S$1699
First Take
Despite being over a year old, the Apple MacBook Air is still a huge bull's eye in the ultraslim thin-and-light category. The recently launched Dell Adamo just issued a direct challenge but alas, it comes at a premium price during an economic recession. Fortunately for the budget-conscious, MSI take on this niche market is a significantly more affordable number with a feature set that beats both the Adamo and MacBook Air hands down. Revealed at CeBIT 2009, the new X-Slim series targets the fashion crowd with its sleek design.
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Read first take of the MSI X-Slim X340 »
Average User Rating
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10
out of 10First Take
Despite being over a year old, the Apple MacBook Air is still a huge bull's eye in the ultraslim thin-and-light category. The recently launched Dell Adamo just issued a direct challenge but alas, it comes at a premium price during an economic recession. Fortunately for the budget-conscious, MSI take on this niche market is a significantly more affordable number with a feature set that beats both the Adamo and MacBook Air hands down. Revealed at CeBIT 2009, the new X-Slim series targets the fashion crowd with its sleek design.
Upside:
At a mere 19.8mm thin with a 1.3kg heft, MSI claims the X-Slim X340 is the lightest thin-and-light laptop and, going by pure numbers, it's right. However, we noticed that the MSI X-Slim comes with a puny four-cell battery that is unlikely to hit the same uptimes as its competitors. But at only S$1,699 (US$1,231.16) some might find this compromise acceptable for an exceptionally slim and light machine.
The 13.4-inch display has LED backlights, which give a brighter display than conventional screens while using less power. We like the fact that the LCD is a high-resolution 1,366 x 768 pixels in 16:9 aspect ratio, making it a great choice for viewing widescreen movies. An HDMI port is also available for hooking up with larger LCD TVs.
Conversely, the Adamo and MacBook Air come with a DisplayPort and mini DisplayPort, respectively.
The X-Slim X340 comes with an ECO Engine power management system that allows instant switching between five power profiles (office, gaming, movies, presentation, and turbo battery) depending on whether performance or battery life is paramount. This MSI laptop is equipped with a SIM card slot for 3G/HSDPA or WiMAX radios, though the availability of these options differ between regions.
Downside:
The X-Slim comes with an ultra low-voltage Core 2 Solo 1.2GHz processor with the memory capped at 2GB, which means serious multitasking and computing-intensive work may not be suitable for this machine. Considering that most thin-and-lights use Core 2 Duo chips, we suspect the reason for using a single-core processor may be related to the next gripe we have on this machine--battery life.
With only four cells, we do not expect this laptop to even come close to the uptimes for the MacBook Air or Dell Adamo. Though there is an eight-cell option, this is likely to add significantly to the cost, weight and dimensions of this laptop. Lastly, the memory card reader takes only SD and MMC cards, which may be an issue for users of Memory Stick and xD-Picture Card formats.
Outlook: While significantly cheaper than other ultrathin laptops at
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Excellent All-in-one device!
Apr 10, 2009Rating: 10 out of 10 (Perfect)
Pros: Excellent All-in-one device!
Cons: Excellent All-in-one device!
Opinion:
Excellent All-in-one device!
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