I've reviewed a lot of MSI gaming laptops over the last few years. And MSI has consistently impressed with its lineup of gaming laptops that go from the ultra-thin to the ultra-big and everything in between. So I guess it's only right that once in a while there's a laptop that's not truly impressive, but more does just enough to get by.
That's how I'd describe the MSI Katana GF66 I've been testing for two weeks. It does its job, but there's nothing noteworthy about how it does it.
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At $1,399, it's on the lower end of the pricing spectrum for gaming laptops. It's a shame it doesn't do a better job of directly competing with similarly priced laptops.
Before I get into what I did and didn't like about the GF66, here's a quick look at the specs of the review unit I was sent.
Specs
Here are the specifications of the MSI Katana GF66 I've been testing:
There's an unmistakable look to the MSI Katana GF66. Maybe it's the boring black exterior. Maybe it's the block-like chunky design. Or maybe it's that lack of polish I've grown accustomed to seeing from MSI over years of testing the company's laptops. The GF66 looks like MSI mailed this one in, slapping some modern components in a laptop housing and calling it good enough.
I imagine that comes off as a little harsh, but, here, look at pictures from the MSI GS65 review I wrote in 2018. Notice the finer details, like the vents along the top of the keyboard? That kind of stuff is nowhere to be found on the GF66.
Now, I realize the GP66 Leopard I reviewed earlier this year had a similar design to the GF66 (lacking the vents, for example), but it also felt like it had a little more polish.
Then again, the GP66 and GS65 both cost hundreds of dollars more than the GF66 I have on my desk right now, so that's likely a big factor.
MSI lists the GF66's measurements as 359 x 259 x 24.9-mm, or roughly converted to 14.13 x 10.2 x 0.98-inches. As for weight, it comes in at 2.25-kilograms or 4.96-pounds. That’s neither particularly large nor heavy, but there’s something about the GF66’s design that makes it just look and feel much thicker and heavier than its measurements.
Other than the MSI logo that's embossed on the laptop's lid, there's not much else going on in terms of branding.
Opening the lid you see the 15.6-inch 144Hz Full-HD display. The bezels surrounding the display take the same approach as the rest of the design – somewhat thick. Along the top you'll find a 720p webcam centered over the screen. The camera will get the job done for the occasional work Zoom call, but you're not going to want to stream on Twitch with it or anything. But that's par for the course for nearly all laptop webcams.
The deck of the laptop has a full-size keyboard with a single zone red backlight. There was just enough space for MSI to squeeze in a small number pad to the right of the keyboard. The touchpad is centered with the keyboard, not counting the number pad. Meaning, it's off-center when you consider the overall width of the housing.
MSI included a handful of ports on the GF66, mixing and matching old and new tech to ensure you can connect a few accessories and peripherals. On the right side is where you'll find the most ports. From front-to-back, there's an audio/combo jack, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB-C port, an HDMI port capable of 4K at 60Hz, and then, finally, a 1 Gigabit Ethernet port.
On the opposite side, you'll find two more USB Type-A ports. One standard USB 2.0 port, and the second USB 3.1 Gen 1 port. There's also the charging port that relies on a barrel connector and charges the laptop using the 180W power adapter.
Vents for air circulation and cooling are found on the left edge of the deck, around the back of the housing and on the bottom.
I think I made it pretty clear I'm not a huge fan of the GF66's design, and I stand by that. It's a basic design and one that leaves me wanting a little more personality or color.
Tucked inside the housing of the GF66 is Intel's 11th Generation Core i7-11800H processor, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, 16GB of 3200Mhz memory and a 1TB SSD. That's all powering the 1080p 144Hz display, and it does a good job of it.
As I did with the GP66 Leopard, I took a peek at how MSI tuned the amount of power the GF66's GPU could use. It's tuned to 85W, whereas the GP66 Leopard and its RTX 3070 were tuned to 130W. There's a big difference not only between those two GPUs but also between the amount of power MSI is allowing them to consume for performance.
