MSI Wind U135

MSI is migrating its collection of netbooks over to Intel's Pine Trail platform, with the aim of using less energy and providing even longer battery life.  The manufacturer has built on an already successful base and improved the look and feel for the U135.

Handling, design and build: glossy materials take centre stage

Glossy materials are gradually taking over everywhere on MSI's laptops and netbooks.  It's a shame, as this inevitably leads to unwanted reflections as well as dust and greasy fingerprints.  If you can get beyond that, the U135 looks pretty nice and is successful mix of grey and black.  Still, MSI somehow managed to use glossy grey plastic in the part of the laptop where you're most likely to touch it and leave greasy marks behind: the touchpad, either side of the keyboard and the back of the screen.  The whole thing is well built and seems solid.


On the chicklet-style keyboard, the individual keys are small and flat (13.5 x 13 mm), but they're solid and responsive.  Typing isn't too loud, although we've definitely seen netbooks with quieter keyboards.  The keyboard dips slightly in the centre when you apply pressure, and we think that its fittings could have done with a little more work, especially at the top.

The touchpad doesn't have multitouch, but it's big enough to be comfortable to use.  It's covered with a matte finish which stops your finger from sticking as it slides over the pad.  We still prefer the accuracy of some other touchpads, including Samsung's for instance. 

The image produced by the webcam is acceptable, but nothing more, despite its 1.3 Megapixel resolution.  Overexposed areas look burned out and the contrast isn't excellent either, with dark colours and blacks that run together.  It seems that the resolution is held back and the whole thing lacks detail.  Fortunately, movements remain fluid and the webcam can handle low light levels.

You can certainly hear the fan in the MSI Wind U135, even when the netbook is idle.  It does remain cool to the touch, though, and the fan remains at the same speed even when the CPU ramps up, a sign that it's working well.

The connectivity options are pretty traditional, with three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA input, a line in and out, an Ethernet port and a memory card reader.  You also get 802.11b/g/n WiFi.

If you turn the netbook over, you can see some of the components on the inside, but the problem is that you can't open it up to access them.  Only the battery is removable.

Power adaptor and 2 USB 2.0 ports	USB 2.0, memory card reader, mic, headphones, VGA and RJ45
Touchpad and click bar	USB 2.0, memory card reader, mic, headphones, VGA, RJ45 and battery

Processor Power: office use mostly
Windows 7 index: 2.4. Details: CPU 2.4 - Memory 4.5 - Graphics 3.0 - Gaming graphics 3.0 - Main hard drive 5.9.

Intel's Pine Trail platform is supposed to breathe new life into notebooks.  With graphics integrated into the same chip as the CPU, at the very least it should help reduce energy consumption.  We weren't, however, expecting any revolutionary improvements in performance, and if you are looking for a more powerful computer, you might well be disappointed. 

The Intel Atom N450 CPU in the MSI Wind U135 produced worse results overall than the N270 processor which is still found in plenty of rival netbooks.  Rather than the fault lying with the processor itself, which is theoretically equivalent, it's the transition to Windows 7 which has reduced the performance.  This laptop managed an index score of 19, compared to 20 on N270-based laptops running XP.  An index of 100 is equivalent to the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi 3650, our standard reference, which has an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor.  However, the different is minimal, and this netbook is still powerful enough for surfing the web and using office software, as well as more complicated tasks like editing photos or encoding video, as long as you're patient: some tasks can take three to six times longer than on a faster machine.

You can't play 1080p HD (Blu-ray equivalent) content on this machine, so you'll have to make do with DVD quality or compressed DivX videos.  The graphics are limited to 720p HD, which is a real shame as we know that the Poulsbo platform is capable of handling 1080p.

3D Gaming: only older titles need apply

Gaming on a netbook is something best attempted by dedicated fans.  You can only really use laptops with ATI or Nvidia ION graphics cards to be able to enjoy the most recent games, as long as the processor doesn't hold them back; a single core Intel Atom processor just isn't enough. 

Audio Quality: headphones are still the best solution

Producing decent quality sound has long been a problem for notebooks.  The MSI Wind U135 is no exception.  Its dry sound isn't pleasant to listen to.  It's lacking in depth and there's no detail in the bass.  Use the headphone jack instead, which is much more better, despite a little gentle crackling.

Portability & Battery Life: could do better

MSI claims that its Wind U135 has great battery life, and with 4 hours 29 minutes of video playback on the clock (WiFi turned off, headphones plugged in and brightness at 100 cd/m²), it's not bad.  However, that's still a long way from beating the current success stories like the Samsung N210 (7 h 06) or the U135's predecessor, the MSI Wind U115 (7-9 h 52).

This netbook has been to a very reasonable size.  The power adaptor is a decent average and slides easily into your laptop bag without adding too much weight.