Laptop Review: MSI X350

A wedge, a slice, a sliver, a ... squeegee? Odd associations come to mind when trying to describe the MSI X350, a notebook so slim that its front edge comes almost to a point like the stapled side of a magazine. The machine measures 8.8 by 13 inches by -- well, 0.9 inch thick at the rear, but it tapers to barely a quarter of that up front.

To put it another way, words like "thin and light" and "slimline" get tossed around for laptops substantially fatter than the X350. To put it the obvious way, the X350 is almost as thin as Apple's knife-edge MacBook Air. And while the elegant Apple costs $1,499, the MSI is $900 at Amazon and Newegg.

The Deli Test

The X350 is also the first notebook we've tested that weighs less than advertised -- 3.3 pounds according to MSI literature, 3.14 pounds on the scale at our local delicatessen. And while it's easy to hit the three-pound mark with a 10-inch netbook or an 11.6-inch ultraportable, the MSI is considerably easier on the eyes with a relatively big, sunny 13.3-inch display.

The 1,366 by 768-pixel panel is one of the thinnest we've seen, just a wafer compared to the thick lids of some full-sized notebooks, but it feels sturdy enough, without too much flex when you grasp the corners. It's sharp and easy to read, with clear colors as long as you stick to the top two or three brightness settings.

The outside of the lid is black with a subtle honeycomb pattern. Its glossy finish unfortunately attracts lots of finger smudges. The honeycomb motif continues with the comfortable -- and large (nearly 4 inches deep) -- textured palm rest.

The palm rest provides room for a sizable (3.5 by 2 inches) touchpad; the pad and the chrome mouse-button bar below it work smoothly. The pad supports multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom, though we found its vertical scrolling feature a bit finicky.

The X350 wins points for delivering a first-class keyboard. The 87-key chiclet- or island-style layout includes dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys as well as cursor arrows; Ctrl and Delete keys properly located in the lower left and top right corners, respectively; and a responsive, medium-firm typing feel.

VGA, HDMI, and Ethernet ports decorate the system's left side, with two USB 2.0 ports and headphone and microphone jacks at the right. You won't find DisplayPort, eSATA, or USB 3.0 ports, or for that matter an optical drive, onboard.

The (Pretty) Long Run

We regularly saw five and a half hours of battery life in work sessions mixed with slideshow and video viewing and some hard-disk-intensive software installation and file scrubbing. One less demanding, mostly word processing session lasted for six hours.

Instead of one of this year's new Core i3 or Core i5 processors, the X350 relies on Intel's older low-voltage Core 2 Duo SU7300 -- a 1.3GHz dual-core with 3MB of Level 2 cache and no Hyper-Threading. There's 4GB of DDR2 memory installed, but the provided 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium can utilize only 3GB of it. Toshiba contributes the 500GB hard drive.

These components add up to acceptable but not pulse-quickening performance. Loading and switching among applications proceeds perkily enough, though the MSI's benchmark numbers are low to middling -- 2,558 in PCMark Vantage, 1,565 in Geekbench, a minimal 3DMark06 score of 674 from the Intel GMA 4500 integrated graphics.

The system rendered Cinebench R10's sample scene in five and a half minutes. Most notebooks we've tested do the job in two or three minutes, but most netbooks take 15 or 18.

MSI's software bundle includes the usual trials of Microsoft Office and Norton Internet Security; ArcSoft utilities for creative print projects and dressing up webcam shots; a webcam facial recognition logon utility; and a customizable program launcher that rips off Mac OS X's bouncing-icons dock and needlessly duplicates Win 7's own taskbar.

If one thing keeps this from being a rave review, it's the X350's price/performance ratio: We'd be happier if it cost $150 less, or if it went two instead of one step beyond a netbook's speed, or both. But these things are tradeoffs; the MSI is priced well below the MacBook Air, and its performance is adequate considering its combination of sky-high portability, screen legibility, decent battery life, and an excellent keyboard. It's a solid choice for office workers who seek to travel light.