Review of the MSI Vector GP77 13VG gaming laptop

If you need a modern gaming PC, but don’t like the idea of assembling a desktop yourself, a powerful gaming laptop with a large screen can be a good alternative. For example, such as MSI Vector GP77 13VG.

Specifications

Design and layout

MSI Vector GP77 13VG has a restrained look, especially for a gaming model: a solid black matte case without RGB backlighting, and even without color inserts (only an inconspicuous MSI logo on the lid). Most of the case is made of metal, except for the plastic bottom, elements around the hinges on the lid, and the rear edge with connectors. In general, the laptop feels sturdy, it hardly bends or squeaks.

A 17-inch gaming laptop can’t be compact by default, but the MSI Vector GP77 13VG still looks relatively light and small against other similar models: the case dimensions are 39.7×28.4×2.59 cm and it weighs 2.8 kg.

The bezels around the screen are relatively small: 7 mm on the sides and 11.5 mm on the top. Thanks to the considerable weight of the base, you can open the lid with one hand without any problems. The maximum opening angle is approximately 135°.

Interface connectors are located both on the side panels and behind the screen. On the left, you can find one USB 3.2 (Gen 1), a combination mini-jack for a wired headset and USB-C (with support for Display Port and charging connected devices), on the right, two more USB 3.2 (Gen 1), and finally, at the back, a power connector, Ethernet (2.5G), HDMI 2.1, and Mini Display Port. Hot air exits on the sides and back.

Keyboard, touchpad

The MSI Vector GP77 13VG has an island-type keyboard with a typical laptop key travel. Keyboard with an additional number pad – the size of the laptop allows it. The main block is exactly the same size as desktop keyboards, so you won’t have to get used to smaller keys or spacing for blind typing, as is the case with other laptops. The keyboard does not bend during operation; it can be bent slightly only if you press down on it with a fairly noticeable force.

The layout is almost standard ANSI, with a long left Shift and single-line Enter. The arrow control block is built into the main block, under Enter and right Shift – for this purpose, we had to reduce the space and shift the right Alt and Ctrl to the left, as well as make a 0 in an additional regular-sized number block.

The power button is located in the upper right corner, in the same row as the upper keys. It is not recessed into the body and does not differ from the other keys to the touch, but due to its location above the digital pad, the risk of accidental pressing is low.

The keyboard has full RGB backlighting, which is adjustable separately for each key; its behavior can be customized in the SteelSeries GG utility. At maximum brightness, the backlight is quite strong and can be felt well even in a lighted room.

The touchpad is of medium size – 10.5×6.5 cm, and it is convenient to use. We didn’t have any problems with it during the review, two- or three-finger gestures worked without any complaints, the only thing you can pay attention to is the rather tight physical mouse buttons at the bottom of the touchpad.

Screen

There is only one screen option in the MSI Vector GP77 13VG lineup – a 17.3-inch IPS panel manufactured by BOE (NE173QHM-NZ1) with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels, an aspect ratio of 16:9, and a high maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz.

The color gamut of the screen is expanded to fully cover the sRGB space, almost entirely DCI-P3, and 88% Adobe RGB.

The gamma value perfectly matches the standard 2.2, so the image has a well-balanced saturation. The brightness is adjustable in the range of 19-353 cd/m², which will be quite enough to work in complete darkness and in strong office lighting. The brightness is controlled by changing the current strength: PWM is not used throughout the entire brightness range, so there is no screen flickering with this laptop.

The maximum static contrast is 1050:1, which is a good result for a laptop IPS panel. The color temperature, depending on the brightness, ranges from 7200-7700K, which is slightly higher than the standard 6500K, so the image has a slightly cold tint.

The color temperature uniformity is very good: the closest to the standard is the upper right corner of the screen, the maximum deviation from it is observed in the lower left corner and is ΔE=3.9. The brightness uniformity is very good for a laptop screen: its maximum value is in the center, the minimum is in the upper left corner, the difference between them is 13%.

The color accuracy is very high, with an average ΔE value of less than one and a maximum of only 2.31. This is a very good indicator even for desktop monitors, which meets the requirements for factory calibration of screens: the maximum ΔE value should not exceed three.

Hardware platform

The MSI Vector GP77 13VG-072UA lineup uses Intel Core i7-13700H or i9-13900H processors and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU graphics card with 8 GB of video memory. Our copy had the older processor model.

Intel Core i9-13900H is a 13th generation 14-core processor for mobile systems that belongs to the Raptor Lake-H family. The processor was announced in early 2023 and contains 6 productive cores with Hyper Threading support and 8 energy-efficient cores – in total, the processor can process up to 20 threads simultaneously.

