Gaming laptops are trending toward mobility, with thin notebooks like the Asus Zephyrus G14 and Alienware X15 punching well above their weight class in terms of gaming ability.

But every millimeter you take away leads to tradeoffs, frequently in the manner of performance and cooling. Enter the MSI Raider GE76 12U, a gigantic laptop that says to hell with portability in favor of brute power, sustained performance, and a gorgeous variety of connections.

If the Raider were a car, it’d be an American muscle car. What it lacks in refinement is made up for with uncontrolled force. It’s huge, heavy, and properly brash—the sort of thing you’d expect from a gaming laptop that boasts of being the “pinnacle of performance.”

I’m delighted to report that, after using the Raider GE76 (we’re deleting the 12U for the rest of the review) as my daily laptop and gaming rig for the past several weeks, it generally lives up to the hype.

Raider Configeration

You are welcome to close this review if you do not have the financial means to purchase a gaming laptop that costs three thousand dollars; I won’t take it personally.

The model that MSI supplied me features a 17-inch display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, a central processing unit (CPU) that is an Intel Core i7-12700H, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB solid-state drive, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.

Are you prepared to pay the price? Keep a firm grip on your wallet, because the total cost of this configuration will be $3,500.

There are certainly models available that are more affordable. One configuration that costs $2,900 and has a Core i9 CPU and an RTX 3070 Ti with 8GB of VRAM is available.

You won’t believe this, but the cost of it will also go up. A Core i9 central processing unit with an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card will run you approximately $4,100; this is comparable to the cost of a used vehicle in a standard market.

Features

As everybody knows that value of having good features in a laptop, features such as lucrative display and having touch id makes a lapop unique. Apart from this, a superior wifi and bluetooth grows the beauty of any laptop, 

Fast Display

As was said previously, the games are displayed on a 17-inch IPS display that has a resolution of 2560 by 1440 and a refresh rate of 240 hertz.

At the very least, this is the panel that can be found on our review unit. It’s a good one, but it’s not even close to being the greatest in its category. While gaming in a bright setting, the matte coating performs an excellent job of reducing glare, which ensures that your field of vision is not disrupted.

I simply wish it would get brighter because the rating of 298 nits that we measured is right on the cusp of what I would consider to be satisfactory.

Great Speaker

This additional girth makes it possible to choose from an impressive array of I/O options. The GE76 has a complete SD card slot in addition to two USB 3.2 Type-A ports on the right side of the device.

Another USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB 3.2 Type-C input port, and a headphone jack may be found on the opposite side of the port. MSI positioned more permanent connections on the back of the laptop, including a Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI 2.1, a Mini-DisplayPort, a LAN port, and a power jack. The manufacturer did this on purpose.

The remainder of the components, including the vegetables, are all pretty tasty. There is a respectable 1080p webcam that is suitable for video chats and will do in a pinch for streaming if you have adequate lighting in the room you are live from.

With the press of a key shortcut, it is possible to prevent creeps from spying on you. Wi-Fi networking is robust thanks to support for the Wi-Fi 6E standard, and Bluetooth 5.2 support is available as well.

Should You Buy MSI G76

The Raider GE76 is an excellent option to go with if you want the most powerful gaming laptop available and are willing to sacrifice portability in exchange for that capability.

It serves as a capable platform for demonstrating Intel’s latest 12th Generation Alder Lake chips, which outscored even Apple’s M-series CPUs on certain of our tests, albeit while consuming more power. This was accomplished despite the fact that the 12th Gen Alder Lake chips consumed more power.

It is not a good idea, in my opinion, to spend this amount of money without first looking into your other options. You can obtain the majority of the performance shown here for a significantly lesser price and in a package that is more compact and convenient for traveling.

A personal favorite of me is the Asus Zephyrus G14. It is a stunning laptop with a relatively small chassis and sufficient of computing strength to handle hard activities or play most games at adequate frame rates; but, it is not in the same performance league as the Raider. Despite its beauty, it is not in the same performance league as the Raider.