MSI Katana GF66 (2022) Review

[ntab Configuration]
Compact, powerful and cheap?! This entry-level gaming laptop from MSI tries to tick all the boxes, but can it do it? The GF66 Katana is the most affordable gaming laptop from MSI, featuring the latest 12th gen processor from Intel and a 3000 series RTX graphics card from Nvidia. While it is bigger brothers from the GP series offer a more premium feeling, RGB lighting and a heftier price tag, MSI’s GF series still manages to rock powerful components while maintaining a competitive price. However, the lower price does imply cutting some corners in the chassis quality department.

[ntab General overview]

There is not much that can be said about Katana’s exterior. The all-black plastic chassis looks bland for a gaming laptop, with only a muted MSI logo on the display lid. This simple look means it can be easily mistaken for an office laptop while closed. However, when it is opened,the red-painted keys and the aggressively-cut corners give it a very outdated “gamey” look. The cheap plastic feel of the chassis doesn’t help either, bending and flexing even on light presses, revealing MSI’s compromise in the build quality department to keep the price competitive. The laptop can be opened with only one hand, and the display lid can be extended to 180 degrees.

The typing experience on the red backlit keyboard was acceptable. The keys have a decent amount of travel, but sometimes they fail to register, suggesting a lack of “n-key rollover”. Also, the Numpad implementation is one of the worst we’ve seen so far, with the keys being cramped together and rearranged to the point that it does more harm than good. MSI should have left it out and made more room for the main keyboard instead.

The touchpad has a decent size but feels mushy and is not very accurate in corners, but it isn’t a big deal since most gamers will buy a mouse anyway.

It is worth mentioning that during the testing period, the laptop would restart itself randomly, or the screen would go black for a couple of seconds. At first, we thought there was a Windows update setting messing with us, but after further investigation, it seems this is a common problem among MSI laptops from this series.

The peripheral port selection is ok for a laptop in this price range, but their placement is inconvenient. Most of the ports (including the HDMI and LAN ports which are almost always in use when the laptop is used as a desktop replacement) are placed on the right side of the chassis, taking precious space from the mouse area and often getting in the way of the mouse during gaming, causing bad moments during competitive games. Overall, the laptop has the following:

On the right side:

And on the left side it has:

[ntab Display]

The AUOAF90/B156HAN08.4 panel in the MSI Katana is “adequate” for a laptop in this price range. It comes with all the pros of an IPS display, like excellent viewing angles, and it has a high refresh rate of 144 Hz, which makes it great for competitive games, but sadly, all the good parts end here. The display is very dim, with a peak brightness of 250 measured nits and has washed-out colours even after calibration. With a colour coverage of 58.5% sRGB, 40.6% AdobeRGB and 41.7% DCI P3, the laptop is suitable for office work and general gaming but not for photo/video editing.

Here is a link to the calibrated display profile of the reviewed unit. Because each display is unique, this profile will not perfectly match other displays of the same model. Still, using this profile should give better overall colours.

sRGB profile and calibration

[ntab Disassembly]

[ntab Benchmarks]

Night Raid

SCORE	34616
Graphics score	55919
Physics score	10959

Fire Strike

SCORE	11992
Graphics score	13203
Physics score	24505
Combined score	4887

Sky Diver

SCORE	36857
Graphics score	43223
Physics score	21765
Combined score	34626

Time Spy

SCORE	5214
Graphics score	4825
Physics score	9610

Orange Room

SCORE	7119
Average frame rate	155.18 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Cyan room

SCORE	4985
Average frame rate	108.66 fps
Target frame rate	88.90 fps

Blue Room

SCORE	1447
Average frame rate	31.55 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Nvidia DLSS Test

DLSS Off	– fps
DLSS On	– fps

Cinebench R20

Single Core	639 pts
Multi Core	4759

Blender GPU

Monster	683.178926 s/m
Junkshop	247.102910 s/m
Classroom	349.994079 s/m

Geekbench 4

Single-core score	Multi-core score
7335	38090

Geekbench 5

Single-core score	Multi-core score
1683	9926

PCMark 10 Web Score 9827 Apps Score 10649 Chat Score 8617 Photo Score 9924 Video Score 5506 Writing Score 6912 Spreadsheet Score 11273 Essentials 9660 Productivity 8826 Digital Content Creation 8237 SCORE 6371

Unigine Superposition benchmark
720p Low	24859
1080p Medium	9100
1080p High	6641
1080p Extreme	2848
4K Optimized	3934
8K Optimized	1368

Crystal Disk Mark

[ntab Gaming benchmarks]

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[ntab Temperatures]

The cooling solution of the MSI Katana consists of four heat pipes (two for the CPU and two for the GPU), two heatsinks (both located at the back of the laptop) and two medium-sized fans. The laptop pulls its fresh air from underneath and pushes it out through each of the three exhaust vents (two at the back and one on the left side of the laptop). Due to this design, the machine will significantly benefit from a cooling pad.

