So I`ve been in the gaming laptop market since last year but have continuously postponed my purchase plan because I couldn`t find that one laptop that is at the optimal point of price and performance. Then I saw the new gaming laptop series from MSI released earlier this year and couldn`t resist the offer.

Goods:
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The hardware spec is probably going to be one of the best you can purchase at this price range. To me, the GPU or the graphics card is obviously the most important factor when considering a gaming laptop because most recent Intel (even down to second generation i7) CPUs are honestly powerful enough and will probably be for next few years for most daily uses and gaming. Also, while the hard drive and memory can be easily upgraded, for most laptops, you are stuck with the initial GPU that comes with the laptop. When I saw that MSI was selling this laptop with the new 8th gen Nvidia GTX spec graphics card at this price (I honestly expected the price to be in the upper 1300s ), I thought to myself this is it. And the hardware lives up to what you expect. One strong recommendation of course is to swap out the hard drive for a SSD since it will exponentially increase the speed. 8GB of RAM is good enough; could`ve been 12 GB, but I think MSI tried their best to cut corners in a way that`s acceptable considering the price tag.
Also, with that price, I expected MSI to make some sketch turns with the display and how sturdy the laptop is built. NOPE. The display is beautiful(1920 x 1080) and, while it may not be a giant monster build like RoG from ASUS, the laptop is built fairly sturdy and is portable size and weight. Additionally, I like the simplistic design approach MSI took. Mad props to MSI for these factors. And do I even need to mention the keyboard? It`s done by SteelSeries. I`ve been spoiled by my mechanical keyboard for past year or so, but, even then, the keyboard felt really nice to type with.
Lastly, I think the heating is passable for all intents and purposes. If you are a little paranoid about your laptop getting warm, you should just consider purchasing laptops with better cooling systems like RoG. But I have to say, if you plan on purchasing a gaming laptop, also plan to purchase a decent cooling pad. Most good quality cooling pad only costs somewhere around 40 dollars and I think they are good investments to have for your 1200 dollar laptop to run at a cooler temperature. The laptop has a built in cooling boost which you can manually turn on, and this brings the temperature of the GPU down by around 3~5 degrees Celsius from the games I`ve tested (League of Legends and Diablo 3).

Flaws:
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There are some minor flaws which I`m personally willing to look over. So other reviews were spot on about the mousepad... the sensitivity and flow of the mouse pad is just weird and I had a hard time navigating through windows 8.1 for the first time with it. But this might have been a smart way for MSI to cut some price down since most people purchasing this laptop will have a dedicated mouse for gaming (if that`s the case MSI knows their audience well). Windows 8.1 is also arguably a flaw, though I don`t think MSI has too much control on that. It was my first time playing around with it and yea it was kinda annoying and lived up to the numerous complaints on the internet. But I fixed this by downloading Classic Shell application which basically turned the start menu into Windows 7 style. So no big issues there. (I haven`t really ran into any program compatibility issues other than there seem to be no desktop gadgets for Windows 8.1).

One major issue I had though is that when I connected my cooling pad on any of the 3 USB ports on the left side of the laptop and had my speakers connected, the speakers generated static noise which didn`t go away until I plugged the USB for the cooling pad on the USB port on the right side. I found another forum discussion where someone else had this issue although I`m unable to locate it at the moment. But this is a bit of let down from a 1200 dollar gaming laptop. But I think I`ll keep mine since I appreciate the overall performance of the laptop

To start off, I want to be honest. I do not know how to compare this laptop to any other seeing how I have only owned two.
That being said, I do have a fairly well put together desktop so I do know what some real horse power can output.

Overall Impression:
I am honestly very satisfied with my purchase, though still only a week in.
The laptop is light, portable and overall powerful for the price.
Though I have not owned nor ever used a gaming laptop in this range I feel like it was a good pick.

KEYBOARD:
The keyboard feels awesome and very responsive. I do have a razer keypad and mouse to game with I only use the mouse seeing how nice the steelseries keyboard actually feels. And well it lights up and can be different colors too haha.

SCREEN:
The screen is very vibrant and pops very well while still being bright and has a anti glare finish.
The screen is very colorful and reasonable in size. I have a 24in and 32in dual monitor setup for my desktop and had no problem transitioning over to the laptop. I actually do not have this many colors in my 23`` Viewsonic, still in awe when playing bf4 or league or diablo after using this laptop.

SPEED:
The computers overall speed and responsiveness is overall ok. There are some bumpy times but I blame that on windows 8. I would have loved to have a ssd installed on here but will more than likely add one within the next two months or so. That was the number one thing I noticed when moving from my desktop which has a corsair 128gb ssd, the slower boot and load times.

GAMING:
I really wanted a laptop that would be able to handle this years games and hopefully next years games at least on medium and does this laptop hold up to that.
Older games hold up great and run like butter.
I recommend always running a game and then optimizing the game via Nvidia`s software.

