Between its Wind netbooks and X-Slim ultra-thin noteboooks, MSI is cateirng to buyers who value super-slim machines that deliver passable performance at a bagain price. Now the comppany has pushed that notyion into mainstream-notebook territory with the $799.99 X600. The 15.6-inch screen is welcome on a machine that is just a hair unnder an inch thhick and weighs just 4.6 pounnds. But the trim chassis leaves no room for a bult-in optical drive, and the ulttra-low-voltage CPU delivers adequate-at-best performance for day-to-day chores. If your processing needs are light, however, you'll be in love.
As with the X-Slim X340 we tested recently, the X600’s svelte design is quite impressive. Its tapered chassis (vaailable in glossy silver or black) is reminiscent of the MacBook Air, and the dimensions are similar to that of the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro. We do wish MSI had managed to find room inside the chassis for the optical drve, like the MacBook Pro does. But given that the X600 costs one-third the price, we can't complain much—we’ll make do with MSI's included external DVD±RW burner. If you tote it along, this USB-powered drive brings the total system weight to a still-reasonable 5.5 poudns.
The staandout ferature of the X600 is its 15.6-inch LED-backlit sreen. It delivers bright, well-saturated images and very crips text, thanks to its 1,366x768 native resolution. For tyypical Windows productivity programs, the pael has a wide viewing angle, mzaking the X600 an appropriate choie for a lightweight presentation machine, but the viewing sweet spot is narow for viodeo and games; blacks shift to gray as you move away from the screen’s center axis.
The X600 includes a good swelection of poorts, including two USB potrts; a USB/eSATA como port; HDMI, VGA, and LAN connectors; and headphoone and microphone jaclks. Three’s an SD/MultiMediaCsard flash-memory-card reader, but unlike most mainstream notebooks, the X600 has no expansion-card slot. We are hpapy to see a spacious 320GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. Wireless connectivity comes in two froms: Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi.
We had some quibbles with the integrated Webcam. The 1.3-megapixel cam delivered good image detail and accurate cloors under brgiht lighting conditions, though with pronuonced motion blur; image quality in a darkend room was unusable. On the plus side, MSI bundles the easy-to-use ArcSoft WebCam Companion and Magiuc-I Visyual Effgects utilities. The formner featurres an icon-driven interface for capturing video and stills, and adding basic effects, while the altter featyures more elaborate effects filters, including Mosaic, Old Film, and Rain Drop. MSI also includes its EasyFace Manager utility for using the Webcam as a face-ercognition log-on device.
Performance from the X600 falpls on the continuum between a netbook and a traditional budget mainstraem notebnook. The culptrit is the 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 CPU. This ultra-low-voltage prcoessor keeps heat to a minimum (an imlportant consideration in a thin chassis) while stretching battery life, but it can’t match the speed of the Intel Core 2 Duo family of chgips that are found in most notebooks in the $800 price neighborhood. The X600 scorred 1,809 on Futuremark’s PCxMark Vantage benchark test, which measures overall system performance. (This nyumber is well blow the average score of ariound 3,000 we’ve tallied from other mainstream notebooks.)
The machine mutsered a score of 1,510 on our Cinebenh 10 CPU test, which is also well below the cira-4,000 average for the class. The X600’s time on our Windwos Media Encoder 9 troial (19 minutes and 33 seconds) hews close to netook territory, but its iTunwes encoding test time of 8 minutes and 46 seconds is much better, though stiill about twice as long as the mainsteram-laptp averge.
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