Gone are the days of laptops designed to be just portable computers. Nowadays you will be hard pressed to find a laptop that does not cater to a particular niche, whether it is gaming, multimedia, or business laptops. The multimedia laptop segment is an interesting one since it attempts to incorporate the best of all worlds and the MSI EX400X-040IN notebook is supposed to do just that.
The EX400X is a petite machine that weighs 2.25 kgs. It has a black glossy exterior and black and silver interior, and a glossy 14.1-inch screen. The build quality is quite good without overindulgence on plastics and overall the laptop looks well designed albeit in a minimalistic way. The keyboard area is cramped though and if you are used to large sized Enter or Shift keys, you will be disappointed. Also the placement of some of the keys (especially the Control key) is less than ideal. The touch pad is efficient but strangely it could not scroll either vertically or horizontally. We thought this was because of an absence of the requisite drivers but we could not find any on the CD that came with the laptop. Around the keyboard are a number of handy shortcut buttons with the help of which you can switch to your web browser, turn on/off the WLAN and the integrated webcam and other customizable applications.
Under the EX400X’s hood is an Intel Core2 Duo T7250 processor clocked at 2GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk. For playing movies and lightweight gaming an AT I HD3450 with 256MB of RAM is also included. Connectivity features include support for Gigabit LAN and wireless, four USB ports and slots for Express cards and memory cards. There is no draft-N support though, one of the many features that the MSI is light on.
We began our performance tests with World Bench 6, our in-house benchmark, and the MSI’s performance was far from satisfactory. It scored 72 marks overall, a good 10-15 marks away from what could be considered desirable. We weren’t expecting much when we ran 3D Mark ’06 on the MSI and sure enough the result was an average 1651 marks. In PC Mark ’05 the MSI clocked 4316 marks and in PC Mark Vantage 2877 marks, both average scores. However, in the Cinebench dual core processor test, the MSI managed a decent score of 3709. We tested the MSI’s gaming capabilities with the benchmark tests of Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. Both games were set at 800x600 resolution with no anti-aliasing and medium settings. In both games, the MSI posted reasonable frame-rates of 35 and 36.
However, don’t expect to play Crysis or Far Cry 2 on this machine, it is better left for movies and music than games. Talking about music, the MSI has two speakers which are nothing to write home about. And although the onboard audio card does not support 7.1 channel sound, it is sufficient to play music and movies on. The battery-life is horrible though, as it petered out at the one-and-a-half hour mark when running a movie. The MSI EX400X is priced at Rs. 55,000 but looking at its performance, it could have been easily priced at least Rs. 5,000 lower. If you are looking for a laptop that does a bit of everything, you could consider this offering from MSI.
A look through this issue will prove that I do not exaggerate when I say that we were overrun by ultraportables. There in the spirit of all things laptop-like, I was rather happy to be reviewing the freshly minted LG X110, which is also called MoMo, which is short for More Mobile.
The X110, like many netbooks is powered by the popular Intel Atom N270 processor with 1GB of RAM, 802.11bg WLAN and Bluetooth v2.0 support and a 160GB hard disk. And it has a matte-finish ( non-glossy) 10-inch LED screen with a netbook standard resolution of 1024x600. A 1.3MP camera sits at the top of the screen which is good enough for online video chat. It also has sufficient connectivity ports; three USB ports, one Ethernet port, a mic-in and one headphones out.
Built around the same chassis as MSI Wind, you can identify that the X110 has improved only the cosmetic part as all the connection ports, speaker and vents remain at the same place as they did on the Wind. Its exterior has a glossy black finish (pink and brown color versions are also available) and its contoured lit with sharper cuts on the edges make it one of the best looking netbooks we've seen. Despite the smudge-magnet finish, the build quality is decent and strong enough for computing on the go.
