MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition review

The MSI Crosshair 15 R6E is an excellent gaming notebook that combines hyper-fast performance, a vibrant display and solid battery life in one attractive package.

The new black and yellow color scheme breathes new life into a dated chassis, and even if you are not a fan of the new Rainbow Six Extraction game, it is much more exciting than black. However, some sacrifices have been made to keep the price down. The keyboard flex is noticeable and you can’t get the RGB lighting effects that more expensive gaming laptops usually offer.

Also, this is by no means the thinnest, lightest, or sleekest-looking gaming laptop, but for the performance it offers, it is one of the best choices at a price under $1,800. MSI’s gaming laptops are known to offer excellent performance and value in a variety of configurations, albeit with a bland and somewhat forgettable design that has remained largely the same in recent years. Whether MSI Stealth, Vector, or Katana, apart from size and thickness, they are all very similar.

Design

The Crosshair 15 is based on Rainbow Six: Extraction, and although the game is far from outstanding, MSI has done a good job of encapsulating its aesthetics. The lid features subtle, sharp indentations that connect to a protruding plate in the center. This plate features a gridded map of New York City with the Rainbow Six: Extraction logo in the center; when the laptop is turned on, the logo emits a faint yellow glow. Lifting the lid reveals a deck chock-full of interesting objects to look at.

The deck has a yellow-black gradient starting at the top and ending in the middle, where it turns mostly black. This is not far from something we could reproduce in Photoshop and is the least intriguing aspect of the laptop’s design. At the bottom right is a jagged yellow quadrilateral with gray squares at the bottom and a black Rainbow Six: Extraction logo in the center.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Graduated yellow and green run along the height of the keyboard top, where they fade to black to match the rest of the bottom 1/3 of the top. When closed, this gradient is slightly noticeable on the sides of the laptop, above the ports. This is complemented by the semi-transparent yellow WASD keys. The keys have a 1.7 mm travel that makes them suitable for typing, but most of the middle keys flex when pressure is applied.

It is not enough to ruin the gaming experience, but remember that this is a cheaper laptop. The trackpad is decent and remains unchanged from previous MSI gaming laptops. There are two click zones that can be activated almost to the top of the trackpad. On the top left is the “REACT” motif, on the bottom left is the Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition in smaller font, and on the right is the barcode.

Display

The 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440-pixel QHD display of the MSI Crosshair 15 R6E is a real stunner, with stunning color accuracy, a refresh rate of 165 Hz, and stunning 2K resolution. The brightness is a bit weak and the bezels could be thinner, but this display is still nothing to be ashamed of. “There’s no way this display looks this good,” we thought.

The colors had tremendous depth without appearing excessive, forced or inaccurate. We switched to our MSI MPG Artymis 343CQR display to compare the two shots, and the results were not even close. The Crosshair 15 R6E absolutely outperformed our monitor in terms of vividness.

Audio

The Crosshair 15 commits the biggest sin in laptop audio design: downward-facing speakers. This guarantees worse sound, but it is true that the Crosshair 15 still does a great job delivering clear, loud audio that could easily fill a room. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered listens better with headphones, but the Crosshair 15’s speaker system was quite satisfactory during our testing.

Peter’s constant babble, city street noises, and the euphoric clatter of your web-sling as you jump from building to building were presented with pleasing clarity. Subtle background sounds are sometimes lost, but for the most part, these downward-facing speakers slightly exceeded our expectations.

Graphics and Gaming

The Crosshair 15 is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile GPU with 8 GB of VRAM, which offers more than enough power to play modern games at high frame rates. Even when it was set to Ultra graphics settings, it performed everything we offered it without any problems. In our benchmarks, Crosshair 15 played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 78 fps at 1080p on Ultra.

This is slightly better than the average mainstream gaming laptop (74 fps) and the Zephyrus M16 (72 fps). The Crosshair 15 played the Grand Theft Auto V at very high settings at 1080p and managed to achieve 113 fps, which is far better than the category average of 85 fps. It is also a huge improvement over the Legion 5 Pro (84 fps) and the Strix G15 (98 fps).

Performance

As for the performance of this notebook, you get what you pay for. The RTX 3060 is not a bad GPU at all, and the results show that you can play 1440p games with this notebook. You cannot play recent games at 1440p 165Hz, but the display gives you the freedom to change the settings in favor of resolution or frame rate.

This model comes with a copy of Rainbow Six Extraction, and although it has already been redeemed by those who reviewed the notebook before us, we own a copy of the game and tried that as well.

Battery Life

The battery of the MSI Crosshair 15 R6E is quite efficient; it is nothing mind-blowing, but it is decently above our average. In our battery test, which involves continuous browsing on Wi-Fi at 150 nits, the Crosshair 15 lasted 7 hours and 3 minutes. This is far longer than the average mainstream gaming laptop (4 hours and 30 minutes), and although the laptop does not last that long, it is still quite good. It also did well against competitors, beating the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (6:34) and the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (6:16).

Heat

The MSI Crosshair 15 R6E can get very hot when gaming. However, in our non-gaming tests, which involved playing 1080p video for 15 minutes, the bottom end averaged 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Even at the hottest point, the temperature only rose to 89.5 degrees, which is still below the comfort threshold of 95 degrees.

But in our gaming tests this is a completely different beast, and at that point you don’t have to bring it close to your knees. The underside reaches 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not too high compared to the comfort threshold of 95 degrees, but at the hottest point of the laptop the number skyrockets to 119.5 degrees.

Configuration Options

The MSI Crosshair 15 R6E starts at $1599 for the 15.6″ RTX 3060. Our 15.6″ review unit mounts the RTX 3070, which we highly recommend over the 3060. In addition to the performance increase and “future-proofing,” the RTX 3070 costs only $200 more, but often receives rebates or price reductions that drop it to only $100 more; it also upgrades the SSD to 1TB from the standard 512GB. This upgrade alone justifies the price.

Final Words

The MSI Crosshair 15 R6E is an absolute powerhouse. Its excellent gaming performance and solid battery life are more than enough to make it affordable, but the laptop’s extraordinary color depth is what makes it truly irresistible. We can never look at our monitor the same way again. However, the display itself is not as bright as we would like. Other problems are the small keys, thick bezels, and hot bottom during games.

Amy Hinckley
Amy Hinckley
The Dell Inspiron 15 that her father purchased from QVC sparked the beginning of her interest in technology. At Bollyinside, Amy Hinckley is in charge of content editing and reviewing products. Amy's interests outside of working include going for bike rides, playing video games, and watching football when she's not at her laptop.

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The MSI Crosshair 15 R6E is an absolute powerhouse. Its excellent gaming performance and solid battery life are more than enough to make it affordable, but the notebook's exceptional color depth makes it truly irresistible.MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition review