
  • Plastic design
  • Short battery life

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