The MSI GL62 is a 15.6-inch low-cost gaming laptop. From looks alone you could assume it costs over £1000, but at its entry-level spec is less than £600.
It’s a bit of a patchwork of hits and misses, though, and we’d advise getting a slightly higher-end spec than we’re reviewing if you can afford it as it will really pay dividends for discerning gamers. This one can only handle recent demanding games at bottom-rung settings and its lack of SSD storage means our MSI GL62 lacks the zippiness of some otherwise less powerful laptops at the price. More on that later.

It’s not hard to spot a gaming laptop, but the MSI GL62 has little bits of gaming flair here and there rather than opting for an outrageous colour scheme or flared vents and mad logos. The keyboard font, the badge insignia on the lid, the odd bits of red trim and some of the GL62’s angles are all obvious ‘tells’ to an experienced eye.
This means the MSI GL62 isn't a laptop that’ll make you feel self-conscious in public like an Asus G752 could. It successfully treads the fine along a few boundaries with confidence.

This laptop has a metal-covered lid but the rest of the laptop is plastic, as used in the vast majority of gaming machines. It doesn’t try to push its luck with thickness or weight either.

At 2.3kg and 29mm thick, the MSI GL62 isn’t light or small enough to be considered a portable laptop. You’ll want to keep it at home most of the time.



It’s not a plain old TN screen either: MSI using something a little different. The GL62 has TN-based screen, but its tweaked architecture makes it look much better than other TN displays. MSI calls it a “world first”.
Its colour is fantastically vivid for a laptop of this price. It can display deeper, richer tones than many a £1000 laptop.
Setting our colorimeter loose on the  MSI GL62, it hits 99.7 percent of sRGB, the usual standard for laptops, as well as 77.8 of Adobe RGB by volume and 85.7 percent of the cinema-grade DCI P3 standard. We’ll admit to being genuinely surprised to see such an affordable laptop provide such rich colour. An IPS laptop at this price might hit 70 per cent of sRGB and be considered more than fine.
It’s the colour that helps give the MSI GL62 screen a bold look, because its contrast alone can’t. Thanks to raised blacks that become really quite obvious even in good lighting when you crank up the backlight, the screen only has contrast of 300:1.
 Viewing angles are not close to those of an IPS screen either, despite MSI's claims. When viewed from a severe vertical angle, there’s severe contrast shift, a typical feature of a TN screen. The effect is nowhere near as bad as a regular TN screen, though. There’s clever ‘wide angle’ tech going on here that’s particularly effective at improving horizontal angled viewing.

If you're prone to noticing poor black level and are going to be playing in dimmed lighting, maybe this isn’t the best laptop for you. However, its colours look a lot more vivid than most laptops at the price.
The screen has a matt finish, a type that tends not to make colours pop as much as glossy ones. As we've said, this is a decent screen for colours. although its 253cd/m2 brightness is nothing special. This isn’t a laptop you’re likely to want to use outdoors much, though. If you’re after a portable workhorse

Most people can’t afford to spend £1000 on a laptop. Workhorse budget laptops that make up that bulk of what you’ll find on high street shelves rarely get much attention, though. Today we’re here to ask: what does £280 get you in 2016? Here's our Asus X553SA review. See also: Best budget laptops 2016.
The Asus X553SA is a cheap laptop, with a good great of entry-level features across the board in a ‘proper’ laptop frame. Asus would readily admit there are compromises at this point, but should they put you off a buy?
Having spend a good while the laptop, there’s only one major issue here: performance. Intel has made amazing progress with its Core M series processors over the last 18 months, but the Celeron chipset used here is slow. Matched with a slow hard drive, you’ll need patience to get on with the Asus X553SA.
Also see: Best laptops 2016 UK

ASUS X553SA REVIEW: PRICE
At £279, the Asus X553SA is not too far off as little as you can spend on a new, full-size 15.6-inch laptop that has a large hard drive rather than a tiny Chromebook-style wedge of solid state memory.
It’s also available cut-price at £249 at the time of writing, clearly with its eye on the bargain hunter