Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the MSI GP76 Leopard

MSI is storming the castle, per se, with its multiple new offerings in the laptop market. One of them is the new GP76 Leopard, which is a proper gaming machine with a big and exceptional display and performance that is through the roof.

Visually, it looks different from its predecessor as well, having a more streamlined design, which could only make it a more desirable device. While some of the latest laptops out there come with the Zen 3 based mobile CPUs from AMD, the MSI GP76 Leopard stays true to Intel and comes with up to the Core i7-10870H, which is a monster for gaming. The real treat for gamers is the availability of the 3000-series Ampere GPUs, with all of the mobile RTX GPUs being available.

MSI GP76 Leopard: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the MSI GP76 Leopard

1. The Design and Build quality

As with most of MSI’s new laptops, this one comes in an all-black attire, which is sleek and elegant. The body lines on the back and the vents are a dead giveaway that this is a gaming device, but they actually give some much-needed spice to the design of the machine. The materials used are decent, with metal for the lid and plastic for everywhere else. However, the body is quite sturdy and while the lid doesn’t flex too much, we noticed some pretty heavy color shifting.

Moving over to the Input devices, both the keyboard and touchpad are great to use. The keyboard is a unit provided by Steelseries and has a per-key RGB backlight. Moreover, the key travel is long enough and the feedback is very satisfying and clicky. The touchpad has a smooth surface, which makes the gliding and tracking exceptional.


2. The Upgradeability

Being a big gaming laptop, upgradability is one of its strong suits. Both the RAM and storage can be upgraded through the two available SODIMM slots and the two M.2 PCIe x4 drives, which can be accessed after unscrewing the screws on the bottom and popping the plate. However, you have to keep in mind that MSI puts a sticker on one of the screws, which if broken, might void your warranty.

3. The Display

As we mentioned above, the laptop uses a 17.3-inch display, which comes in two variants (either a 144Hz or 300Hz refresh rate). Our review unit had the 144Hz panel which has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Moreover, it covers 94% of the sRGB color gamut, which is plenty for gaming and perfect for artists and designers.

The color accuracy was great as well, especially when we had our “Gaming and web design” profile applied. Our test, which uses the 24 most commonly used colors, measured a dE value of 1.2, which is within the standard. Below you can see the results, with both the factory settings (left) and with our “Gaming and web design” 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 GP76 Leopard configurations with 17.3″ Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN176E) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*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


4. The Cooling

The laptop uses a pretty robust cooling solution, even going as far as to implement liquid metal. Below you can see an illustration of the cooling with its fans and heat pipes, as well as results from our stress tests.

 

Intel Core i7-10870H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
MSI GP76 Leopard (High Performance)3.67 GHz (B+67%) @ 95°C @ 103W3.53 GHz (B+60%) @ 95°C @ 94W3.33 GHz (B+51%) @ 90°C @ 80W

The Core i7-10870H which is inside the laptop manages to run at decently high speeds, and while the temperatures are high, the cooling does a good job at maintaining a consistent temperature, even after 15 minutes of testing.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
MSI GP76 Leopard1860 MHz @ 71°C @ 129W1857 MHz @ 73°C @ 128W1869 MHz @ 67°C @ 128W

When it came to the GPU stress test, here the RTX 3060 ran pretty well, with temperatures never going above 73°C. When we hit the fan boost button, the temperature dropped even lower, while the clock speed increases, which is amazing.

Gaming comfort

As far as the outside temperatures and noise are concerned, while using the fan boost mode, the laptop got pretty loud, but fortunately, the outside temperature remained within the usable margin of 43°C.

 

1 reason NOT to buy the MSI GP76 Leopard

1. The Battery life

Being a gaming device, with monstrous hardware and a huge display, the battery life is its weak spot. The laptop has a 65Wh unit, which only lasts for 4 hours and 20 minutes of Web browsing, and 4 hours and 51 minutes of video playback.

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


All MSI GP76 Leopard configurations:

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