Lenovo ThinkPad X1 vs MSI GS65: Which to Buy?

This is the comparison between the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 and MSI GS65 Stealth RTX

LENOVO THINKPAD X1 CARBON GEN 7	MSI GS65 STEALTH RTX
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Great looks and premium build quality.	Great performance once tweaked, especially in demanding loads and games
CONS	CONS
Mediocre webcam with IR camera	Build has improved, but not much, as the outer case and chassis still creak.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Experts Reviews for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen-

By NotebookCheck

–Privacy Guard ThinkPad with room for improvementsYou have to pay $197 extra for the ePrivacy display compared to the regular 1080p screen (400 nits). The picture quality as well as the brightness are pretty similar between these two models and the…

By klgadgetguy.com

The 7th generation Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a fantastic device, as it should be. As part of the long lineage of reliable ThinkPad laptops, this one is as well-thought out as its counterparts – its build (especially its keyboard) as well as its…

By LaptopMag

Lenovo’s 7th Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s lightweight and durable design, gorgeous display, long battery life and extensive security features make it the best business laptop on the…

By zdnet.com

Lenovo doesn’t change the general design of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon year on year, because it doesn’t need to: the distinctive look is well-established. But squeezing a 14-inch screen into a chassis that’s only a shade over 1kg is a real feat, especially…

By HotHardware

Of course, most folks aren’t replacing their $2,000 laptop annually, either. However, if you’ve been clinging to an older business-class laptop and didn’t just jump straight to the conclusion of this review, you probably already know what we’re going to say. If you want a no-compromise ultrabook, you can confidently pick up a 2019 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and not look back.

 

Experts Reviews for MSI GS65 Stealth RTX-

By  PC Gamer 

Seeing how it radiates wealth (it’s literally a gold and black laptop), the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin could be a lot more expensive than it is. Somehow it tucks an Intel Core i9 processor, RTX 2080 graphics, 32GB of RAM and a huge 1TB hard drive into a sub-0.7-inch frame. Needless to say, I’m cheering it along.

By PCWorld 

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 9SD has a tradition to uphold. Its predecessor, MSI’s GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE, was the laptop that changed our perception of just how much real gaming performance you could pack into a thin-and-light gaming laptop. With the next generation, we find essentially the same winning laptop design, stuffed with the latest toys from Intel and Nvidia.

By PC Mag 

MSI’s GS65 Stealth delivers better-than-60fps gaming performance and a premium, portable build with long battery life. With no real flaws, an appealing price, and power topped only by pricey alternatives, it’s our top midrange gaming laptop.

By UltraBookReview 

The 2019 iteration of the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin is pretty much a hardware bump of last year’s model, with Nvidia Turing graphics and a few minor refinements on the side. It remains one of the lightest and most stylish devices in its class, combined with the roughly 20% performance gain in regular games, as long as you’re not shopping on a budget.

By  xataka.com 

Hands on: Incluso a los más exigentes. Además, es una máquina estupenda también para creación de contenidos (edición de vídeo, infografía, retoque fotográfico, etc.), o para cualquier otra tarea que conlleve un esfuerzo de cálculo importante. La faena es que su precio es lo suficientemente alto para impedir a muchos usuarios que se hagan con él, pero es lo que tiene apostar por tantos componentes de gama alta.

DESIGN

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

The conferencing you have a manual shutter here on the webcam is something that, Lenovo includes now in most of their laptops so you can just shut that camera lens, with an actual physical shutter without having to use tape and stuff up there. But it does not support facial recognition for login you have to do that through the fingerprint sensor, here at the bottom to get into it so altogether a very nice piece of hardware very lightweight it feels solid and premium and it has a nice design.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

The black finish which is very attractive to show fingerprints the nice kind of darkish gold accents, on the sides give it a classy look it still doesn’t have the same kind of high-end classy chassis looking thing that the Razer Blade 15 has or a 15-inch MacBook Pro, or maybe even a Dell XPS 15 but it looks pretty darn good compared to most gaming laptops certainly. In fact, it doesn’t scream gaming laptop even the MSI logo on the lid is that kind of tasteful bronzy gold instead of something you know light up neon green or red.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

The road weight on this is 2.0 2.4 pounds or 1.0 8 kilograms not all that heavy, and this has always been one of the strong suits of the x1 carbon line they are extremely lightweight it will surprise you how lightweight. It is when you first pick it up and if you are someone who often feels the weight of that 4-pound laptop in your backpack this will cut the weight down in half, and it’s really a pleasure to walk around with really nice feeling device it does pick up a lot of fingerprints and stuff.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

Weight is nearlyn1.89 kg (4.17 lbs), .89 kg (1.96) for the charger, EU version. Dimensions are 358 mm or 14.08” (w) x 248 mm or 9.75” (d) x 17.5 mm or .69” (h).

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

The keyboard feels slightly different than other think pads. I have used recently partly because the travel on it is not as deep as you might expect out of a think pad just because this one is so thin so it might take a little bit of getting used to especially if you’re coming from an older larger think pad the keys will feel similar in their size and distance but the travel is again not as deep so that might be something you’ll want to play around, with to get used to you also have the nub here which is something you see on everything pad it wouldn’t be one without the nub and you’ve got your mouse buttons here to control that you also have a really nice trackpad down here that has a nice spring to it is very very accurate in its tracking and really nice to use so altogether a very nice premium experience.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

Backlit keyboard it’s low travel pretty low travel boy but it has fairly good tactile feel a nice bounce-back so it’s not that bad to type on before we talk about the trackpads are gone it’s obviously very wide it works pretty well not the ultimate best I would say the Dell XPS 15 in the Razer Blade 15 still have an even better track the Padma this is pretty darn good speaking of and their. Microsoft precision trackpad Bank God the days of MSI is not so good trackpads are gone it’s obviously very wide it works pretty well not the ultimate.

