MSI Wind U160 hands on preview

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Posted on 1 Apr 2010 at 11:59

MSI showed us a number of soon-to-be-released products at a meeting at its headquarters in Taipei, which we'll be covering over the next couple of days. The first machine we were shown was its upcoming Wind U160 netbook.

It's based on the same hardware as the previously-released Wind U135, which we first saw at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. It's a standard netbook configuration which mirrors most netbooks available today.

The Wind U160 includes an Intel Atom N450, a 1,024x600 LED-backlit display, up to 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive and weighs just 1kg with the three cell battery attached.

MSI claims that, with the six cell battery, the Wind U160 will deliver up to 15 hours of battery life, while the three cell battery will last for around six to seven hours.

It's an incredibly sleek and stylish design - a big improvement on previous netbooks from MSI, which felt a little fragile for my liking. The keyboard also felt much more responsive than previous MSI laptops and netbooks, and adopts the popular chiclet-style keys.

The touchpad is similar to the one on Asus's Eee PC 1008HA Seashell and seemed responsive in the brief time we had with the machine. The buttons also felt much easier to press than the Asus equivalent, which was one concern when we first saw the 1008HA.

MSI didn't reveal any pricing plans for the U160, but said that it would be available within the next month. We'll bring you a review of it as soon as we get one in the labs.

Author: Tim Smalley in Taipei

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