There's a lack of bass that makes the audio experience dull. Gaming-wise, I played Call of Duty: Vanguard (on fairly low settings) and couldn’t feel the punchiness of a carbine shooting off or the impactful explosions kicking off left, right, and center. At least the vocals weren’t subdued, so I certainly did “kick off the Sunday shoes.” The speakers are shallow and tinny, meaning the raring up of the guitar riffs as the drums kept an upbeat tempo couldn’t get me up to start dancing (illegally).
I just watched a scene with “Footloose” in it, so of course I listened to the belter of the tune from Keeny Loggins. MSI Katana GF76 audioĪudio isn’t a strong point of the Katana GF76, so it’s a good thing there is an audio jack and plenty of wireless gaming headsets around. The GF66 covered a measly 43.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and hit 247 nits of brightness, which is worse than the Acer Nitro 5 (63% coverage, 255 nits of brightness). While I don’t have benchmarked brightness results, I’m confident that the color and brightness are similar to the results on the Katana GF66. That said, I saw brighter, more vivid colors when playing it on the ROG Strix Scar 17, but that’s the difference between a premium gaming laptop and a budget one.
That same color can be seen on the GF76’s display (it's hard for it not to), and the sizeable display with minimal bezels offered a full scope of the crumbling city of heaven. I also played Neon White, which oozes bright blue skies and rays of lights shining on white pillars. What’s more, the Acer Nitro 5 (2020), with a very similar design, can be picked up for $669, and its GTX 1650 performance is nothing to sneeze at.Įven at its more affordable price as a 17-inch gaming laptop, the Katana GF76 isn’t competitively priced. For instance, the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 is now $990, and is often discounted to around $900 (opens in new tab). That’s a significant price jump for commendable power, especially considering some of the best gaming laptops like the $1,529 Lenovo Legion 5 Pro and $1,699 Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition can get you stellar performance at more affordable prices.Īs for the RTX 3050 Ti configuration, it’s still more expensive than other gaming laptops with the same GPU. However, This model will set you back $2,099 at Walmart (opens in new tab), while the RTX 3070 configuration retails at $1,899 (currently $1,799 at Abt (opens in new tab)). The Katana GF76 can also be configured with up to an RTX 3070 Ti and 1TB SSD, which is a bit more fitting for a gaming laptop. Of course, that bumps up the price, and the laptop can’t escape its dim display, flimsy plastic lid, and average keyboard and touchpad. What’s more, each model boasts a powerful Intel 12th Gen i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The good news is the Katana GF76 comes in a number of configurations, up to a more attractive RTX 3070 Ti. It kind of defeats the purpose of a gaming laptop, right? Sure, it has the ability to offer ray-tracing graphics in a number of titles, but its overall performance is plain disappointing. That’s the case with the MSI Katana GF76 we received, sporting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti.
From sizeable 17-inch displays with 165Hz refresh rates to become fully enveloped in the high-octane action onscreen to sleek, gamer-esque designs making the bold statement “this isn’t your average laptop,” these features appeal to anyone hunting down a portable powerhouse that can play the latest games.īut it’s all for naught if there isn’t a capable GPU stuck inside.
Gaming laptops can come with all the bells and whistles to pique the interest of power-hungry PC gamers.