MSI Raider GE67 HX (2022) Laptop Review

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has a gamer-oriented design. It has a dark gray chassis with angular design elements, a silver-color MSI logo and branding on the lid, and an RGB light bar on the front. There's more branding on the bottom in red. There are air vents on the back and the bottom, and you can find ports on both sides of the laptop and the back. The speakers are on the sides, near the front.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX's build quality is great. The chassis is a mix of plastic and metal and feels very sturdy, with almost no flex in the display and keyboard deck. The finish is relatively scratch-resistant but easily picks up fingerprints and oil. Another minor cosmetic issue is that the stickers on the keyboard deck are hard to remove and can leave a mark. The feet feel solid and adhere firmly to the bottom of the laptop. The whole device has a heft, and the weight is evenly distributed.

The hinge is outstanding. It feels sturdy and smooth and is very stable, with no play at all. There's a good amount of resistance, but you can still easily open the laptop with one hand, giving it a premium feel. The screen doesn't wobble, even when typing aggressively.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX isn't very portable, as both the laptop and its power adapter are bulky and heavy. If you want a more portable gaming laptop, check out the ASUS ROG Flow X13 (2023).

The serviceability is decent. Although you can replace components like the memory, storage, and wireless adapter, accessing them can be challenging. Unclipping the bottom panel is the hardest part because the clips break easily, and it takes a lot of effort to clip the bottom panel back on. Also, the cover on top of the memory modules is hard to remove. 10 Philips screws hold the bottom panel; some screws might not fit properly after you remove them.

• MSI Raider GE67 HX laptop
• 330W power adapter and cord
• User guide
• Keyboard cover
• Laptop bag

The MSI GE67 HX is only available with a QHD OLED panel. It displays sharp images and text and provides plenty of room for multitasking. Its 16:9 aspect ratio is well suited for gaming; however, for productivity, a taller aspect ratio like 16:10 or 3:2 would have been preferable as you don't have to scroll as much when reading a document or website. Also, it would have reduced the size of the bottom chin.

The MSI GE67 HX has a high refresh rate display and a fast response time. It displays a clear image in fast-moving scenes with almost no visible ghosting, making it exceptionally well-suited for gaming. The built-in display doesn't support variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing, but you can use VRR if you use an external display that supports it.

The contrast ratio is superb. Like all OLEDs, this display can turn off individual pixels to produce deep, inky blacks with no blooming around bright objects, making it fantastic for dark room viewing.

The display gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings but not outdoors in broad daylight. You might also have visibility issues in very well-lit and sunny rooms. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark.

The reflection handling is decent. The glossy finish mainly struggles with direct, mirror-like reflections. Unlike matte finishes, bright light sources don't spread to other areas of the screen, but the reflections are more defined and are visible even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The black uniformity is superb because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels to produce perfect blacks.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has a decent horizontal viewing angle. Image accuracy doesn't degrade much when moving off to the side; the only issue is that the colors start shifting fairly early. The image looks good enough from the sides for almost all uses unless you need perfect accuracy.

The vertical viewing angle is good. It's very similar to the horizontal viewing angle, as it's mainly color shifting that's the problem because it happens fairly early.

The display's accuracy is decent. The white balance is excellent, and the color temperature is very close to the standard 6500K target, but most colors are oversaturated. The gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve; bright scenes look too bright, and dark scenes look too dark, crushing blacks. You can get better accuracy by switching to the sRGB color profile; here are the measurements:

• White balance dE: 1.99
• Color dE: 1.69
• Average gamma: 2.23
• Color temperature: 6601.2.

The color accuracy is significantly worse out of the box, as there's a driver issue causing everything to look over-brightened, resulting in a white balance dE of 16.09, a color dE of 13.67, and an average gamma of 1.01. You can resolve this issue by downloading the NVIDIA drivers from MSI's website and forcing the system to use the discrete GPU.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has a superb color gamut. It has full sRGB and DCI P3 coverage and near full coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, making it suitable for color-critical work like photo and video editing. The default color profile targets DCI P3, which is why most colors are oversaturated out of the box. You can change the color space through the MSI True Color application.

The display isn't flicker-free and may cause eye strain. It always flickers at 120Hz regardless of the refresh rate.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has a great keyboard. It's spacious, and its layout is fairly standard, so it's easy to get used to. The keycaps have a fine texture and feel high-quality. Typing feels great, as the keys are stable, don't require much force to actuate, and provide relatively satisfying tactile feedback. There's a good amount of travel for scissor-type switches, although you may find it too short if you're used to mechanical keyboards. Typing noise is very low and isn't an issue, even in quiet settings. You can customize the RGB backlighting through the SteelSeries GG application.

The touchpad is decent. It feels smooth and high-quality, but it's on the smaller side, which makes actions like dragging and dropping over a long distance hard. Also, it doesn't track well around the edges. It's responsive to gestures, though, and palm rejection works well. Clicking only works in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the click feels mushy and not particularly satisfying.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has bad speakers. They get reasonably loud but sound unnatural and boxy, with no bass. Turning off the default 'Music' audio profile increases bass slightly; however, it makes the speakers sound quieter and causes more distortion.

The webcam's video quality is great. The image looks clear; it's just a tad overexposed, so you lose some finer details in more blown-out areas. The overall image is still very detailed, and the colors look natural. As for the microphone, voices sound loud and clear but a little boxy, and there's also some background noise.

