page-4 | MSI X340. Decent performance in a beautiful design | Laptops

MSI X340. Decent performance in a beautiful design - Physical aspects

Saturday, 01 August 2009 08:34 Allan Hansen

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Article Index
MSI X340. Decent performance in a beautiful design
Specifications
Package contents
Physical aspects
Physical aspects continued
Benchmark
Benchmark continued
Conclusion
All Pages

Page 4 of 8

Physical aspects

First impression

I was pleasantly surprised to note that this laptop can easily live up to the expectations the case and its contents created. When I first got my hands on the X340 there was no doubt in my mind; this is a great piece of craftsmanship, both in terms of design and quality. Fortunately these two often go hand in hand. This model has a great feel to it, a smooth and slightly dull one that goes really well with the almost unibody design. It’s made of only a few different parts put together, and thus seems more like a single unit. The chassis itself is cast in almost one piece which gives it a great look. However it is quite glossy, so you’re gonna see a lot of fingerprints especially on the inside…that’s just the price of the sleek look.

The MSI logo is at the rear and shines with the light from the display in the best Apple-esque manner. It still looks fantastic though. You’ll also find the logo below the display in a silvery material – quite discreet so as not to be annoying. Sadly MSI was unable to resist the temptation to plaster the insides with stickers, but there are only a few of those.

One of the first things I noticed was that it doesn’t have any extra buttons at the top, next to the power button; they’re all incorporated in the keyboard as another function for different buttons.
The diodes shine with a white light that contrasts beautifully with the black theme that otherwise prevails on this computer.

When you expose this laptop to strong sunlight, you’ll notice a type of crystals embedded in the material of the chassis, a funny little detail. The netbook itself is cast in some sort of hardened plastic. If you compare it with the MacBook Air (which is really the laptop the X340 is out to beat), Apple has chosen to employ hardened aluminium which makes the chassis quite hard, a testament to quality. MSI have used a type of hardened plastic instead, which probably enabled them to shed a bit of weight. However this also means you can feel the chassis yielding if you press really hard on it, which means you don’t get quite the same feeling of quality and that’s really a shame.

Plastic also has the advantage of being easier to shape and form, and I’m not convinced they would have been able to achieve the same curves with aluminium, so perhaps they deliberately opted for this solution. Still, they would have gotten a whole lot of free “quality feel” by using a different material. On the other hand, most other notebooks have a plastic chassis so it doesn’t really stand out so much.

The ports have metal frames which give them a sense of quality and stability. It’s a very clever solution instead of just using plastic, and it also adds to the overall impression. Even the webcam has been given a small silver frame.

The X340 generally has a lot of rounded edges and indentations here and there, giving it a very streamlined and modern design which is pleasant to look at. If you want to improve on this further you can opt for the white model, which may also sport some better hardware (depending on country).