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MSI’s WS60 6QI is a beast of a workstation in a dainty frame

Just because you have a laptop for work doesn’t mean it has to be slow and boring. Take MSI’s newly announced WS60 workstation notebook, which packs up to a 4K resolution display, high-end Intel CPUs and monstrous amounts of RAM. Better yet, it’s quite light for a high-powered laptop and if work is buying it for you, you don’t even have to worry about the cost.

Admittedly while we don’t know the pricing of this system just yet, it is likely to be at least $2,000, so expect to have a couple of budget meetings before you can secure one. But if you can, you’ll likely be quite pleased with it.

The system measures just 0.8 inches at its thickest point and weighs 4.3 pounds. Although not quite as light as some of the fancier consumer products that are available today, this one does pack a lot more hardware than your average MacBook. Along with 32GB of EEC DDR4 RAM, it can have an Intel Core i7-6700HQ or Xeon E3-15005M CPU, with a powerful Nvidia Quadro M1000M graphics chip with 2GB of its own GDDR5.

All of this can power a standard 1080P HD display, or a 4K panel if you prefer, all within the confines of a 15.6-inch screen. Cooling is handled by MSI’s properitary “Cooler Boost 3” dual cooling system, as per Hexus.

Storage-wise, the WS60 has space for 2.5 inch drives and M.2 SSDs up to a terabyte. If opting for the latter PCI-Express option, MSI suggests that it can deliver performance as much as five times that of traditional SSDs.

It has output ports for HDMI, mini-DisplayPort, and Gigabit Ethernet. There’s also three USB 3.0 connectors, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a single USB Type-C port and an SDXC card reader. It also supports Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi for wireless connectivity.

It also has some of the more typical accessory features, like the Steelseries backlit keyboard, Dynaudio speaker system and S/PDIF and headphone out jacks for more serious audio listeners.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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