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While MSI has already expanded pretty well into the business and Creator sector, it will forever be known as a gaming-first brand. It is also good that they haven’t abandoned the niche that made them successful, and what is more, they are actively trying to improve and push themselves further and further. Last year, we saw a total redesign of their portfolio, yielding laptops like the Katana, Sword, Pulse, Vector, Leopard, and more. Today, we have the second year of the Katana GF66, which comes with Alder Lake 12th Gen processors, and RTX 30-series graphics, which come with low TGPs that are common for more budget offerings.
Today we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux).
MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux): Full Specs / In-depth Review
3 reasons to BUY the MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux)
1. Design and build quality
While not employing any premium materials, as the whole laptop is crafted from plastic, that doesn’t stop it from being every bit as durable and rigid as its bigger brothers. There is a bit of flex from the lid, which is to be expected, but the base is tough enough to give no major flexing when applying a large force, so even during harsh typing sessions, you can expect little to no deck flex. This comes in a portable package that weighs only 2.25 kg and has a profile of 24.9 mm.
2. Upgradeability
The laptop arrives with two SODIMM slots and two M.2 PCIe x4 slots. The RAM slots can fit up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, which is fine considering the budget nature of the device. The two M.2 slots also support Gen 4 drives, leading to even faster read and write speeds.
Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and SSD slots.
3. Display quality
The display has its kinks, but will generally do fine in gaming, with its comfortable viewing angles, high 144Hz refresh rate, and lack of PWM usage, which means that it’s generally safe to use the laptop for prolonged periods of time. At this price point, you shouldn’t expect good color coverage or accuracy, with the panel giving us about 53% sRGB coverage. The pixel response time is also a little slow, but still okay for what the laptop is.
Here are our color accuracy tests using both the stock settings (left) and our Design and Gaming profile applied (right).
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux) configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS AUO B156HAN08.4 (AUOAF90).
*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.
除了获得高效和健康友好的配置文件，购买LaptopMedia的产品，您还可以支持我们实验室的发展，我们在实验室测试设备，以产生最客观的评论。
办公室工作
Office Work应该主要由那些花大部分时间看文本、表格或仅仅是浏览的用户使用。该配置文件旨在通过保持平坦的伽玛曲线（2.20）、本机色温和精确的色彩来提供更好的清晰度。
设计与游戏
本资料针对专业处理色彩的设计师，以及游戏和电影。设计与游戏》将显示面板发挥到了极致，使其在白点D65的网页和高清电视的sRGB IEC61966-2-1标准中尽可能准确。
以33%的折扣获得所有3份资料
2 reasons NOT to buy the MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux)
1. Battery life
Budget laptop, budget battery, as this device sports a measly 53.5 Wh unit that can’t hold up with the demands of the Core i7-12700H, despite the best efforts of the Efficiency cores inside. The thing lasts for 5 hours and 44 minutes of Web browsing, or 5 hours and 31 minutes of video playback. As always we do our battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.
2. Cooling
The cooling here seems to be an issue, which is weird since, at first glance, the setup looks competent with two heat pipes for the CPU, three pipes for the GPU, and a single pipe for the VRMs.
Max CPU load
| Intel Core i7-12700H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux) | 3.24 GHz @ 2.68 GHz @ 82°C @ 98W | 3.17 GHz @ 2.65 GHz @ 88°C @ 94W | 2.97 GHz @ 2.55 GHz @ 86°C @ 83W |
The Core i7 hits similar speeds as most of its budget competitors, while also hovering around the 80-90°C mark.
Real-life gaming
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSI Katana GF66 (12Ux) | 1226 MHz @ 74°C @ 87W | 1225 MHz @ 75°C @ 87W | 1260 MHz @ 69°C @ 88W |
The RTX 3070 Ti with a 105W TGP seems like a waste of silicon, delivering low clock speeds and low temperatures, to be fair.
Gaming comfort
The outer shell of the device gets quite hot, reaching a hotspot of 54.7°C.
