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CNET First Look
Get a classic keyboard in this massive gaming laptop
The MSI GT83VR has two video cards and a mechanical keyboard inside its giant frame.
1:51 /
Transcript
[MUSIC]
Forget about CES prototypes, there's a crazy experimental gaming beast you can buy right now.
It's the MSI GT83 VR.
[MUSIC]
Now this is a desktop replacement in the truest sense of the word.
The massive body is thick and it angles upward towards the 18 inch display, that extra space to accommodate the high-end parts and cooling needs.
That's because there's not one, but two Nvidia GeForce 1080 graphics cards inside.
But even the double video card setup is not the most unusual thing about this laptop.
That would be the deep sense full mechanical keyboard.
It's the kind of thing you usually only see in dedicated stand-alone gaming keyboards.
And if that wasn't enough, the touchpad gets moved from the traditional below the keyboard spot over to the right-side It also doubles as a number pad with a tap on the corner.
It's a cool visual trick, but the whole thing is not very practical, because when you move a touch pad from where your fingers expect it to be, you've just confused years of muscle memory.
There are a few other quirks.
The GT 83 VR require two huge power bricks, which then route into a a Y connector, and that's a lot of extra cables even before you hook up a VR headset.
But if there was ever a laptop that seemed made for virtual reality gaming, well this is it.
There's more performance overhead here then in most performing desktops.
[MUSIC]
Even though it's huge and, kind of, ugly, I still like to think binder like body and the chunky mechanical keyboard.
It gives the whole think, kind of, a retro feel.
Let's like a sleep modern laptop and more like a nuclear football being hustled through norad corridors in a 1960s cold war thriller.
[MUSIC]
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