Here's a look at the benchmark numbers comparing the GF66 to the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE and Asus TUF Dash F15:
As you can see, the GF66 was outperformed by both comparisons in nearly every test, except for narrowly beating out the Predator Triton 300 SE in 3DMark's Night Raid test.
Real-world testing birthed a similar experience. For everyday use such as browsing the web in Edge, working in Google Docs, streaming Twitch or Spotify, and doing some shopping on Amazon.
And truth be told, gaming on the GF66 was a solid experience. Playing games like Knockout City, Need For Speed Remastered or Battlefield V, I saw the GF66 run the gamut of performance.
In Need for Speed, a game it should easily achieve 60 frames-per-second, it averaged closer to 52. Sometimes less, depending on how often my car crashed.
In Knockout City, I saw an average of 104fps. At times, the frame rate was pegged to 144fps, maxing out the refresh rate of the display – which is more in line with what I expected from the GF66.
I spent the most time in Battlefield V, testing various graphics settings and even bouncing between performance modes provided by MSI.
With Battlefield V set to Max Fidelity, which is a mix of Medium and High settings, the GF66 averaged right at 100fps with performance mode enabled in the MSI Center app.
With the game set to Ultra, performance dropped to 79fps. If I set the GF66's performance setting to Balanced. The frame rate took an additional 10% hit, dropping down to 71fps.
None of those numbers come close to the speed of the display on the GF66, but they're also nothing to get upset about. I didn't notice any tearing, hiccups or any other performance issues that made the GF66 a boring gaming experience.
If I had any complaints about gaming on the GF66 it would be that when in performance mode, the fans are really loud. You'll definitely want a pair of headphones, or you can take the FPS hit and drop it down to balanced if you want to game and hold a conversation with your partner or roommate. The fans on Balanced mode were very quiet.
As for the display, it looks alright. Color saturation is very muted on it, and in turn, games don't look as crisp as I know they can and should.
The 1TB of internal storage is a welcome starting point for this laptop – it's more than enough space to keep a few AAA titles and personal files.
Whenever a gaming laptop lands on my desk, and it's a true gaming laptop, not one of those super thin portable wannabes, I try to guess whether the manufacturer prioritized battery life over performance or vice-versa. With the GF66, I assumed it would be battery life.
However, after running PCMark 10's battery benchmark, the results reflect a mixture of both. Performance was good, but not great. And the battery followed the same approach – good, not great, with a final time of 3 hours and 12 minutes. That's enough to watch a very long movie, however, it's only half the amount of time that the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE lasted, and a third of the time that the TUF Dash F15 powered through.
There's not a lot of extra software installed on the GF66 out of the box. Of course, there's this staple bloatware of Norton Security that routinely prompts you for various things. Then there's MSI Center, an app that you can use to change the performance settings of the GF66, monitor the system and its current level of resource use, as well as contact MSI support should you run into any issues.
MSI Center is what you'd use to change any RGB lighting if you had an MSI laptop with multiple zones or per-key lighting. Alas, the GF66 has a single zone red backlight.
Outside of those two apps, the standard Windows 10 preinstalled apps, games and shortcuts are there.
MSI has a few different GF66 models. The version I tested is available from Microcenter for $1,399. There's the GF66 11UD that's priced at $1,199 and comes with the same processor and memory I tested, but with an RTX 3050 Ti and 512GB of storage. Adorama is also taking preorders for the Katana GF66 11UC for $1,049, which comes with an Intel Core i5-11400H, 8GB of memory, 512GB of storage and an RTX 3050.
Continue reading...
That's how I'd describe the MSI Katana GF66 I've been testing for two weeks. It does its job, but there's nothing noteworthy about how it does it.
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At $1,399, it's on the lower end of the pricing spectrum for gaming laptops. It's a shame it doesn't do a better job of directly competing with similarly priced laptops.
