MSI X-Slim X340
Product: MSI X-Slim X340
Price: $799, €728, £759
Way back in January MSI brought its ultra slim portable computer to Las Vegas and aired this X340 Airbook clone at CES, since then it's breezed through all of the trade shows known to man.
It's hit the likes of CeBIT and Computex and all without so much as a hint at the arrival date. Well now it's here. But were all those months of hanging around for its release worth the wait? Is there really now a contender to award for the slimmest computer in the world with some substance or is the bantamweight world title still firmly with Apple?
MSI X-Slim X340
On first impressions the MSI X340 looks stylish, there's no two ways about it. Remember the SR-71 Blackbird aircraft? The sleek black looks, with the matt black keyboard finish is quite stunning. But are looks really everything to go by?
The X340 contains an Intel Mobile GS45 chipset, powered by a Core 2 Solo U3500 1.4GHz processor which seems to do the trick for most of the arduous tasks we put the notebook through. MSI says it chose this platform for the prolonged battery life, which wasn't the exactly case from our findings.
There are a couple of power settings - or Eco Modes as MSI call them - for managing the notebook's battery life. On the normal operational settings, without invoking those modes, the longest the X340 could last was just 1 hour and 50 minutes. On the best Eco Mode, for the greatest possible battery life we only managed to squeeze out around 2 hours and 45 minutes before the machine unceremoniously expired through lack of power.
Not by any stretch of the imagination is the X340 a laptop for use out and about. With its inability to stray too far from a power supply it's more like a desktop replacement in our opinion.
Another minor niggle we found was the keyboard's flimsiness. It's very flexible, especially towards the centre, to the degree that, on more than one occasion, we thought it had broken away from its housing. Colleagues who tried it felt the same way.
The chipset at the heart of the X340 offers up the possibility of Bluray playback due to its built-in codec support, but it's down to individual device manufactures to utilise this feature to the best of its abilities. Thankfully MSI has done so with the X340,and even included an HDMI port to export playback to an HD screen.
Most netbooks we've encountered float around a weight of 1.3kg or thereabouts. It is here we're having a hard time pigeonholing the X340: it is that exact weight, which means those who are used to the weight of a netbook and could be now looking for a sizable screen in a laptop will still be comfortable with it. Its overall dimensions are 330mm wide, 224mm in length and only 19.8 mm deep, while the display is just 6mm thin. All of which is fairly close to the Apple Airbook size, with only a half a millimetre here or two millimetres there either way. There's no two ways about who MSI think they're going after with the X340.
MSI X-Slim X340
MSI has opted not to go down the SSD route with this notebook, but has chosen to fit a 320GB HDD instead.
The 13.4in TFT display is pretty decent for any notebook or laptop we've seen of late. What lets down the X340 is the plain auld graphics onboard: a distinctly mediocre Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD. The Apple Airbook of course has the Nvidia GeForce 9400M which outshines the offering inside the X340.
There are some nice touches in the X340, from the likes of a WiMAX function key to support for SSD, MMC and SDHC memory cards.
In Short
We fully understand who MSI are targeting with the X340: the design, size and the overall look and feel spells Apple competitor. We feel it's let down on the graphics front, but the inclusion of an HDMI port, which the Airbook lacks, is a small bonus.
Despite some minor issues it does appear to be a decent halfway between netbook and a notebook. Perhaps the X340 should be situated in the MSI Wind range, the domain of their netbooks and nettops.
The Good
It's not an Apple product, very thin, extremely light, Bluray support and an HDMI port, It's not an Apple product
The Bad
Flimsy keyboard, distinctly lacking decent graphics adaptor
The Ugly
Very low battery life
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Personally since I'm an AMD man I would say that having the AMD Neo with a 34XX 256MB vidcard on ATI 780 chipset would make this thing kickass on the performance bar. It wouldn't fix the battery though.
On the intel side of things I would have put this on the ION chipset with a 9400M gfx again slightly less powered cpu but much better graphics. With this combo you could probably get an extra hours out of it from battery life.
I can't imagine any graphics card making much of a difference for 2-D acceleration or even today's lightly-3-D windowing environments. Which makes me wonder how this laptop was tested and found lacking in the graphics department. Did you play graphics-intensive 3-D video games?
That price is not the equivalent in dollars at all. Rip-off Britain again?
The MacBook Air comes with a DisplayPort output, which as far as I can tell, just out the gate, is superior to any computer sporting the HDMI spec. Please get your facts straight Sir Author.
The Air is a better machine period, but it does go ahead to justify this fact by its pricing over the X340, which is a cheaper alternative where the build, power and final price portray this. Both PCs then are good for getting their purposes at their respective cost points. But again, DisplayPort is a much bigger deal than the HDMI ones, even though HDMI has market penetration thus far, as well as an ever-moving, ever-improving spec. At the current HDMI 1.3, the spec is pretty much close to DisplayPort territory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdmi#Relationship_with_DisplayPort
Ok Sir collinvaughn,
Nobody says the display port is superior technologically speaking, it lacks support for tvs and such, and if there isn't a Display port to HDMI adaptor, for me, right now it's like buying a beta player.
Anyway the Air's price is over the macbook pro and is a half of that machine.
We've got some of those in at my shop.
I feel that MSI cut too many corners for a lightweight chassis material... or the engineers weren't thinking at all.
It is absolutely the most flimsy piece of hardware next to a "roll-up" keyboard.
I'm positive I will see them all making a return trip with cracked LCD at the very least.