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MSI’s new gaming laptops have speedy 300Hz displays and massive 99.9Wh batteries

MSI’s new gaming laptops have speedy 300Hz displays and massive 99.9Wh batteries

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But they could be expensive

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Image: MSI

At CES 2020, PC gaming hardware maker MSI announced two new gaming laptops with super-speedy 300Hz refresh rate screens and massive batteries to help power them.

One of the laptops, the new MSI GS66 Stealth, has a nice, relatively unassuming-looking black chassis:

Image: MSI

The new GE66 Raider, on the other hand, has a more pronounced design, more ports (including an SD card reader), and “panoramic aurora lighting,” which looks to mean that the laptop will be able to cast light from its bottom edge:

Image: MSI

Both can be upgraded to 300Hz displays, but even more impressive is that each comes with a huge 99.9Wh battery. If you opt for the 300Hz display, you’ll likely burn through that big battery quickly, given how fast most variable refresh screens can suck through power.

But if you’re not regularly playing 300Hz games, it seems likely that the big battery could give you quite a lot of juice. My colleague Dieter Bohn averaged about eight hours of battery life from the comparably large 100Wh battery in the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, so hopefully MSI’s new laptops perform similarly when they’re not playing battery-intensive games. And 99.9Wh is just under the Federal Aviation Administration’s 100Wh limit for lithium-ion batteries that are allowed on airplanes, so you’ll be able to bring MSI’s new laptops on a flight for some in-flight gaming.

Both models can be equipped with 10th gen Intel Core i9 H-series processors

According to Tom’s Hardware, both laptops have 15.6-inch screens, and each can be equipped with up to 10th Gen Intel Core i9 H-series processors. But if you’re wondering what kind of GPUs the laptops have, MSI only told Tom’s Hardware that the laptops would use the “latest” Nvidia RTX GPUs, so it’s not clear exactly what generation GPU will ship with the laptops when they’re available later this year.

MSI hasn’t yet revealed pricing for the two laptops, but they probably won’t be cheap, especially with that optional upgrade to 300Hz refresh rate screens. To give you an idea of how much they might start at, the cheapest version of the MS65 Stealth currently costs $1,899 at B&H, while the MS65 Raider currently costs $1,649.99 at B&H. Asus said in September that it would eventually sell a 300Hz version of its Predator Triton 500 laptop for a wallet-emptying $2,799.99, so it seems likely 300Hz laptop gaming on the go might come at a price, for now.