Before I get into what I did and didn't like about the GF66, here's a quick look at the specs of the review unit I was sent.
Specs
Here are the specifications of the MSI Katana GF66 I've been testing:
- Model: MSI Katana GF66 (11UE)
- Display: 15.6-inch FHD 144Hz (1920 x 1080)
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H (24M cache, 4.6GHz Max Turbo)
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB GDDR6
- Memory: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
- OS: Windows 10 Home
- Storage: 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD
- Webcam: 720p
- Ports: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1 x USB 2.0 Type-A, 1 x HDMI, 1 x audio combo-jack, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet
- Connectivity: WiFi 6 802.11ax, Bluetooth 5.2
- Dimensions: 359 x 259 x 24.9-mm (WxDxH)
- Weight: 2.25-kilograms
- Price: $1,399.99
MSI Katana GF66 – Design
There's an unmistakable look to the MSI Katana GF66. Maybe it's the boring black exterior. Maybe it's the block-like chunky design. Or maybe it's that lack of polish I've grown accustomed to seeing from MSI over years of testing the company's laptops. The GF66 looks like MSI mailed this one in, slapping some modern components in a laptop housing and calling it good enough.
I imagine that comes off as a little harsh, but, here, look at pictures from the MSI GS65 review I wrote in 2018. Notice the finer details, like the vents along the top of the keyboard? That kind of stuff is nowhere to be found on the GF66.
Now, I realize the GP66 Leopard I reviewed earlier this year had a similar design to the GF66 (lacking the vents, for example), but it also felt like it had a little more polish.
Then again, the GP66 and GS65 both cost hundreds of dollars more than the GF66 I have on my desk right now, so that's likely a big factor.
MSI lists the GF66's measurements as 359 x 259 x 24.9-mm, or roughly converted to 14.13 x 10.2 x 0.98-inches. As for weight, it comes in at 2.25-kilograms or 4.96-pounds. That’s neither particularly large nor heavy, but there’s something about the GF66’s design that makes it just look and feel much thicker and heavier than its measurements.
Other than the MSI logo that's embossed on the laptop's lid, there's not much else going on in terms of branding.
Opening the lid you see the 15.6-inch 144Hz Full-HD display. The bezels surrounding the display take the same approach as the rest of the design – somewhat thick. Along the top you'll find a 720p webcam centered over the screen. The camera will get the job done for the occasional work Zoom call, but you're not going to want to stream on Twitch with it or anything. But that's par for the course for nearly all laptop webcams.
The deck of the laptop has a full-size keyboard with a single zone red backlight. There was just enough space for MSI to squeeze in a small number pad to the right of the keyboard. The touchpad is centered with the keyboard, not counting the number pad. Meaning, it's off-center when you consider the overall width of the housing.
MSI included a handful of ports on the GF66, mixing and matching old and new tech to ensure you can connect a few accessories and peripherals. On the right side is where you'll find the most ports. From front-to-back, there's an audio/combo jack, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB-C port, an HDMI port capable of 4K at 60Hz, and then, finally, a 1 Gigabit Ethernet port.
On the opposite side, you'll find two more USB Type-A ports. One standard USB 2.0 port, and the second USB 3.1 Gen 1 port. There's also the charging port that relies on a barrel connector and charges the laptop using the 180W power adapter.
Vents for air circulation and cooling are found on the left edge of the deck, around the back of the housing and on the bottom.
I think I made it pretty clear I'm not a huge fan of the GF66's design, and I stand by that. It's a basic design and one that leaves me wanting a little more personality or color.
MSI Katana GF66 – Performance and gaming
Tucked inside the housing of the GF66 is Intel's 11th Generation Core i7-11800H processor, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, 16GB of 3200Mhz memory and a 1TB SSD. That's all powering the 1080p 144Hz display, and it does a good job of it.
