Design
The GT725 is most definitely a desktop replacement with an eye on budget-focused gamers. If you're looking to turf the old chained-to-the-wall box, the GT725 checks all the required boxes, with its 17-inch, 1680x1050 glossy screen, full-sized keyboard and quad-core processor.
The lid and wrist rest are in brushed black aluminium, and this time MSI has managed to keep consistently sized keys across the whole keyboard — although the keyboard does disconcertingly flex a little, not enough to cause any problems with typing speed or response, but enough to be noticeable. Annoyingly the Fn key has been placed on the far left and CTRL to its right, meaning that you'll consistently hit the Fn key instead of CTRL accidentally whenever using keyboard shortcuts.
The interior of the laptop is a mix of grey, silver and black, although MSI has only partway pulled it off, the result being a cheap looking laptop. The inset and difficult to use mouse buttons don't help the impression any either, although at least MSI has not used the Sentelic touchpad in this model. MSI is still not including any drivers for the touchpad or putting them online though, requiring the user to go hunting and figure out what's being used. Those interested will find the Synaptics touchpad drivers work just fine.
Below this is a set of status lights for wireless, battery, caps lock, scroll lock and num lock, while just under the screen is a touch panel for media controls and control of the webcam, wireless, Bluetooth and a user customisable button. In the middle of this is a button for MSI's Eco utility which sets power profiles, and a turbo button which increases the FSB from 266MHz to 276MHz, giving you a little overclock. This overclocking feature is unique to MSI, and something we certainly approve of.
Features
The right-hand side of the laptop features the hot air vent, which means right-handed mousers will get a toasty hand. Considering this is positioned as a gaming laptop, most users will be using an external mouse, and this is quite the oversight by MSI.
Also on this side is 5.1 sound out, an eSATA/USB combo port, SD and Express Card 54 slots, USB and FireWire 400 ports. The left features another two USB ports, gigabit Ethernet, modem and Blu-ray drive. Blu-ray is a luxury we'd question from a gamer's point of view and fortunately a version without Blu-ray is available, retailing for AU$2799.
The rear has another vent, HDMI and VGA outputs, and the power jack, which is nestled up to the uncomfortably jutting out battery. It's so close to the battery it blocks the rotation of the power adapter on one side, limiting its flexibility.
The software side of things hasn't improved much since the last MSI desktop replacement we saw. There's still the mysterious icon that says "Click Me" on the desktop that disappears when you do so; the aforementioned mouse drivers are not installed, although at least the Ulead Burn Now 4.5 install works; and the laptop comes pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium, but it's the 32-bit version, meaning only 3.07GB of the installed 4GB RAM can be used. WinRAR, an Office 2007 trial and Norton Internet Security trial are included as well.
Performance
Internally, the MSI contains quite the powerhouse — a Core 2 Quad P7350 running at 2.0GHz, with 4GB RAM, an ATI Radeon HD4850 and a 300GB hard drive. This produced some huge results in 3DMark06 and PCMark05, scoring 8496 and 6255 respectively, meaning it should be able to tackle even the latest high-end games.
As expected for a desktop replacement with a grunty graphics card and CPU, battery time was low — registering just one hour, 37 minutes and 15 seconds while playing back an XviD movie with all power-saving features turned off, and screen brightness and volume set to maximum. This indicates a worst-case scenario — obviously during lighter tasks on a power-saving profile the battery will last significantly longer.
Conclusion
MSI's GT725 is a bleedingly fast laptop. There's a number of design and software concerns, however, the price alone allows most of these to be forgiven. If you need a powerful desktop replacement, consider the GT725.
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