MSI X610: Supersizing the Netbook?
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2009 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
MSI X610: A Compromising Solution
MSI's X610 is a truly eclectic mix of hardware. Normally, we would expect a company to either pursue the long battery life target offered by netbooks, or provide higher performance with a balanced solution. Unfortunately, to date it doesn't seem like many companies are interested in providing MacBook levels of battery life -- and certainly there are many people that don't want to spend $1300+ on a new laptop. If you're interested in a Windows laptop that offers long battery life, netbooks still reign supreme and are very affordable. Acer also makes the Timeline and claims eight hours of battery life, although without testing the laptop we're hesitant to recommend it.
MSI's chosen hardware for the X610 is a strange combination of low-power parts with relatively high-power parts. We understand why users might want a Radeon Mobility HD 4330, especially if you're using an Intel platform where Intel's integrated graphics are the lowest common denominator among GPUs. From that standpoint, the MSI X600 made sense, though the $800 price tag was hard to swallow. The X610 should be a less expensive alternative, but considering the HD 4330 isn't substantially faster than the HD 3200, at least when handicapped by a single-core 1.6 GHz CPU, the design isn't going to be a runaway success. If MSI could get the price close to $500 (yes, that's cheaper than the current €500 MSRP), keep the weight under 5 pounds, and boost battery life up to five hours or more we think it would be a much more interesting system.
Compared to netbooks with Intel Atom CPUs, the AMD Neo MV-40 offers better performance with power requirements that are 2~3 times as high, so a smaller netbook based on AMD's Neo could be competitive. It would certainly offer better performance than Atom netbooks, in both the CPU and GPU departments assuming it uses an ATI IGP. We're certainly interested in seeing more of AMD Neo and perhaps getting a better package for the low power CPU.
If you happen to live in the UK (or possibly Europe), the MSI X610 is a solution for people looking for a reasonably lightweight laptop to function as a multimedia and light gaming system. You'll have to decide if the slower CPU with faster GPU is a better fit than something that uses a dual-core CPU up with integrated graphics. Either way you should get roughly the same battery life, but certain applications/games will favor dual core CPUs while others will prefer discrete graphics. The MSI X610 won't be the perfect solution for everyone, but there's a niche market that it just might satisfy. If you don't mind slightly faster than netbook performance (with significantly faster graphics performance) with less battery life and you want a bigger laptop that doesn't weigh a ton, the MSI X610 could be exactly what you're after.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
Yeah, but often the prices are about the same in Euros and USD because of taxes and such... at least, that's been my experience. Anyway, without the product in the US it's pretty much a moot point, but I'd like to see it at $500 or less.samspqr - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
you can't use the exchange rate to convert hardware priceshere in europe we have higher direct taxes (around 18% por this kind of goods), and some other legislation that makes this stuff more expensive (like a mandatory 2 years warranty by the seller), plus quite often we just get ripped off
the X600 is selling for $800 in amazon.com and 720eur in amazon.de, so for the X610 those 500eur should mean something like $560
samspqr - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
(sorry, I meant indirect taxes)max347 - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
With such a low speed cpu, I wouldnt really see the point in a dedicated card. I would rather have either- stronger cpu/dedicated, or igp/better battery life.Mint - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
At a given pricepoint, I would have the ability to play somes games with AA, AF, and full shaders than have a strong CPU with a weak GPU that can play all games at 640x480.A 1.3 GHz C2D isn't going to be that much faster for games, but it's the best you can get in a reasonably priced lightweight notebook. I would totally go for this notebook if they engineered the power saving properly and got 5+ hours of battery life, and a Neo X2 option would be icing on the cake. Instead I'm pleading for the substantially more expensive 3810TG to eventually arrive in NA.
LarsAlereon - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
It needed a discrete GPU because the IGP (X1250) isn't good enough for basic usage. Ideally you'd use an IGP in value systems, and only use a discrete GPU if you want gaming capabilties. In this case they were forced to use a discrete GPU, but the unit wasn't positioned somewhere that needed gaming performance. Is there a reason they couldn't have used the RS780E (HD 3300) instead? I look forward to seeing an IGP based on the R5000-series architecture at some point.Mint - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
15.6 inches in a 4.5 lb chassis for that price is fantastic, especially when you get better-than-atom performance and HD 4330 graphics. Too bad battery life is so mediocre. You'd think that ATI's hybrid power technology would be able to shut down the discrete graphics when idling.Still, have you considered reviewing Acer's Timeline 3810TG? That can be equipped with a Core 2 Duo (albeit low clock speed), 4330 graphics that can be shut off, and claims to have 7-9 hours of battery life. Unfortunately, this particular Timeline is also unavailable in the US...
bjacobson - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
I think I'm going to start defining netbook by weight and battery life nothing else.IMO it needs to be at or below ~3lbs and have a 7-8 hour charge.
Size never mattered to me, it was all about weight and battery life.
At 7h I can safely consistently leave the charger at home if I have a full charge. Needs vary but I haven't had to worry about it once this semester, and that's with 8 hour days of classes and I still usually have 15-20% battery life left.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
Yeah, unfortunately the part of the netbook this laptop used was the "low performance CPU". It's rather disappointing to me that a CPU that's only ~50% faster than Atom can use 3X as much power. They also took the MacBook Air part that consisted of "thin" without worrying about providing great battery life and reasonable performance.JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
I've been trying to get any Timeline for review... hopefully some day soon Acer will send me one. I'm still a little confused as to why the X610 has an IGP and discrete graphics with no apparent way to use the IGP (unless I'm just totally missing it).