MSI's new entertainment notebook

Rory Reid | Aug 24, 2009

MSI GX723

We're having a spot of déjà vu here at Crave. Remember that MSI GT725? The quad-core gaming laptop with the ghastly red highlights? Well, we've just taken receipt of an almost identical alternative, except this time it's blue. And it has a new name. And totally different specs.

This model, dubbed the GX723, swaps the garish red accents of the GT725 for far less disturbing splashes of blue. It also swaps the quad-core Q9000 chip for a slightly more sedate Core 2 Duo P8600 running at 2.4GHz. There's still a healthy 4GB of RAM, however, and a 500GB hard drive, plus an Nvidia GeForce GT130M graphics card, so it'll run games and play hi-definition movies from its Blu-ray drive on its 17-inch, 1,680x1,050-pixel display. There's HDMI out too, so you can play Blu-rays on your TV.

Is all this worth £1,146 (US$1,893) ( when the theoretically superior GT725 costs roughly the same? Well, yes -- we'd do almost anything not to look at those horrible red bits from the other model. There's also a model available for £1,111 (US$1,835), which doesn't have Blu-ray.

The GX723 is available to buy now from Amazon UK. We have confirmed that the MSI GX723 is also slated for Taiwan, though its availability for the rest of Asian markets is still not clear.

The back looks good, too. We're lovin' the brushed metal effect.

Here's a closer look at the blue accenting.

Above the keyboard, the GX723 packs shortcut buttons for overclocking the CPU, engaging the battery-saving Eco mode, as well as for toggling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the 1.3-megapixel Webcam. (Note:MSI has removed the horrendously ugly strip of red from the front edge near the mouse trackpad. Good call, guys.)

We're not so hot on the keyboard, however. Some of the buttons, notably the arrow and enter keys, are simply too small.

Via CNET UK Crave

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