There are a few key things that keep PC gamers tethered to their desks, one of them being the awesomeness of having the “click clack” of a quality mechanical keyboard punctuate their gameplay. Impressive as they may be, laptops haven’t been able to replicate that experience… yet. MSI to the rescue!
Today the hardware developer unveiled its latest in a long, long line of spiffy gaming laptops: the GT80 Titan. This one stands out from the pack because, as a representative for the company proudly stated in an email to Kotaku, it’s “the world’s first gaming laptop with a mechanical keyboard.” It’s an 18-inch machine with a clicky keyboard made by prolific peripheral producer SteelSeries built in.
The company’s press release didn’t give a full rundown of the GT80’s hardware specifications, but it noted a few details that might stand out to the hardware buffs out there. The keyboard “uses standard Cherry switches and a standard keycap with 27mm of thickness, nearly 5 times of traditional laptop keyboards.” They also claim that it’s “the world’s slimmest and lightest 18-inch gaming laptop, measuring 17% thinner and 22% lighter than its closest competitor.” MSI Pan America president Andy Tung therefore promises that the new device “blends the performance of a high-end gaming desktop with the mobility of a laptop.”
We’ll see if that’s actually the case once we get our hands on the thing. But regardless of the specifics of this particular piece of hardware, I have to admit that I’m thrilled by the simple fact that someone’s trying to make something like this in the first place. I recently finished rebuilding my high school era gaming PC from the ground up and got my first mechanical keyboard to go along with the new rig, and… what’s that phrase: “I once was lost, but now I’m found?”
Playing games — even something like The Sims 4 — just feels better when your every movement is registered with a resounding “clack”. Hell, it just makes writing more enjoyable. I’d go as far as saying that this kind of haptic feedback is more important than having the best CPU or graphics card that money can buy. That, in turn, makes the trade-off of choosing between a desktop rig and laptop arbitrarily frustrating if you can only get your ideal mouse-and-keyboard on one of those systems. So while I don’t imagine this first attempt by MSI will be perfect, necessarily, I find the prospect of gaming laptops that take some of the best ideas from desktop peripherals pretty darn exciting. Hopefully, at the very least, the GT80 will be good enough that it inspires other hardware developers to start tinkering with the idea of pairing mechanical keyboards with laptops as well.
I’ve reached out to MSI asking for more info about its new laptop, and will update this story once I hear back.
Comments
11 responses to “Someone’s Finally Making A Gaming Laptop With A Mechanical Keyboard”
Never actually considered that people preferring the clickity clack of a keyboard to be a ‘thing’ but then again I am not sure I understand the whole ‘gaming mouse’ think either… Why does my mouse need its own RAM again? >_>
Once you use a 17 button mouse you never go back.
This. No idea how I ever played MMOs for so many years without my Naga.
17 button?? Mother of god….
It’s not so much the sound, more than it is the feel. Mechanical KB’s feel really nice to play on and type with.
It’s all about feedback you get, so you really get a good feel of when they key has been registered. Membrane keyboards are fine, but some can get pretty spongy. You *know* when you have pressed a key on a mech kb.
The sound is actually SUPER annoying for anyone else within earshot, you can buy ‘silent’ models which provide the same feel, but don’t make the noise.
And your mouse needs it’s own RAM so that you have some way to demonstrate your e-peen to your friends, who are clearly noobs with their ram-less mice 😉
For the record I do use a R.A.T. 9 mouse, mostly because I’ve got large hands and I also dislike the shape of most mice for gaming, and this mouse can be moved and shaped to your hand.
The crazy mice with super low latency and insane DPI I do not really like. Even on my mouse, I have it on the second lowest DPI setting. Anything higher and it’s way too sensitive.
I gotta say I love the noise, when I bought myself a Mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX blues (the loud clicky ones) I spent a while pressing individual keys just for the sound and the pleasant tactile feeling. Even though it took me a while to get to the same (admittedly still fairly slow) typing speed as the membrane KBs I had been using, typing almost felt like some kind of game.
They are a lot of fun, but I can definitely imagine hearing someones typing and wanting to kill them after an hour or two, they definitely wouldn’t be ideal for any office situation.
Any more photos of the product? the product looks strange, where is mouse pad?
I think, considering the two physical buttons below it, the touch screen number pad is also supposed to double as the mouse pad.
Yeah looks like it.
I like that design if it’s meant to be a gaming laptop. One thing I hate about playing something like Starcraft on a laptop is the fact my left wrist sits on top of the part in front of the keyboard that only exists for the mousepad and nothing else. They did away with that whole area by putting the pad off to the right side (where it belongs).
I like it.
I agree.
Considering the guts this thing looks to be packing, as well as the presumed size of it, (a full size mechanical keyboard only takes up less than half the size of the actual bottom part of the laptop) I’m assuming this is predominately going to be marketed as a desktop replacement laptop and as such people will likely be using it in tandem with a normal mouse. However if required, the ability to have the mousepad situated to the right of the keys is a lot better in my opinion than having it directly below them or actually amongst them, but that of course is just my opinion.
The only thing I’m concerned with at the moment is the size of the thing, and it’s price. I do not think the Australia Tax is going to be kind to this laptop.
Yah, it’s not going to be cheap when it launches here (IF it launches here).
CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK
Pretty sure the switch type in this is Cherry MX Browns, which are not the ‘clicky’ variety. They do have a tactile bump, however.