As I did with the GP66 Leopard, I took a peek at how MSI tuned the amount of power the GF66's GPU could use. It's tuned to 85W, whereas the GP66 Leopard and its RTX 3070 were tuned to 130W. There's a big difference not only between those two GPUs but also between the amount of power MSI is allowing them to consume for performance.
Here's a look at the benchmark numbers comparing the GF66 to the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE and Asus TUF Dash F15:
As you can see, the GF66 was outperformed by both comparisons in nearly every test, except for narrowly beating out the Predator Triton 300 SE in 3DMark's Night Raid test.
Real-world testing birthed a similar experience. For everyday use such as browsing the web in Edge, working in Google Docs, streaming Twitch or Spotify, and doing some shopping on Amazon.
And truth be told, gaming on the GF66 was a solid experience. Playing games like Knockout City, Need For Speed Remastered or Battlefield V, I saw the GF66 run the gamut of performance.
In Need for Speed, a game it should easily achieve 60 frames-per-second, it averaged closer to 52. Sometimes less, depending on how often my car crashed.
In Knockout City, I saw an average of 104fps. At times, the frame rate was pegged to 144fps, maxing out the refresh rate of the display – which is more in line with what I expected from the GF66.
I spent the most time in Battlefield V, testing various graphics settings and even bouncing between performance modes provided by MSI.
With Battlefield V set to Max Fidelity, which is a mix of Medium and High settings, the GF66 averaged right at 100fps with performance mode enabled in the MSI Center app.
With the game set to Ultra, performance dropped to 79fps. If I set the GF66's performance setting to Balanced. The frame rate took an additional 10% hit, dropping down to 71fps.
None of those numbers come close to the speed of the display on the GF66, but they're also nothing to get upset about. I didn't notice any tearing, hiccups or any other performance issues that made the GF66 a boring gaming experience.
If I had any complaints about gaming on the GF66 it would be that when in performance mode, the fans are really loud. You'll definitely want a pair of headphones, or you can take the FPS hit and drop it down to balanced if you want to game and hold a conversation with your partner or roommate. The fans on Balanced mode were very quiet.
As for the display, it looks alright. Color saturation is very muted on it, and in turn, games don't look as crisp as I know they can and should.
The 1TB of internal storage is a welcome starting point for this laptop – it's more than enough space to keep a few AAA titles and personal files.
MSI Katana GF66 – Battery life
Whenever a gaming laptop lands on my desk, and it's a true gaming laptop, not one of those super thin portable wannabes, I try to guess whether the manufacturer prioritized battery life over performance or vice-versa. With the GF66, I assumed it would be battery life.
However, after running PCMark 10's battery benchmark, the results reflect a mixture of both. Performance was good, but not great. And the battery followed the same approach – good, not great, with a final time of 3 hours and 12 minutes. That's enough to watch a very long movie, however, it's only half the amount of time that the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE lasted, and a third of the time that the TUF Dash F15 powered through.
MSI Katana GF66 – Software
There's not a lot of extra software installed on the GF66 out of the box. Of course, there's this staple bloatware of Norton Security that routinely prompts you for various things. Then there's MSI Center, an app that you can use to change the performance settings of the GF66, monitor the system and its current level of resource use, as well as contact MSI support should you run into any issues.
MSI Center is what you'd use to change any RGB lighting if you had an MSI laptop with multiple zones or per-key lighting. Alas, the GF66 has a single zone red backlight.
Outside of those two apps, the standard Windows 10 preinstalled apps, games and shortcuts are there.
Purchasing Guide
MSI has a few different GF66 models. The version I tested is available from Microcenter for $1,399. There's the GF66 11UD that's priced at $1,199 and comes with the same processor and memory I tested, but with an RTX 3050 Ti and 512GB of storage. Adorama is also taking preorders for the Katana GF66 11UC for $1,049, which comes with an Intel Core i5-11400H, 8GB of memory, 512GB of storage and an RTX 3050.
Continue reading...