The 10-inch screen, though not super sharp, provided enough brightness. Reading text at the default size is easy, and watching a movie or some YouTube video is not really eye-straining. The matte-finish once again is an advantage here over the glossy ones found on Acer Aspire One and this is more obvious when outdoors. The keyboard has a regular layout which is easy to get used to. It’s the same as those standard laptop keyboards and adequate shortcuts to access common features like Wi-Fi, brightness and volume controls etc. The Synaptic Touchpad is responsive; virtual and horizontal scrolling worked as expected though the buttons were a bit slim for our taste.
The X110 came pre-installed with Windows XP with SP3 and Norton AntiVirus with 90 days trial . No Office Suite came preinstalled though. There is an LG Intelligent update system to keep the system patch, drivers and programs up to date that has an offline or online updates mode. Some cool applications like Xtreme Surround System that supports SRS WOW HD and SRS TruSurround XT took care of the audio department. This worked better for headphones particularly while watching movies. The onboard speaker (2w/ch) delivered quite a tinny sound but we did not expect much from a netbook anyway. Its 1.3MP Smart Cam with LG’s included application called CyberLink YouCam worked great. It has a lot of animation effects and shortcuts to post the video clips directly to YouTube or send it via e-mail that was fun to use.
From our WorldBench and Everest Benchmarks results, the X110 performed at par with other netbooks having the same specifications. The only problem we found with the X110's performance is its 3-cell battery life. With the Wi-Fi on and at the normal screen brightness setting, we could achieve just 120 minutes during our online usage which is way below what we got from other netbooks. Upgrading the battery to 6-cell is advisable for more mobile usage which is what netbooks are intended for.
Looks-wise, the LG X110 is hard to beat and performed admirably. However, the default 3-cell battery is the deal-breaker as you can find better battery-life and similar performing netbooks at this price.
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At first glance the Asus U6S looks like a proper business machine. With its silver keyboard and bezel and a glossy black exterior, the laptop comes across as a classy product. However, what spoilt it for us some what was the brown faux leather that surrounds the touchpad. Some users may find it a refreshing break from plastic but we thought it was a little too reminiscent of the 80’s. The Asus’ 12.1 inch screen is nothing special and in fact a little too dull. The Asus offers a lot of connectivity ports (including an HDMI port) but those on the left side seem cramped. The laptop also sports a DVD combo drive and a 0.3 megapixel web camera.
Asus’ chances as the perfect ultraportable laptop are hurt by its weight (1.8 kilograms) and its very weak battery that just lasted 165 minutes in our tests. The U6S is a great performer though, and as is evinced by its World Bench 6 score of 93 and a Cinebench score of 4946, both of which were the highest in the comparison.
The Asus U6S is priced at Rs. 92,900 and at that price, the laptop should have offered more in a better fashion.
At first glance the Asus U6s looks like a proper business machine. With its silver keyboard and bezel and a glossy black exterior, the laptop comes across as a classy product. The U6s’s touchpad is surrounded by brown faux leather which is a refreshing change from all the plastic but does not add that much to the overall look. even the touchpad is clunky, and requires too much force on the mouse buttons. The Asus’ 12.1-inch screen is nothing special and in fact a little too dull. The Asus offers a lot of connectivity ports (including an HDMI port) but those on the left side of the chassis seem cramped. The laptop also sports a DVD combo drive and a 0.3 megapixel web camera. Asus’ chances as the perfect ultraportable laptop are hurt by its weight (1.8 kg) and its very weak battery that just lasted 165 minutes in our tests.
The U6s is a great performer though, as is evinced by its World Bench 6 score of 93 and a Cinebench score of 4946, both of which were the highest in the comparison. This is due to the fact that it has the fastest processor among the ultraportables in the 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo t8300. The performance is also given a boost thanks to 2GB of Ram, 250GB hard drive, and a GeForce 9300m G dedicated graphics chipset. The Asus U6s is priced at Rs. 92,900 and at that price, the laptop should have offered more in a better fashion.
