The notebook is a sort of high-end ultrabook, so to speak

Jun 14, 2013 13:16 GMT  ·  By

Micro-Star International has officially introduced something that it calls “the perfect combination of ultrabook portability and deadly gaming capability.” Essentially, it is a lightweight gaming notebook.

Called GE40, the product isn't actually as thin as an ultrabook. Not even close actually. Still, it is significantly slimmer than high-end laptops of this sort usually are, as the photo shows.

The full aluminum body with psychedelic dragon eye backlit design hides an Intel Haswell Core i7 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M graphics, and one or two storage drives, all in a package no more than 1 inch thick.

Customers will get to select between a hard disk drive unit of 750 GB, and a combination of a 128 GB mSATA SSD and a 750 GB HDD.

The Matrix display technology is available as well, allowing the laptop to stream to three displays at once (including the notebook screen itself).

Speaking of the GE40's screen, it measures 14 inches, surprisingly, not 17.3 or 15.6 inches, or some other size. MSI was serious about the portability.

Sadly, the resolution isn't the highest: 1600 x 900 pixels, rather than 1920 x 1080.

That said, the GE40 gaming notebook also boasts 8 GB of DDR3 RAM (random access memory), Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 connector, HDMI 1.4a, a headset amplifier, a multi-touch touchpad, a chicklet keyboard, and Sound Blaster Cinema and Audio Boost technologies on top of everything else.

"The GE40 was designed for mobile gamers seeking the best in gaming performance but not wanting to carry around larger laptops," said Andy Tung, vice president of sales for MSI US.

"Even though the GE40 is exceptionally light and nimble, it is still packed with high-performance components worthy of a desktop replacement unit."

Sales should already be underway, for $1,399 / €1,051 – 1,399 (dual-drive option) or $1,299 / €976 – 1,299.