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.


Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer grew up around technology. From an early age, she was curious about all things related to computers. As a child, Jennifer remembers spending nights with her dad programming in BASIC and taking apart hard drives to see what was inside. In high school, she wrote her senior term paper on her experiences with building custom computers.

Jennifer graduated from the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After college, she began writing full-time for various PC and technology magazines. Later, she transitioned to the Web. In these roles, Jennifer has covered a variety of topics including laptops, desktops, smartphones, cameras, tablets, and various consumer electronics devices. When she's not playing with or writing about the latest gadget, Jennifer loves to spend time with her family, capture memories with her camera, and scrapbook.

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