If you looking for a mid-range gaming Laptop In 2022, So today we are taking a look at the MSI GF66 Katana Gaming Laptop. The GF66 Katana is a mid-range gaming laptop from MSI, Now it’s not the thinnest nor the lightest and It doesn’t have crazy specs or a lot of RGB. It is just a typical gaming laptop that should just offer a lot of gaming performance in your budget. In this, you get different options at different price points. We have here Fourteen-core Intel i7-12700H with the RTX 3060 which is always nicer to see than the max Q version, it has 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 500GB of SSD with 144Hz IPS Panel for this particular model.
| Modal | KatanaGF6612603 |
| Display | 15.6-inch FHD 144Hz ISP Panel |
| Processor | Intel i7-12700H |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 |
| RAM | 16GB DDR4 |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe SSD |
| Webcam | 720P HD Webcam |
| OS | Windows 11 |
Pros
- Excellent CPU Performance.
- Good design.
- Upgradeable RAM & SSD.
Cons
- No Thunderbolt 4 or SD reader.
- Average battery life.
Build & Design of MSI Katana GF66
The MSI GF66 Katana looks and feels like a mid-tier gaming laptop, It weighs 2.25KG and it is 24.9 millimeters thick so it is definitely not the thinnest nor the lightest 15-inch laptop on the market. It is a brushed metallic color with a laser-etched MSI logo on the lid. The logo is all-black, staying away from MSI’s traditional red.
Now build quality mid-tier as well, The lid is made of metal and the rest of the chassis is made of plastic. It is decent enough overall the hinges are sturdy the panel shows barely any flex but there is some flex in the keyboard. The 15” matte display has thin bezels and houses an HD webcam and microphones.
Display
The MSI Katana GF66 comes with the 15.6-inch FHD 144Hz ISP Panel which is quite good. It is an entry-level gaming panel with a roughly 25 millisecond response time and a very poor color reproduction I measured only 95% SRGB Color Gamut. It’s going to be fine for casual gaming and office applications but it’s not great for competitive play or anything that requires any level of color accuracy. Even though some other results of the display aren’t really that bad contrast is good for example and the brightness is fine for most users they just don’t stop this panel from being classified as poor.
Also Read:- Best Laptops Under $100
Performace
The MSI GF66 Katana is packed with the 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H CPU processor and coupled with 16GB LPDDR4 RAM. The laptop comes with 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD storage, which translates to an impressive performance.
Let’s Talk about the CPU the Katana GF66 comes with the Fourteen-Core Intel Core i7-12700H. which is a good and pretty fast CPU that does especially well in single-core performance. The laptop can easily handle multiple Chrome tabs coupled with a video editing session in Adobe Premiere Pro and doesn’t let you down if you try to push it.
Now the CPU definitely doesn’t hold back games and this is where this laptop just shines. The MSI GF66 Katana comes with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics, which is a great GPU available in the market right now. You have no problems playing big AAA titles at high settings or light games at very high frame rates. If you want to do a heavy workload on this machine it won’t let you down in terms of performance.
Keyboard
Let’s talk about the keyboard of the MSI GF66 Katana and the keyboard is nice to use. This particular model has a red keyboard with red backlighting. Which is pretty much identical but with gray color on the inside instead of black.
Now the keyboard itself is really nice and used the actuation feels good both for typing and fast-paced gaming and I absolutely love that they included a full-size Numpad. There is a button for some turbo cooling on the top right and next to it there is another button that is supposed to open Dragon center software just be careful not to turn off your laptop.
The touchpad is a bit basic it is a precision touchpad with a plastic surface, It’s pretty accurate and not really sensitive to accidental wrist contact and I personally like that they added dedicated buttons. But they are quite tough to press and they do have quite a bit of resistance to them so it’s fair to say that it is not as nice as some of the new extra-large glass pads that MSI is using for high-end models.
WebCam
The MSI Katana GF66 comes with a typical 720p HD webcam which is enough good for meeting and video conferences but if we talk about the streaming, We suggested you use an external one for better video quality. It also supports 30FPS video recording, which is quite good.
I/O AND PORTS
There are the right amount of I/O ports available in the MSI GL65 leopard. Now there is one fast USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-C port, 3 USB 3.2 gen 1 Type-A ports, A gigabit LAN an HDMI port a mini display port, separate audio and microphone jack. Now the only real thing missing here is thunderbolt and SD Card reader support. The position of some of the USB Ports is not really that ideal. I mean plugging anything other than a small dongle into those front right.
Verdict
If we talk about the choice you will get a really decent gaming laptop with a good keyboard with nice upgradability and you do actually get more gaming performance out of this RTX 3060 than most others in this price class.
If you can stretch your pocket a little more and you want a Best Gaming laptop so you can go for Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2022.
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