Is this the future for the netbook market?
This is definitely not a netbook by either Intel’s or Microsoft’s clearly defined standards, but somehow this strange 15.6-inch hybrid manages to qualify as an ultraportable. For a laptop this size, the X600 is incredibly thin and light – it competes with the MacBook Air for thinness with a width of only 0.9 inches. It’s not as light as the MBA at 4.6 pounds though, but that’s still not heavy considering the format. Actually it’s the lightest 15-inch laptop ever.
Unlike the MacBook Air, however, it’s surprisingly affordable ($799 on Amazon). It has a 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo processor from Intel – a single-core processor that is slower than what you usually get with a 15-inch laptop, but it’s still a lot faster than the 1.6GHz Atom found in most netbooks.
Another surprise is that MSI has managed to cram in a dedicated graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD4330 with 512MB of video RAM. The 4330 isn’t the fastest GPU of course, but should be more than enough for some casual gaming and watching HD content. It also comes with a generous 4GB of system RAM and a 320GB hard drive.
The large screen and dedicated graphics on the X-Slim X600 is probably the main reason why the battery life on the MSI isn’t stellar. From a laptop with an Intel Ultra Low Voltage processor, you usually expect something out of the ordinary when it comes to battery life, but the huge screen restricts it to 3-4 hours. That’s on par with other 15″ laptops, but our expectations were a bit higher.
MSIs new X600 is clearly full of surprises, and the biggest surprise of all is the appearance. It used to be either thin-and-light or a large screen – not both. It’s still exciting that some laptop manufacturers dare to experiment. If the X600 is a success – which isn’t all that unlikely – we will probably see more of this strange new hybrid format in the future.
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