Fortunately, Nvidia can now brag about significant performance gains over their prior GTX 700M series. With a 17-inch display, the dedicated GPU under the hood needs to be up to the task. On the plus side, it's nice to see a fast 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive, with enough room inside to house 2 additional mSATA drives if you're so compelled. It also has a DVD/RW drive, though I would have loved to see Blu-Ray take its place. Separate headphone and microphone inputs, both an HDMI and VGA connection (Nvidia's GTX 860M can power external and internal displays simultaneously), three USB 3.0 ports and an "always on for charging" USB 2.0 port, and an SD card slot to round things out. In the connections department, there's just enough to satisfy most people's needs. As the portal into the gaming experience, I'm usually very sensitive to a display's flaws sure this isn't an eye-popping IPS panel but it's better than I expected at this price point. Better, in fact, than laptops commanding twice as much coin (I'm looking at you Razer Blade). It's just bright enough, has wide viewing angles, and exhibits very accurate color reproduction. The GE70 Apache Pro ships with a matte 17.3" full HD display. (I prefer Roccat's Kone Pure or the Sensei RAW from SteelSeries.) Display, Storage, And Connections Arm yourself with an external mouse for lengthy use. It looks and feels wonderful, it simply isn't as responsive as I'd like for all day use inside of Windows 8. Granted, on gaming notebooks touchpads tend to be afterthoughts rather than crucial considerations. MSI's touchpad doesn't invoke as much praise, other than it being roomy and serviceable. This next bit is for longtime followers of this column: I'll even go on record saying it's superior to my beloved Lenovo Y500 series keyboard. It also has deep key travel, fully customizable color LEDs, and thoughtful tweaks that gamers will appreciate like shifting the Windows key to the right side of the keyboard. The island-style keys have a coating which prevents any kind of slippage.
I hope their partnership with SteelSeries continues well into the future, because it's a satisfying addition to this notebook. The look and feel of the chassis certainly erodes a bit of the premium look MSI is trying to accomplish with the brushed aluminum finish, but when you open the lid and put your hands on the custom SteelSeries keyboard things get decisively more positive.
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