6 cell lithium batter vs. 9 cell

Sorry I missed this thread yesterday. A 9-cell battery would last longer (assuming, of course, we are doing an apples-apples comparison to a 6-cell battery that uses the same cells). But I don't see a 9-cell battery for this laptop. Did you find one? Main thing is to make sure it's for the GS60. Also, your safest bet is to get it through MSI or someone that MSI approves. You might find cheap batteries on Amazon and eBay that probably aren't OEM and won't last long (I buy a $20 battery for my 6-year-old beater laptop about once a year now, for a good hour of normal usage battery life). You may just need to carry a spare 6-cell battery.

Gaming laptops do generally have piss-poor battery life, because they make literally no sacrifices in hardware performance. But the one thing to understand is that with few exceptions, gaming laptops are not meant to be cordless gaming machines. You simply don't game on battery unless you're OK with about 30-45 minutes of battery life. They are portable workstations/gaming machines only in the sense that you can conveniently port them from one electrical outlet to another.

So, the best way to mitigate short battery life during regular browsing/work use is to make your unplugged power settings in Windows as aggressive as possible. Set them to a level of performance you'd get out of a typical ultrabook with a U-series intel CPU. Passive cooling, minimum processor state of 5% and maximum of 50% or less. There may also be an option in Nvidia control panel to switch to integrated graphics when on battery.