--Some quick stats from today--
Battlefield 4: [Settings range from ULTRA to Low but looks amazing] 50 constant frames on 64 TDM Server after 2 matches only at 80 degrees peak avg 70-80
Diablo 3 ROS: [Settings are all High] Infinite frames as long as your ping is appropriate.
****Power options set to High Performance, Web browsers closed or minimal tabs, Nvidia recommended settings, and Low Ping all factor into your final gaming experience. So make sure you dont have a million processes going on, reduce internet usage to lower ping, and have fun.*****

BATTERY:
Battery life is ok and hasn`t seem to be a problem since I am usually plugged in most of the time.
But is around the 1-3 hr mark depending on use.

TEMPS:
So far I have not burnt my crotch nor have I spent enough time gaming to actually burn it since finals and other projects are around the corner. (This review is a form of procrastination)
As seen above, I have yet to pass the 80C threshold just yet but these are only 1-2 hour gaming sessions. If you do play longer or do not have a cool room temp to begin with do invest another 20-60 dollars into a ventilation fan to place you laptop on. You dont want your 1.3k investment dying because you couldn`t buy a $50 cooling solution.

All in all I did a fair amount of research and I am proud of my choice so far. Will more than likely update if anything bad or extraordinary happens with the laptop.

a Quad core i7 and able to upgrade to 16 gb of RAM and this fit the bill.

Nice thing with this unit has a Single 8 GB SODIMM so you can just purchase another 8 GB stick and get it up to 16 GB.

It ships with a nice 7200 RPM 1 TB hard drive but you do have 2 MSATA slots inside. Amazon has 240 GB MSATA Solid State Drive (SSD) units for a great price.

Just note no Windows 8.1 install media is included so you have to make recovery/restore media (USB/DVD) after booting up the unit.

I had an issue due to the MSI restore image would not restore to my 240 GB MSATA drive to make Windows boot off the faster SSD so I had to use disk clone software to move Windows 8.1 from the 1 TB Hard drive to the 240 GB SSD.

Screen on this unit is Anti-Glare and very sharp.

Keyboard feel is great - just note the space-bar is a bit narrower due to FN and Directional Arrow keys on bottom row. BTW all the pictures for this unit show the three color zones on the backlit keys - you can change them to all white if you want.

Touch-pad as a bit to be desired but as soon as you plug in or Pair a mouse it gets disabled so not much of an issue to me. The feel on the touch-pad just is a bit off (Note: It seems that the default acceleration for the Touch-pad driver is set low - turned up the tracking and seems much better)

Not a gamer but I did load some NVida Demos and they looked great.

Normal operation of the unit I do not hear excessive fan noise - it seems to be a very quiet unit.

If you want a powerhouse laptop with the latest mobile video card (as of 4/2014) check out the MSI GE60 Apache Pro.

The product was terrible. The vents on this machine are a piece of crap they allow the computer to reach a very uncomfortable temperature and is a big turn off. My laptop came preinstalled with malware and the internet refused to work. I was extremely annoyed and returned it within the first week of use. The gaming however was very nice with the little use I had out of the machine.

So far, I`m finding discrepancies in the advertising of the product, and what I received. The most glaring is the 3.2 GHz i7 processor. As I bring up the system information, the i7 processor is only a 2.4 GHz. After checking the packaging I see that it`s not listed anywhere as a 3.2. This was one of the reasons I purchased this unit, and I`m VERY upset that I was misled.

I`m not a computer person, so this is a review from a non-computer savvy plain Jane reviewer. Hopefully helpful to the other non-computer savvy customers...

Cosmetic: I LOVE the rainbow keyboard! It is such a pretty computer, I receive compliments on it all the time! I showed my photography portfolio the other day and even before my pictures were up, the clients were all remarking on what a `neat` and `pretty` computer it is!
Big beautiful screen! Whatever I edit on this screen looks exactly like it when I print it out! The coloring is true to life for photo editing and that creates a lot less of a headache when printing!

Speed/performance:
Super fast, awesome computer! I purchased a gaming computer for the speed- for photo editing. I cannot believe how fast this loads and saves my photos in photoshop and lightroom! I`ve never had a computer with better performance. I usually had a lengthy wait time for uploading pictures- like 45 minutes to over an hour- this had an entire wedding downloaded in 7 minutes!

Functions:
I don`t usually like touch pads, but the one on this computer is actually usable and awesome. I use a mouse with it for photo-editing, but for internet browsing and things, this touch pad works great. I am impressed with it.
It has good speakers for a laptop. I was playing Pandora Radio while editing the other day, i didn`t have it cranked up terribly loud, but it sounded great.;

CONS:
I HATE the apps thing for Windows 8- this has nothing to do with the computer but with the operating system. It took me forever to figure out how to do anything... then someone pointed out it has a computer `desktop,` like in the olden days... so now I still run everything from there. I added `my computer` and things to the desktop so that I could get to them easier- there is no start button on Windows 8!
It came with a ridiculous amount of pre-loaded software...(they all do) but I had to spend some time deleting silly programs I didn`t need. ugh.. bloatware...
Battery: I get 3-4 hours at tops, which it the only real issue I have with the computer. But it works so fast!
Also, you`ll need a cooling pad, or just place it on a table or something, not your lap during use, it heats up easy when you`re running a lot of programs.

Overall- a GREAT computer. This was my first MSI, I would buy one again!