 With the recent spec change, including new performance profiles and a graphics card upgrade to the recently released GTX 970M 3GIG, we figured, and MSI agreed, that it was finally time to take the GS70 stealth for a spin in our studio. The red anodized finish on this stunning device didn't hurt matters either. 🎵 The Cooler Master Neptune 240M features an exclusive pump design and their new Silencio fans to provide impressive near silent performance. Click now to learn more. We'll start with the specs rundown. There's a bit of variety here, but the one that I've got is top of the line except for storage. It's got a Core i7-4710HQ processor that runs at 2.5GHz nominal and 3.5GHz boost, 16GB of DDR3 memory in two slots max, 384GB worth of RAID 0 SSD goodness that was able to achieve sequential read speeds of well over 1GB per second for the OS, with a 1TB hard drive for larger programs and mass storage, hardline gigabit networking and 802.11ac, both with Qualcomm's killer packet prioritization for gaming, and a GTX 970M graphics card giving you more performance than a last generation top of the line 880M equipped notebook with less power and less heat output. But none of this would be that impressive if it wasn't for the physical design of this gaming sheet. Yes, I even came up with a new name for pancake thin gaming notebooks, gaming sheets. So let's do a bit of a physical tour. The profile of the notebook is less than 2.2cm and it weighs under 6 pounds, thanks to its aluminum-magnesium alloy casing making it about as lean and mean as anything else on the market. This top cover features a MSI gaming logo that I actually kind of hated at first, but it's sort of grown on me over the last year or so, and an otherwise extremely clean brushed aluminum finish. The bottom has a similar finish with a port for the bottom subwoofer, vent holes for the dual side exhausting cooling fans, and this weird velvety material that perplexed me at first, and then I'm just sitting there using the thing and I went, oh yeah! It's so it doesn't slide off your lap when you've got it sitting on your thighs, flippin' brilliant. And say whatever you want about the red color, I personally think it's drop-dead gorgeous and a very positive move away from the standard black notebook with accent color that everyone's been doing for at least the last 100 bazillion years. It manages to be extremely eye-catching without that gaudy, only 14-year-olds would like it look about it that many gaming products manage to be stuck with. And if you don't like red, well it's available in black and silver too anyway, I guess. In terms of I.O., both sides are taken up with a surprisingly complete configuration with the left side equipped with a Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI out, dual mini display port, yeah, that's a total of three concurrent 4K displays, two at 60 Hz and one at 30 Hz, two USB 3 ports, and gold-plated audio jacks, and then on the right side we find a Kensington lock, a somewhat awkwardly placed power input for the 150 watt power brick that's still pretty sizable, but at least similar in thickness to the notebook it powers, and finally an SD card reader and two more USB 3 ports. And now it's time to get inside this little beauty. Around the 17-inch display is more tastefully plain design with only an MSI logo and a 1080p 30fps webcam. Its low-light performance isn't as good as its well-lit performance, but I still think that's a nice inclusion with the way that webcams have turned into a spec-list checkbox item rather than a quality hardware add-on. Which leads us to the million-dollar question, how is that 17-inch display? Well, it's 1080p, so if you were hoping for a 3K or 4K display then you will be disappointed, but I personally think 1080p is still a good place for the 970M, and it's TN. So if you were hoping for IPS then you'll be disappointed by that too, but there is some good news here. While the vertical viewing angles aren't amazing, at this size, with how easy it is to adjust the vertical angle of a notebook display, I don't consider this to be a deal-breaking issue, and horizontal viewing angles are surprisingly good. So if you're sitting on the couch watching a movie with your bow, you'll both be able to enjoy it, rather than, you know, who gets to watch without the colors inverted being an indicator for who wears the pants in your relationship. Speaking of colors, I liked the multi-colored backlight keyboard by SteelSeries the first time I saw it, and I still like it today. Each of the keyboard's three zones can be individually lit, whatever color you want at any of the four possible brightness levels turned off, or set up with a variety of lighting patterns, including breathing and color cycling. It's a nice little touch of flair and personalization, and since it doesn't have a negative impact on the keyboard layout, which other than the missing media controls, I really like, by the way, nice standard key layout with proper arrow keys and a full numpad, or the surprisingly solid tactile response, then I don't really see a downside, since if you don't care about it, you can just set it to one color forever, and just use the SteelSeries engine utility for rebinding whatever keys you want, setting up macros or whatever else it is you want to do. You don't have to touch the color. For blow-out wear, I was ready to give the GS70 Stealth a B- for Norton being installed, and having links to Wild Tangent and MSI's YouTube channel and Facebook page in the modern UI start menu, but MSI's performance monitor that they also include is lightweight and somewhat useful, and the machine comes with a six-month license for XSplit GameCaster included, so I'm gonna bump that up to a B+. Useful bundled applications with trial periods that are long enough to not just be considered a try-before-you-buy demo are actually worth marks to me here. Which leads us to that useful thing in MSI's Control Center app, their new Shift functionality. The general concept here isn't really anything new, different performance and fan profiles depending on your tolerance for noise and heat, but it works really seamlessly. Just function F7 to switch between Sport, Comfort, or Green mode, and you go from higher temps and pretty loud and whiny to, but with better performance, down to lower temps, quieter and much less whiny with less performance, of course. It should be noted though that these modes only work when plugged into AC power, but there's NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 when you're on battery anyway, which lets you throttle performance depending on your tolerance for lower frame rate targets and in-game details when you're on battery in order to get more on-the-go gaming out of your PC. In my experience, it works for anywhere from a negligible improvement for really demanding games that were gonna max out the GPU regardless, to well over 50% more life if you really scale things back or you're playing something that's not very demanding like League of Legends. So, conclusion time, I guess. Who is the GS70 still for? Well, I'd say anyone who's willing to pay a premium over the more traditional brick-style gaming notebook for what is in my mind a more portable and more visually appealing design with similar performance, not quite the same, but at the cost of component temperatures. The outside stayed within reason, but our CPU got up to around 90 degrees in Sport mode with CPU and GPU benchmarks running at the same time. Something that won't really happen during games where we topped out around 65 degrees, but might be a concern if you're a content creator who uses both CPU power and CUDA for video or 3D production at the same time. The good news, though, is that our CPU didn't go under 2.9 GHz turbo on all four cores when stressing CPU, RAM, and GPU, so no throttling is a very good thing. Now that the laptop's out of the way, I'm sure you guys are wondering, what the heck is up with the little dragon stuffy that we've had sitting here? His name, according to MSI Canada's Facebook fans, is EmisInferno, because there's an I at the beginning of Inferno. Sorry. And they're running a cool little promotion with this laptop where if you buy it in November, you get one of these bad boys, a keyboard skin, and a SteelSeries Flux headset with little MSI branding on it and all that. But if you are not shopping for a notebook, then you can still actually get one of these bundles. They're giving them away to three winners on Facebook, and they're also doing a grand prize bundle with this Polo shirt, a mouse pad, and a GK601 mechanical gaming keyboard. The full contest details are linked in the video description, so good luck. MSI told me they wanted me to wear this shirt in the video, so this is going to count as me wearing it. I'll wear it on the head. So guys, thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment below if your feelings are more complicated, ow, than this or this. Also, check the link in the video description to support us. You can give us a monthly contribution, buy a cool t-shirt like the one I'm wearing. You can't buy these, unfortunately. You'll have to sign up for MSI's contest. Or you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code, so we get a small kickback whenever you buy gaming notebooks or plush dragons or whatever else. When I breathe in really fast with this shirt on my face, but like, I can't breathe because I tend to breathe pretty hard when I'm doing these videos. Now it's a cape. Find us a way!