Productive cores can operate at 2.6-5.4 GHz (with a single-core load; for all cores, the maximum frequency is 4.9 GHz), and energy-efficient cores can operate at 1.9-4.1 GHz. The processor is manufactured using a 10 nm process technology, with a recommended base power consumption of 45W, and in turbo mode, it can reach up to 115W for short-term loads.

In the current configuration, the laptop is equipped with 32 GB of DDR5-5200 RAM manufactured by SK Hynix, which operates in dual-channel mode. If desired, its capacity can be increased to 64 GB – the memory is not soldered on the board, but installed in two SODIMM slots. The laptop has two M.2 SSD slots, one of which is occupied by a Micron 3400 MTFDKBA2T0TFH NVMe SSD PCI-E 4.0 x4 (2048 GB), so the storage system can also be expanded later.

Source: LaptopMedia

The only thing worth noting here is that in order to remove the bottom cover and gain access to the expansion modules, you’ll have to break the factory seal that covers one of the screws.

The Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 module (Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.3) is responsible for wireless communication, and the 2.5-gigabit Realtek Gaming controller is responsible for wired communication.

MSI Vector GP77 13VG performance

The Intel Core i9-13900H is one of the most productive mobile processors available today, and thanks to MSI OverBoost technology, the maximum combined CPU+GPU power consumption can reach 185 watts. So it’s no surprise that this laptop performs very well in both complex synthetics and benchmarks that focus on CPU power. So, if you want, you can use it without any problems not only for gaming but also for applied tasks that require powerful hardware. The NVMe PCIe 4 SSD has very decent results in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark: read speeds of 6500 MB/s and write speeds of almost 5000 MB/s.

The MSI Center utility allows you to choose from several cooling scenarios: Super Battery, Silent, Balanced, Extreme Performance, and the default Smart Auto, which automatically optimizes performance and cooling using the MSI AI Engine.

We compared the system performance in these modes using the Cinebench 2024 utility under all cores. As you can see, the difference is insignificant in most modes: Balanced offers almost the same performance as the “powerful” modes, while the frequencies, temperature and power consumption of the processor in these modes also differ little from each other. It’s only in Silent that the situation is completely different: this mode is really quiet, and the laptop is almost inaudible in a room with windows open to the street. The frequencies and power consumption are reduced very much, so the low results in the Cinebench 2024 multicore test were not a surprise.

We also checked how battery operation affects performance and how it differs from operation when connected to the mains. As you can see, MSI Vector GP77 13VG loses significantly in performance in standalone mode: in some tests by two times or even more. Well, this is not surprising, given the powerful “stuffing” of the laptop, which without significant performance limitations would very quickly “eat up” the battery charge.

Let’s move on to games. The performance of the Intel Core i9-13900H processor in combination with the GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU (up to 140W with Dynamic Boost) is quite enough to comfortably play in native resolution at maximum graphics settings in the vast majority of games. The only exception here is Bethesda’s new Starfield project, which is still not doing well with optimization, especially on NVIDIA chipsets.

Performance in games, maximum graphics quality, 2560×1440 dots (frames per second):

If you want to see the benefits of the MSI Vector GP77 13VG’s high refresh rate, you can lower the graphics quality a bit – even at high settings, the average fps in most cases is well above 60 frames per second.

Performance in games, high quality graphics, 2560×1440 pixels (frames per second):

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to play games with Ray Tracing at maximum ray tracing quality without DLSS: the frame rate is below a comfortable 60 fps. DLSS 2 significantly improves the situation, and DLSS 3 improves it even more; finally, you can lower the tracing quality from maximum to “high” – after which, if you use DLSS 3, you can get game-level performance without Ray Tracing at all.

Performance in games with ray tracing (RT: maximum quality), 2560×1440 dots (frames/sec):

Performance in games with ray tracing (RT: high quality), 2560×1440 dots (frames/sec):

Battery life

Battery life has never been a priority for gaming laptops, and with a 65 Wh battery, you shouldn’t expect to run long sessions without a network connection. In addition, the system is activated by default in a mode that constantly uses discrete video, which means that the laptop does not last long on battery power, to put it mildly.

Thus, in the battery test of the PCMark 10 benchmark at a brightness of 100 cd/m², the MSI Vector GP77 13VG worked for just under an hour in the gaming test and 2.5 hours when watching a video. In the “idle” state, the laptop lasted only 3.5 hours (5 minutes longer after turning off the keyboard backlight).

You can increase the battery life by switching to one of two other modes – either hybrid, where the system decides which graphics to use, or exclusive use of the built-in video. In the latter case, the battery life is expected to improve significantly: in a state of inactivity (and when using the Super Battery mode), the laptop “lived” for almost 5 hours, which can be considered a pretty decent result for a gaming model.