Get an RTX 3060 gaming laptop for $850 in an early Black Friday deal
That's $250 off the regular price of the MSI GF65.
The MSI GF65 Thin is the first Black Friday gaming laptop deal we've spotted, around a month before the shopping holiday traditionally begins. At Best Buy, you can pick up this RTX 3060 equipped machine for $850, a cool $250 below its usual price of $1100. That's a fantastic value for a laptop that's seen strong reviews since its release earlier this year.
Before we get into the reviews, let's cover the rest of the specs - and they're extremely impressive for a sub-$1000 laptop! As well as the RTX 3060 graphics card, you also get a Core i5 10500H hexa-core CPU, 8GB of RAM (upgradeable to 32GB), a 512GB NVMe SSD (with one extra M.2 slot for future expansion) and a 15.6-inch 1080p 144Hz screen. Windows 10 Home is preinstalled, with a free upgrade to Windows 11 whenever you fancy it. This is a good spec out of the box, but the fact that it's upgradeable with more RAM and more SSD is awesome to see as it means you can make meaningful upgrades down the road, whenever RAM or SSDs are going cheap.
In terms of the reviews of this model, they're all quite positive! While the build quality here isn't anything to write home about, with plastics and a few brushed aluminium pieces, the cooling solution is quite robust with three heat pipes and performance is as expected from a machine of this spec. It is worth noting than the 75W RTX 3060 is towards the lower end of possible RTX 3060 configurations (60W - 115W), but still has the benefits of DLSS to boost frame-rates and RTX to enjoy some next-gen graphics in supported games. Notebookcheck's final verdict cites the 'easy serviceability, high refresh rate and relatively cool core temperatures when gaming' as some of the design's better aspects, something echoed by Pocket Lint in a review of the same model. For a sleek, portable design, MSI have done quite well here to preserve performance, although this does come at the expense of heat (externally) and noise - so it's probably best to play on a desk rather than literally on your lap!
In any case, I'm sure this is one of many Black Friday laptop deals in the near future, so if it doesn't look quite right then do hold fire. Otherwise though, this model won't go cheaper during Black Friday itself, so if the price is right then I'm happy to recommend this deal.
I hope you found this helpful, and stay tuned for more deals to come. Until then, keep your stick on the ice!