MSI GT627-216US Gaming Notebook Review

We’ve seen plenty of gaming notebooks that are meant to dazzle potential customers with outrageous designs, ultra high-resolution displays, twin GPUs, and quad-core processors. The MSI GT627-216US isn’t such a notebook. Instead, the GT627-216US takes a more subdued approach to offer budget-minded gamers a powerful machine at an affordable price.

Although the MSI GT627-216US may take a budget-minded approach, it doesn’t skimp on what’s important to gamers, namely the graphics card. The NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS at the heart of this notebook helps it to produce more than respectable scores in many gaming benchmarks. In addition, the GT627-216US has an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor and 4GB of RAM backing up that graphics subsystem.

Available for under $1,200, the GT627 employs the increasingly popular (and durable) brushed metallic look and adds red accents that give the notebook a bit of flare. Because it uses a 15.4-inch widescreen display as opposed to the 17-inch displays seen on many gaming notebooks, the overall machine is also lighter than its larger competitors. There’s a tradeoff, however, since a smaller display also means resolution sacrifices, and the GT627 is not immune to this. With a native resolution of 1280 x 800, you’ll definitely miss some of the detail you’d enjoy with a larger gaming notebook.

Read on as we take a closer look at the design and features of the GT627-216US. We’ll also run the GT627-216US through a rigorous set of benchmarks to see just how well it compares to some other gaming notebooks.