All the tests were performed at an ambient temperature of 26° C (78.8° F).

During the standard 30-minute AIDA64 stress test (CPU, FPU, cache), the processor reached an average temperature of 88 °C (190.4 °F), with a maximum of 97 °C (206.6 °F). At these temperatures, the processor maintained an average frequency of 3.73 GHz on its performance cores and 2.79 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 1.59 GHz on its performance cores and 1.69 GHz on its efficient cores. Overall, these results seem pretty good, considering that, for this processor, the minimum guaranteed frequency by Intel is 3.10 GHz for performance cores.

In the combined AIDA64 + Unigine Superposition stress test (which had both the processor and the dedicated graphics card under heavy load for 30 minutes), the processor reached a maximum temperature of 97 °C (206.6°F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 86 °C (186.8 °F). During this test, the processor kept an average clock speed of 3.17 GHz on its performance cores and 2.44 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 0.49 GHz on its performance cores and 0.39 GHz on its efficient cores. The dedicated graphics card maintained an average clock speed of 1569 MHz with a maximum boost of 1987 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered between 73.1 °C (163.5 °F) and 76.2 °C (169.1 °F). This test has excellent GPU performance and temperatures, but the CPU cooling is only borderline ok.

Finally, the laptop was tested with the AIDA64 stability test, another combined stress test for the video card and processor. The results were very similar to the previous stress tests. The processor reached a maximum temperature of 96 °C (204.8 °F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 79 °C (174.2 °F). Despite its throttling, the processor kept an average clock speed of 2.32 GHz on its performance cores and 1.83 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 0.49 GHz on average performance cores and 0.39 GHz on its efficient cores. The dedicated graphics card maintained an average clock speed of 1856 MHz with a maximum of 1950 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered around 74 °C (165.2 °F).

[ntab Noise]
Users can choose between four pre-defined fan profiles: Extreme Performance, Balanced, Silent and Super Battery. Each fan profile can be tweaked further by pressing the cog icon and customising the fan curve.

MSI Katana GF66 12UC fan profiles

The LatencyMon test evaluates if a laptop is suitable for video/audio editing and recording. The results are mixed. When the WLAN / wireless connection is used, the laptop experiences high latency, which may result in clicks or pops when recording. This problem disappears if the laptop is used on the LAN / wired network. Otherwise, LatencyMon did not signal any other issues with this machine. The device should work well for video/audio editing and recording as long as the laptop is used with a wired connection.

LatencyMon test – WIFI	LatencyMon test – LAN

[ntab Battery life]

Since most laptops are used on battery for mundane office activities and web browsing, the laptop was tested using a simulated continuous web browsing session over WiFi. The browsing session involved checking emails/news, social media and accessing multimedia websites, similar to the behaviour of an average user. The level of brightness was set according to visibility and usability. At 50% brightness, the laptop provided an enjoyable viewing experience. The sound volume was also set to 50%.

With its 53 WHr battery, the laptop lasted 2 hours and 38 minutes. The machine was tested using Firefox and Edge and yielded similar battery life results regardless of the browser. The dedicated GPU usage was at 0% for most of the test, indicating that the laptop switched to the integrated GPU. There is no clear explanation for this meagre battery life, but hopefully, MSI will improve it with future BIOS updates.

Charging the laptop from 5% to 95% took almost 2 hours.

[ntab Conclusion]

Pros:

• decent 1080p gaming performance
• high refresh rate display
• backlit keyboard

Cons:

• low colour coverage display
• keyboard deck flex
• random restarts
• screen goes black at random times
• bad placement of ports

In conclusion, is the MSI Katana GF66 worth it? Well, maybe with some hefty discounts. The machine has decent gaming performance, and for the right price, it would be great for a gamer on a tight budget. But the screen and the low-quality chassis are very off-putting, so it is better to save a few more bucks and get a Nitro 5 or a Legion 5 instead.

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