PORT SELECTION

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

USB 3 port you also have two, Thunderbolt 3 ports here on the other side these are full-service ports so they can provide power in along with data devices for thunderbolt. USB type-c and you can have display going out of those as well so if you have one of those docking stations one of those Thunderbolt 3 docks. You can plug a single cable in get video out power in and then get access to some of the USB devices you might, want to plug into that dock again all through a single cable these are four-lane thunderbolt ports so it’s all up to date on everything and you could plug in an external GPU, with this as well if you wanted to do that because this only has the Intel GPU inside right over here is a network jack. This is to be used with a little dongle that will allow you to plug in a full-size Ethernet cable they couldn’t fit that rj45 here on the case so there is a dongle for Ethernet, but you can connect that network without having to use any of the USB ports in the process. There so that’s an option for you there and of course, you’ve got a headphone your phone jack on the other side we’ve got another full-size USB 3 port the standby power button here you have your fan exhaust over here and then you’ve got a Kensington lock, for locking it down on a desk so nobody walks away with it.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

SD card slot is here including Thunderbolt 3 with the USBC connector and that’s the full 4 lanes for those who want to use Thunderbolt 3 doc sorry GPUs and get, the maximum throughput we have USB 3.1 points as you would expect as well and the usual audio jacks just like last year we have the same. the audio jacks as always I use their ESS Sabre hi-fi audio DAC which means headphone audio is pretty good and you have separate headphone and mic jacks on this the speakers are C usual in the hemacue audio. Ports are also Gigabit Ethernet e 25 hundred killer Ethernet that’s pretty unusual in a small chassis like this we see this in a few laptops in this size class but still, that’s pretty cool for Wi-Fi it is the killer 18:50 iCard which is actually a rebranded intel 95/60 AAC card with killer software.

DISPLAY

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

I believe the RAM is soldered on so you can’t upgrade it. I have a 14-inch display this one has a 1080p resolution. I think is the sweet spot for this particular device it looks fine at 14 inches it’s actually thirteen points nine, to be exact really not an issue here color is nice and sharp it’s decent and bright good viewing angles on it so. I would probably say go with this there is a higher resolution available for more money it might look a little nicer than 1080p.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

I same identical panel is a 15.6 inch 144 Hertz fast response display 7 millisecond response time so an IPS display not TN so no mediocre viewing angles. Again it’s the same as last year’s Full HD with all these r-tx laptops out of the gate they’re just offering them with full HD displays, even though they could drive much more powerful at this place happily it does have HDMI 2.0, that can drive a 4k monitor at 60 Hertz and it has a mini DisplayPort 1.4, as well so if you want to do higher resolution gaming you can plug in an external monitor and do that speaking of those ports they are pretty plentiful on here we have those display alcohol it’s impressive.

BATTERY

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

But to be honest, with you at this size it’s a negligible difference and you’re going to be getting a huge battery hit. With the 4k version of this in particular so my advice is stick with the 1080p save yourself some money in battery life.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

The battery capacity in half its uses a 230-watt charger because max Q graphics doesn’t need as much power and battery life on this thanks to Nvidia Optimus, switchable graphics too so when you’re doing lightweight productivity work or streaming some video you’re not using that Nvidia is actually pretty good. This is about a six-hour laptop unplugged with the left display said it 150 nits.

PERFORMANCE

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

Now let’s, see what this laptop is all about so let’s take a closer look now, at the hardware these start at about thirteen hundred bucks and kind of go up from there the one we’re looking at today. I think you can probably piece out for 1,400 to $1,500 this one has an i7 85 65 u quad-core processor inside some of the newer ones now have a 10th generation intel chip as an option, but the lower end of the x1 carbon line will be using the prior generation chips. I was surprised that it only has ddr3 RAM onboard which will impact its performance for a lot of higher-end tasks this one comes configured with 16 gigabytes.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

Performance inside that’s pretty darn impressive we’re talking for level, of portability here with a lot more graphics performance inside so the casing is unchanged from last year. Performance are not unexpected which is to say we have the top-of-the-line with the art TX 2080 max-q graphics card inside and the performance numbers are very good they are not quite as good as the razorblade 15 with our TX 2080 max-q that we reviewed razor knows how to push a laptop to let’s put it that way but it’s fairly close.

CONCLUSION

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7:

I would not recommend this for people that are doing a lot of heavy processor-intensive work it’s going to be fine as an executive-level laptop for doing, all the things we just talked about but if you are doing things like video editing or any kind of high-end production work this is definitely not going to be the laptop for you.

MSI GS65 Stealth RTX:

The ultimate premium 15.6-inch portable laptop and it still has a more normal keyboard design than the asou rogue Zephyrus I honestly I’d like what they’ve done with the build quality. The fact that it’s less flexible yet it’s still very light and relatively thin when you’re pushing it really hard playing triple-a titles because well those laws of physics can’t be defied there’s only so much cooling you can fit into packages this in but there is plenty of performance here it’s also great for pro apps, of course, MSI will probably have a, PS 65 pristine refresh as well which is pretty much the same laptop but with the silvery casing for the creative apps crowd.