Review: MSI GP62 7RD Leopard Pro Gaming Laptop

MSI has been one of the first companies to offer NVIDIA’s 10-series Pascal GPUs in their gaming laptops. We have already seen the impressive Stealth Pro with GTX 1060 and the Dominator Pro with GTX 1070, and today we have with us the budget GP62 7RD that comes with the latest Intel i7-7700HQ Kaby Lake processor and the GTX1050 graphics card. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Tech Specs

The MSI GP62 7RD Leopard Pro comes with the latest i7-7700 HQ Kaby Lake processor along with the Geforce GTX 1050 GPU with 2GB VRAM. It also has 16 GB of DDR4 RAM which can easily be expanded up to 32 GB. There’s a 128 GB M.2 SSD for loading and booting up your OS while a secondary 1 TB hard disk drive is provided to take care of all your storage needs. The display comes is a full HD 1920 x 1080 panel.

The device doesn’t feel as premium as the higher-end MSI notebooks, but it sure packs a punch. The design is streamlined and angular, making it great looking laptop. The back lid has the signature MSI Dragon logo that lights up, and a matte finish, so be wary of fingerprints. The lid wobbles a bit even when you tap it lightly, but it doesn’t affect the display in any way. The overall build quality is sturdy enough, but again, it lacks the finesse and class of the Stealth and the Dominator devices. However, as this is a budget gaming laptop, some compromise between performance and build quality is expected.

On the left side of the laptop, you can find the Ethernet and the HDMI ports, a MiniDisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports and a USB Type-C port. Alongside are two 3.5mm jacks as well, one for mic and headphones each. Move on to the right, and you’ll be greeted by the DVD-RW drive, along with a single USB 2.0 port, an SD Card Reader and the charging port. The speakers are providing on the front towards the bottom, while the back has two vents for air circulation.

Lift the lid and you’ll see the the full-HD display with large plastic bezels, and the full standard QWERTY layout keyboard designed by SteelSeries. Unlike the more expensive models, in which the keyboards have RGB backlighting with multiple customization options, the Leopard Pro’s keyboard has a simple white backlight. You can, however, adjust the brightness of the keyboard backlight to suit your liking. The keyboard is at par with the higher-end models and feels really great to use, with the keys being large and well-spaced. The trackpad is big enough and comfortable to use as well.

Performance and Benchmarks

With a Kaby Lake i7-7700HQ and a GTX 1050 at its heart, the MSI GP62 7RD is powerhouse by the entry level gaming laptop standards. Add to that the 16GB RAM and the 128GB SSD, and you’re pretty much set for a hassle-free experience. Keep in mind, though, as the GTX1050 is a low-end GPU, you won’t be able to run every single game at the highest settings. You can check out the benchmarks below. For all the tests, Vsync and AA were turned off.

First we decided to test Rise of the Tomb Raider. Running the game at Medium preset, the laptop was able to provide an average framerate of 50.6 FPS in DX11 and 49.5 FPS in DX12, meaning a small decrease in the notebook’s DX12 performance.

Next up was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Here we saw a similar pattern, with the device running the game at an average 37.8 FPS in DX11 on Medium settings, dropping down to 33.6 FPS after switching to DX12. The same drop in performance was observed in Ashes of the Singularity as well, where we got an average framerate of 34.1 FPS when running the game on the Standard preset in DX 12.

We were impressed by the how DOOM performed in the tests. Using the low resource-head Vulkan API, we were able to the game at the Ultra preset and obtain a stable framerate of 54-55 FPS, with the minimum FPS being 47.

The general performance of the laptop is quite impressive as well. The 128GB SSD might not be enough for you store your games, but it makes sure that your system boots up quickly. The i7-7700HQ CPU is a beast in itself, making tasks like video editing on-the-go a convenient and fast job. We ran Cinebench 15 benchmarks to test the processor’s performance, and obtained an impressive score of 739. Mind you, it does heat up during long gaming sessions, so you might want to time your hours accordingly.

Even though gaming in general is seeing a trend towards 4K, it’s something that we can’t really expect to see in the commonly used gaming laptops anytime soon. The display offered in the Leopard Pro is a full HD display, which more than meets our needs, especially in the budget range. Moreover, it is a non-glossy panel, so you won’t have to worry about annoying reflections. It’s bright enough to be used easily under broad daylight and though the colours don’t really pop out, it doesn’t put any strain on your eyes.

The device is pretty impressive as a whole. However, one thing that disappointed us was the short battery life. We do expect gaming laptops to trade battery life for performance, but even with under normal usage, we weren’t able to get more than 3 hours.

The Verdict

At the price of INR 108,000 (Amazon), the MSI GP62 7RD Leopard Pro makes an excellent entry-level gaming laptop. It’s perfect for people who want a balance between portability and performance, especially e-sports fans. It’s convenient to use and carry around, and has more than enough features to suit all your needs. However, the battery life might be a cause of concern, especially for people who don’t like to sit in one place with their device plugged in all the time. And like most gaming laptops, it comes with a horde of pre-installed softwares, so be prepared to deal with that too.

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