To disclose, I haven't tested the performance of the 1060 in the Phantom Pro as of yet but will update this review as soon as I have the time and get all my games and benchmarks downloaded. (As we all know the 1060 is the main selling point of this laptop).
Packaging:
The packing is nothing spectacular, a brown box with the MSI logo. Inside is another black box with the MSI logo which when opened reveals the Phantom Pro wrapped in a soft packaging to keep from scratches. Underneath are the booklets and the charging cables. Again nothing spectacular but it's what you'd expect and it keeps the laptop protected.
Exterior:
First impressions taking the laptop out are that it feels and looks smaller than expected but in a good way, bringing it down to 14" instead of 15.6" makes the laptop much more portable without sacrificing too much screen real estate. It's also very light for the hardware packed inside.
The feel of it is a soft plastic with a brushed aluminum pattern, it feels and looks great but does attract fingerprints very easily so keep that in mind.
The top cover is that brushed aluminum but with a red stripe on the top edge and the MSI logo in the middle. The white dragon inside the red shield lights up when the laptop is powered on.
The bottom reveals the vents for intake and a pair of fans.
The right side houses a vent for exhaust, full HDMI port, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt.
The front has LED lights for HDD activity and battery as well as left and right speakers.
The left side keeps the Ethernet Port, the power input, another USB 3.0, and a separate Hi-Fi mic and headphones out.
Screen:
The screen is a pretty great looking 14" panel, the viewing angles are wonderful and the colors are solid. I'll update this section as I get time to test out games with colors that pop on here. However I don't have any professional tools to test RGB spectrum but I do have a ASUS VG248QE (TN, 1080p, 24", 144Hz) and a LG 23MP47HQ (IPS, 1080p, 24", 60Hz) to use as comparison and the viewing angles and colors definitely compare to the IPS panel.
Keyboard:
The panel that makes up the base of the laptop and keyboard also has the brushed aluminum styling, with some textured angles along the sides. The power button is an angular silver button on the top left (far enough from the keyboard to not be accidentally hit, nice touch). Some logos adorn the left side of the keyboard saying "Sound by Dynadio" and "Keyboard by Steelseries"
Now the keyboard itself is not bad for a laptop keyboard, its not perfect but I've used much worse before even in desktop keyboards. The click is mushy and the keys wobble a bit, however there is very little flex which is nice. The travel is better than expected though so they don't feel hollow, and they don't sound terrible either. The LED lighting is a soft red with two brightness settings, and most of the lighting is solid with the entire key except for the top function row.
I do want to point out though (this is entirely personal preference however) that the keyboard layout is perfect. There aren't any strange extra keys, no small sized shift or double stacked enter buttons. Everything is a nice, simple, standard US layout that makes getting used to the keyboard a breeze. Another nice touch is that the Caps Lock has a light indicating when it's on or not, very helpful. Also, due to this being a 14" laptop (one main selling point for me) is that there is no numpad, so the keyboard is much more centered when typing. This also applies to the trackpad which brings me to-
Trackpad:
This is definitely somewhere MSI had cut corners, the material is soft enough but can't compare to the glass trackpads of things like the Dell XPS line. The tracking was responsive and didn't jump around which was nice, but the click leaves much to be desired. It works but It's nothing to call home about. Though considering the target audience of this laptop I'd expect more external mouse usage so this is in no way a deal breaker. It does have a red accent around the edge of it if the aesthetics are any consolation.
It is however more aligned to the center which is a nice change of the usual left sided trackpads which never made sense to me.
Thermals:
This will be updated further once I get more time to test gaming and benchmarking, however so far temperatures for a laptop seem to be adequate. Just with some set up and a scan running with Chrome tabs and me typing this review, HWMonitor shows maxes up to 81c and minimums at 44c. However this is with the default fan speeds set which while aren't silent are at least quiet enough to be tolerable. The Phantom Pro does however have a "Cooling Boost" mode that'll ramp the fans up to max and it does exactly as advertised. The noise is definitely going to be ridiculous but it did drop temperatures quickly back down into the mid 30's. Cool.
Notes:
Again this review will be updated as I get further into testing the Phantom Pro, however as far as first impressions go, this is one solid machine and worth the buy,
I also want to disclose that I don't receive any type of review samples or discounts, I bought this myself from XOTIC for that full MSRP listing price, and am reviewing it as such because those are the types of reviews I pay the most attention to when purchasing on Amazon. When I bought this laptop though there were no reviews so I jumped the gun on this one.
As another disclosure I want point out I do have experience with many different laptops to use as a base for comparison, such as the Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-571G-50VG, the Asus G75VW-NH71, the Dell Inspiron 15 7559, etc.
Hopefully this helps anyone looking at the Phantom Pro as a more portable gaming machine packing the 1060, if you have any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer as time and knowledge permits. Do note that this review isn't complete yet.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.6 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 3.5 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 6 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
