MSI GS30 Shadow i7 4870HQ 16GB 2X128GB SSD 13.3in FHD Windows 8.1 Notebook Aluminum Black

Comment:
This is a very unusual laptop, probably the only one of its kind.Ultrabooks are light and thin with a great battery life but the "U" processors they use are underwhelming. Gaming laptops have fast, powerful processors but are heavy, thick and large with poor battery life.This unique laptop is a combination of the two - a fast processor (the second-fastest mobile processor in current production) and a small, thin, light ultrabook form factor.You have to give something up though. With such a monster of a CPU in such a small form factor, battery life suffers. So far it seems battery life is around 3 hours, though I haven't tested battery life extensively. When the processor is pushed hard, the laptop gets very hot very fast - the single fan screams at high volume and the CPU gets so hot it throttles. But in return you get very high performance. Benchmarks show this approaching the performance of my Core i7-4790K in my desktop!The high-resolution screen is bright and detailed - very easy on the eyes. The graphics are the best Intel has to offer - Iris Pro 5200, using a discrete graphics controller and 128 MB of eDRAM. The backlit keyboard is excellent, it feels fantastic. It's similar to a Macbook keyboard. The trackpad is not as nice, left and right clicks require a lot of force and often move the pointer, missing the target area. It also uses a longer pause as a click, resulting in unwanted clicks and selections. It takes time to get used to it. It helps if you use a double-tap as a click instead of pressing the left corner down hard.The storage consists of two 128 GB Kingston M.2 SSDs arranged in RAID0 - MSI calls this "Super RAID" but it's really just using the chipset and Intel RST drivers. I wanted to install Linux on this laptop which isn't compatible with Intel RST. I had to break the RAID and install Linux on one drive and Windows on the other, which is actually a perfect arrangement as the OSes do not interfere with each other at all. Linux works well on this laptop although Linux Mint had problems using the Intel Iris Pro graphics - I had to install Ubuntu then install Mint packages.Linux reports there is an extra unused SATA port inside but the unit is sealed with a tamper-proof warranty sticker. You could install an extra SATA drive (there's no indication of its form factor) but you'd have to invalidate the warranty. I'm not sure if the memory is soldered in but at least 16 GB is plenty for now plus several years into the future.It's great that there is a wired LAN port but it's Qualcomm Atheros AR8161. It works fine but an Intel LAN controller would be better. It would also be nice to have conventional link and activity LEDs on the LAN port but still, it's nice to have a LAN port at all in such a thin laptop.This is a unique laptop that offers stellar performance.