MSI Wind U160 review
A stylish and sleek netbook with long battery life, but strong competition holds it back from winning an award.
Specifications
10.1 in 1,024×600 display, 1.2kg, 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450, 1.00GB RAM, 250GB disk, Windows 7 Starter
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In our tests we managed to get almost nine-and-a-half hours from a full charge. This is fantastic and easily enough for a day’s work. Longer battery life is possible by putting the laptop into Turbo Battery Mode (Fn-F10), one of the pre-set Eco modes. However, this reduced the screen brightness so far that it was practically unreadable, so we opted to set the screen to 50 per cent brightness, giving a realistic figure for the laptop in a usable mode.
There are several other Eco modes including Gaming (pointless really, considering the power of the netbook), Movie, Presentation and Office. We recommend setting the screen brightness and battery settings manually in all cases, in order to get a set up that you’re happy with.
As you’d probably expect from a modern netbook, the Wind U160 is pre-installed with Windows 7 Starter Edition, a 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor and 1GB of RAM. Scoring 16 overall, this netbook runs at a similar speed to all other 10.1in netbooks we’ve seen: it’s fast enough for internet and light office use, but you’ll want something more powerful for video editing or dealing with lots of photos. The processor has integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics, which are incapable of playing games, but can handle Windows 7 smoothly.
We recommend that you upgrade a netbook to 2GB of RAM. Fortunately, MSI has made this simple with its Wind U160, providing an access hatch to the single memory slot. Once you’ve opened it you’ll need to replace the existing 1GB module with a 2GB one, which is both quick and easy.
Basic Specifications | |
---|---|
Rating | **** |
Processor | Intel Atom N450 |
Processor clock speed | 1.66GHz |
Memory | 1.00GB |
Memory slots | 1 |
Memory slots free | 0 |
Maximum memory | 2GB |
Size | 25x265x165mm |
Weight | 1.2kg |
Sound | Realtec High Definition Audio |
Pointing device | touchpad |
Display | |
Viewable size | 10.1 in |
Native resolution | 1,024×600 |
Graphics Processor | Intel GMA 3150 |
Graphics/video ports | VGA |
Graphics Memory | 250MB |
Storage | |
Total storage capacity | 250GB |
Optical drive model | none |
Optical drive type | N/A |
Ports and Expansion | |
USB ports | 3 |
Bluetooth | yes |
Wired network ports | 1x 10/100 |
Wireless networking support | 802.11n |
PC Card slots | 0 |
Modem | No |
Supported memory cards | SDHC |
Other ports | none |
Miscellaneous | |
Carrying case | Yes |
Operating system | Windows 7 Starter |
Operating system restore option | restore partition |
Software included | none |
Optional extras | none |
Buying Information | |
Warranty | two year collect and return |
Price | £316 |
Details | www.msi.com |
Supplier | http://www.cclonline.com |