The MSI Raider GE77, also called the GE77HX 12UHS, is one of the most interesting and ambitious gaming laptops on the market. Inside, it has hardware that will make any game cower, and outside, it has a screen that will make any game look great. People will look at it with envy, but it won’t come cheap.
This means that the MSI’s price is as high as its goals, which are even higher than those of many of its competitors. When machines from Alienware and Razer are in the mix, that really says something.
The MSI Raider GE77 is a great buy for gamers who miss the days when gaming hardware was big and bold. The front of the case is dominated by a wide strip of RGB LEDs that use 30 zones to change colours smoothly. The lid has big letters that say “MSI” and a glowing MSI logo. If you turn the Raider around, you’ll see that it has sharp angles and big air vents.
The bottom has an MSI Raider logo and a stylized MSI rubber pad. The GE77 is braver than both of its competitors. But while some people will like it, not everyone will like how it looks. The Alienware x17 R2 is striking, but its white-and-black design is more grown-up. The MSI is also more understated than the Razer Blade, which is all black and made of aluminium.
The GE77 is pretty easy to get inside of because the base is held together with a lot of screws, but they are big, standard Philips screws, so you don’t need any special tools. Once you’re inside, there’s a lot of space to work: both SO-DIMM slots are open, and there’s an extra NVMe socket next to the SSD.
For connectivity upgrades, it’s easy to get to the wireless chip, and the cooling hardware and battery are also easy to get to. The base panel of the Alienware is just as easy to take off as that of the Razer. A T5 screwdriver will be needed. And while it’s easy to get to the memory and SSD slots, it’s not as easy to get to the cooling hardware.
The MSI Raider GE77’s battery life is one of the most surprising things about it, because it’s not bad. In a gaming test, the MSI lasted for 1 hour and 44 minutes, which is almost an hour longer than the other laptops. The Raider could be used normally for 4 hours and 35 minutes, it could be used to make content for 3 hours, and it could play videos with the brightness turned down for almost 8 hours.