The port selection is outstanding. Two of the three USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen. 1 data transfer speed (up to 5Gbps), while the third one supports USB 3.2 Gen. 2 (up to 10Gbps). The USB-C port on the left supports USB 3.2 Gen. 2 data transfer speed and DisplayPort Alt Mode, and the one on the back of the device supports Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and video output to two 4k displays at 60Hz). You can charge the laptop via USB-C, but it won't charge as quickly as with the proprietary power adapter, and the battery will continue to drain if you perform demanding tasks at the same time.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E AX1675i.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core i7-12800HX (16 cores/24 threads, up to 4.80GHz, 25MB cache)
• Intel Core i9-12900HX (16 cores/24 threads, up to 5.0GHz, 30MB cache)

Both CPUs are high-performance mobile chips typically found in gaming laptops and mobile workstations. The HX-series processors are the fastest in Intel's 12th Gen. lineup, with more cores and threads than the regular H-series CPUs. The Core i7 and i9 can handle demanding tasks like gaming, video editing, and 3D graphics. The Core i9 is faster than the i7, but the difference isn't significant and only noticeable in extremely CPU-intensive games and applications.

The MSI GE67 HX is available with the following discrete GPUs:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop 8GB GDDR6 (150W TGP with Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop 8GB GDDR6 (175W TGP with Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop 16GB GDDR6 (175W TGP with Dynamic Boost)

All three options are high-end mobile GPUs that can provide smooth gameplay in graphically demanding titles at the laptop display's native QHD resolution. The top-end RTX 3080 Ti is only about 10% to 15% faster than the RTX 3070 Ti, with the RTX 3080 sitting in between, so depending on the price difference, it may or may not be worth upgrading. This laptop has a MUX (multiplexer) switch, meaning the discrete GPU can send information directly to the display without going through the CPU. This bypass results in better performance than laptops that lack this feature. The performance increase can be anywhere between 10% to 25%, depending on the game. Check out the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024) if you want a laptop with newer, faster NVIDIA RTX 40-series GPUs.

You can configure the laptop with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of memory.

You can get this laptop with 1TB or 2TB of storage.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX has a superb overall score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. The Intel Core i9-12900HX is among the fastest mobile CPUs of its generation and can handle nearly every type of workload, including demanding tasks like 3D graphics and video editing. The Intel Core i7-12800HX is only about 5% to 10% slower than the Core i9. As for GPU compute performance, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is among the best GPUs of its generation and has no problem handling demanding tasks. The RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 are only slightly slower. They can handle the same tasks; they'll just take slightly longer to complete renders.

The MSI GE67 HX's Intel Core i9-12900HX performs exceptionally well in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, making it suitable for professional rendering and other heavy, sustained workloads. The Core i7-12800HX is only slightly slower.

The MSI GE67 HX's performance in Blender is outstanding. All three GPUs support NVIDIA Optix hardware acceleration and can render 3D images very quickly. The RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 are only slightly slower.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti scores exceptionally well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. Again, it's one of the best mobile gaming GPUs in its generation. You can easily get near or over 100fps in AAA titles at 1440p with some tweaks in the settings. The RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 are slower but can easily push over 60fps at 1440p.

The MSI GE67 HX's PCIe Gen.4 x 4 NVMe SSD performs exceptionally well. Its fast read and write speeds allow the system to boot up, transfer files, and launch applications quickly.

The MSI GE67 HX's battery life is bad. Although it has a large battery (the maximum battery capacity allowed on flights), it can't last through a typical 8-hour day of light use, so regardless of what you do, you'll have to use the laptop plugged in most of the time. Configurations with an Intel Core i7 and/or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will last longer, but not significantly. Battery life varies greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 runs well on the MSI Raider GE67 HX with an intel Core i9-12900HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. The average frame rate is great at 1080p with high settings; however, there are occasional stutters as the frame rate sometimes drops drastically. The gameplay is similar at 1440p, with an average frame rate of 105 fps. Every configuration of this laptop can provide a smooth gaming experience in this game and other similar Unreal Engine 4 games. The RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 are slower but can still push over 60 fps at 1440p.

Civilization VI isn't very graphically-intensive, meaning any GPU configuration can push high frame rates, even at 1440p. As for the average turn time, the Core i9's performance is about as good as it gets for mobile CPUs of the same generation. The turn time will only be slightly longer with a Core i7.

Every configuration of the MSI Raider GE67 HX can provide smooth gameplay in CS:GO and other similar titles. Even at 1440p with high settings, the Intel Core i9-12900HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti push an average of 426 fps, which is well above the built-in display's maximum refresh rate.

Every configuration of the MSI GE67 HX can provide a smooth gaming experience in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and other similar, graphically-intensive AAA titles. There are some noticeable stutters, but they don't happen often. The gameplay is also smooth at 1440p, with an average frame rate of 126 fps. The large frametime spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the laptop's performance.

The MSI GE67 HX has mediocre thermal and noise handling. When idle, the keyboard deck is only mildly warm, and the fans are completely silent. The keyboard deck gets much hotter under load, with the hottest spot around the letter P. It isn't an issue if you only use the keys around WASD for gaming, but it might be uncomfortable if you're typing. Unfortunately, the fans get very loud. You can turn the fans down through software but at the cost of some performance loss.

The MSI Raider GE67 HX's performance over time is excellent. Neither the CPU nor the GPU gets very hot under load. There's some performance loss on the CPU, but it's very minor and only noticeable in extremely CPU-intensive tasks.

The MSI GE67 HX has a few pre-installed applications, including:

• Nahimic: SteelSeries-branded audio customization software. It lets you change the sound profile and tweak the EQ.
• SteelSeries GG: Lets you customize the keyboard's backlighting and RGB light bar.
• MSI True Color: Lets you change the display's color profile, apply profiles to specific apps, and add a crosshair.
• LinkedIn: App for LinkedIn social media platform.
• Music Maker Jam: Music production software.
• ClipChamp: Video editing software.

The MSI GE67 HX has per-key RGB keyboard backlighting and an RGB light bar at the front of the laptop. You can customize the lighting through the SteelSeries GG application.