Laptop-Review.eu

The lid:



The lid is incredibly thin and I assume this is what gave rise to the name X-Slim. Besides being so thin and streamlined, it’s cast in some fantastic materials. It has smooth rather than sharp edges and the display takes up most of the inside. Just above the display you’ll find the webcam and microphone.



The hinges are pretty discreet on this model, which is generally true for the entire computer except for those details MSI deliberately chose to show off, which is pretty darn cool. The hinges are quite sturdy and do not seem as if they’ll wear out over time; they’re solid and will keep up the display at all angles which is perfect for your plane or train ride.



The front:



The front almost vanishes from this angle; only one thing to say – Slim. There’s nothing but a fan at the front.

The rear:



The front and rear are almost indistinguishable, although here you can see the hinges but not much more. The battery is at the bottom.

The bottom:




The bottom doesn’t hold much of interest, although this is where you insert/remove the battery; it’s only a 4-celled kind so it doesn’t take up much space. However it meshes perfectly with the design, which may explain why they did not include a bigger one.

The right side:



The left side:



Overview:



Two things to note here.
The first is D-Sub, which as far as I have gathered is a VGA port so you can connect to an external monitor. However you can connect it to other things as well, so it’s really much more than just a VGA port.

In addition to that we have my personal favorite that only increases my love for this model: an HDMI port. Thank you, MSI! HDMI is extremely useful if you have, for example, a newer TV with HDMI inputs. That allows you to transfer both video AND audio to your TV from your computer. Useful? Very much so, especially if you have movies or the like on your laptop. The quality is also tiptop with this port. What separates this from, say, a DVI port is that sound is transferred as well, which is one less wire to worry about.

Diodes:





The diodes are found at the front of the computer, and on the power button. They shine with a white light as mentioned earlier, which gives a really cool effect. Plus they’re quite discreet and I’m a big fan of that; in my opinion, diodes have no need to draw too much attention.

Keyboard and touchpad:




The keyboard is of great size, though the Enter key may be slightly smaller than what you’re used to, but that issue fades with time and use. At least I had no problems typing away on the web or in a word processing application.
The keys are something special though; they don’t yield too easily but are not too hard to depress either, and the sound they give off is soft and not annoying. It truly is a great product with a lot of attention to detail.



The touchpad is nice and big and feels good to the touch. It reacts as it should and adequately sensitive for when you want to double-click without using the button below. There is one large button rather than two separate ones. This sometimes works well on notebooks, and sometimes not. Luckily it worked out exceptionally well on this particular model...no complaints here. It’s really great when it works as intended.

Display:



The display is beautiful. It has just the right size and is perfect for widescreen which most new movies are made in, making it a pretty optimal choice for watching movies as well as surfing the web.





It has the mandatory microphone and a webcam so you can enjoy those video conferences on the internet. While it’s long been accepted that webcam and microphone are things you just have to include, they’re always nice to have. It runs a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. This is greater than most other netbooks and allows it to go through our PCMark benchmark. As mentioned already, it’s great for surfing the web.

The colours are vivid and easily visible both in daylight and at night. As can be seen in some of the pictures it does suffer quite a bit from glare. Whether that annoys you is a matter of taste...you just have to make sure you look good if you use it in the sun, because you’ll be looking at yourself most of the time. The colours also wash out a bit in direct sunlight. It may not happen often, but just note that using this notebook in sunlight is suboptimal.

As a new part of our reviews we now test displays for pixel errors and faults in the backlighting, using a program called MonitorTest. It works by, for example, blackening the entire display which will expose pixel errors, i.e. areas that do not change colour. This will also allow you to see if the backlight is uneven.

None of these problems are present here. It a bit hard to show you any proof since it would only be a black picture, but even in a dark room I couldn’t spot a single error.

Sound and speakers

The audial aspect is better than expected and certainly good enough for Skype and other things on the internet. Still, don’t ever expect too much from the speakers in this particular segment...

Noise, heat and power consumption

Since the battery is only 4-celled I expect little from it. However since MSI put a power saving processor in the X340, it might just provide a decent battery life. Time will tell.

They also added some preinstalled power settings which supposedly optimize battery life depending on what you’re doing – watching movies, standby, working, etc. How great an effect you get from this is hard to quantify, but it always sounds good when you think about it.
I have no complaints when it comes to noise; it handles this aspect elegantly, even at full performance.

This should indicate that it gets rather hot but it never gets more than lukewarm, so you can easily sit with it in your lap if you so choose.