[Review] MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro – The Ghost who Walks

MSI’s GS43VR Phantom Pro is one of the most compact and powerful gaming rigs they currently have in service that come with NVIDIA Pascal GPUs so it was quite a pleasant surprise when one appeared on our doorstep for field testing. The GS43VR Phantom Pro comes with all their usual refinements for gaming rigs including stereo speakers tweaked by DynAudio, a SteelSeries keyboard along with quite a few other more subtle enhancements under the hood which, by dint of its GTX 1060 card, include it being VR ready hence its VR suffix in its product code.

Externally, it comes in MSI’s distinctive matte black and red paint job with the top lid coming in the aforementioned finish along with the MSI G-series dragon logo and the MSI corporate logo emblazoned into the casing. There are slightly raised grooves to accentuate the curves of the top lid but are otherwise there purely for aesthetic value.

When flipped open, the top lid had no flex or play and otherwise kept the 14-inch 1080P IPS display up in a sturdy fashion without any wobbling. The hinges themselves proved up to the task with relatively smooth traverse that lets you position the display all the way to a 45-degree incline from a neutral vertical position.

The base of the notebook itself is aggressively angled, with each end hiding a pair of downward firing stereo speakers. The keyboard itself is backlit and like many other keyboards lacks a numeric keypad though it does cram in space for a set of direction keys on the bottom right. The palm rests are generously sized as is the touchpad which is lined with red chrome trim.

The base of the notebook itself is otherwise unremarkable save for ventilation grilles and a quartet of triangular rubberised feet that prevents the whole affair from sliding off a table into oblivion.

The left side of the notebook comes with an Ethernet port, the charging port, a USB 3.0 port, a card reader along with a 3.5mm microphone jack and a headphone jack.

The right side sports a USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, a USB 3.0, a HDMI 1.4 out and a notched groove for a Kensington lock. In terms of portage, the GS43 VR covers all the essentials including the Type-C port for fast data transfers; more so seeing as it has Thunderbolt support.

In terms of build quality, the notebook is an otherwise solid example of MSI’s engineering prowess with brushed aluminium on almost the entirety of its surface area and nary any creaking or any gaps in its assembly. The only plasticky bits being the underside of the notebook though odds are it’s an area that avoids scrutiny most of the time. It’s relatively well sized for transport at under 2 kilos and a thickness of about 2cm or so for a gaming notebook.

Hardware & Performance

For gaming purposes,  the MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro comes with a 14-inch matte 1080P IPS panel that serves up good viewing angles as well as pretty crisp detail and colours even under daylight though a 2K display would have been welcome.


Under the hood, the notebook sports an Intel Core i7-6700HQ Skylake CPU and 16GB RAM. As mentioned earlier, the rig comes with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU to handle pixel crunching duties and, if needs must, any VR gaming that comes its way. Storage is sorted via an 256GB M.2 SSD and a 1TB 2.5-inch SATA hard disk. In terms of connectivity, it comes with MSI’s nifty Killer LAN, Killer ac and Killer DoubleShot Pro tech to improve gaming connectivity and performance.

When put to the test, the GS43VR Phantom Pro was, to quote a certain Dark Lord of the Sith – impressive. Firing it up took seconds before booting into the home screen and we went the whole hog and installed a slew of games on it including Counterstrike: GO, Starcraft 2, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Company of Heroes 2 and Bioshock: Remastered. The rig handled it all without breaking a sweat with the built-in heat cooling fans doing a dab job without kicking up a racket though the rig did get somewhat warm during intense gameplay. The speakers, beefed up by Nahimic V2 audio enhancement tech served up a hefty soundstage with good detail and aural punch. Vocals were clear while heavily layered audio like the middle of a raging firefight offered a distinctive, robust soundstage with beefy reports when shells are hitting vehicle hull plating or organic targets.

The GS43VR was also able to handle paperwork effortlessly with the ability to handle video rendering and spreadsheets with nary a pause. The keyboard was responsive, with decent travel and play though the mousepad seemed a bit on the sluggish side, even with the sensitivity settings maxed out. It’s otherwise fine for ‘serious’ work but if you need pinpoint precision and speed you’ll likely need to get an external mouse.

Like other MSI gaming notebooks of recent vintage, the GS43VR is also issued with their Dragon Center app that helps you manage all your important system settings in one convenient spot. It’s relatively analogous to other MSI notebooks and helps you to monitor CPU, GPU and RAM usage, ambient temperature as well as optimise other settings as needed. For a more indepth look you at what Dragon Center can do you can see our prior review of the MSI GE62VR here.

In 3DMark 11 Extreme, the notebook managed to get an impressive score of 5056 which is better than 60% of most notebook scores. The Heaven DX11 Unigine benchmark with settings cranked up to high yielded a score of 715 with an average 28.4FPS. In Fire Strike Ultra on 3D Mark, it yielded an equally respectable score of 2,677 while the Sky Diver demo yielded a score of 21,596. As far as its gaming is concerned, the GS43VR has it down pat and is able to handle anything you can throw at it from this year’s current crop of games and then some.  

The main quibble, as with most gaming notebooks is its rather short battery life. Away from the mains, it’s only able to last three or so hours tops. Less if you are running it at full tilt. That aside, this is one of the most powerful gaming rigs of its size in the market. If cash is no object and you’re seeking a portable gaming experience that can handle 4K and VR out of the box, this won’t disappoint you.

WHAT WE LIKED Powerful specs, good keyboard, VR and 4K ready
WHAT WE DIDN’T Gets rather warm, poor battery life
WE SAY MSI’s GS43VR is an impressively powerful and portable gaming solution that does not come cheap but if cash is no object, this should be tops on your wishlist

Specifications
Price RM8,599
Display 14-inch IPS , 1920 x 1080 pixels display
Processor Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6GHz
OS Windows 10
Memory 16GB RAM/ 1 x 2.5-inch SATA HDD, 1 x M.2 SSD Combo (NVMe PCie Gen3 x 4/SATA)
Graphics Nvidia GeForce 1060 w 6GB GDDR5
Size/Weight 345x245x21.8-22.8mm / 1.8kg
Review unit courtesy of MSI Malaysia