The Right Design - Review Wind U160 from MSI

U160 is an award-winning design, but MSI should have improved on storage
It was love at first sight. Everything about the way the MSI Wind U160 looked, the stylish chiclet keyboard, the shiny brown body with the flash-cut Mac-like MSI logo and the round power button on the side, impressed me. After all, this machine won the iF Product Design Award for 2010.

And it was not all design. The U160 has a dedicated switch for wireless along with the 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth and a LED backlight screen with a refresh rate of 8 ms, one of the best in the netbook segment. Like other netbooks with the new age Pine Trail Atom Processor, the U160 too comes packed with a 1.6GHZ Single Core Atom Processor, with 1 GB RAM, and Windows 7 starter edition. The machine performed pretty well during web browsing as well as office work and stayed cool all along thanks to the special design.

MSI claims the U160 can deliver about 12 hours of battery backup, and I easily managed 8+ hours of work, a great plus point in a portable netbook. However, I would have loved to see a dedicated switch to turn off the display and save some more power. On the other hand, the webcam switch on MSI laptops is a bit of a let down, for every time you are about to chat you realise that the webcam is switched off.

For some reason MSI has chosen to fit the model with just a 160 GB hard disk, among the smallest today. The model is also not high on ergonomics, especially compared to the Asus EEE PC 1005P, the Pine Trail model already in the market. This one was a bit awkward in terms of the hand position, and small keys took some getting used to. But, the chiclet key design works well in dimly lit rooms.

Though the small 2.5” x 1.8” touchpad is nice to touch and bumpy, the single metal button is a bit of an irritant, as you often end up touching it inadvertently. But unlike MSI’s X series which has very stylish white LEDs, this one has irritating red, yellow, green and blue LEds all over the place. Plus, the U160 seems to have a weak Wi-Fi reception and it could sense just 50 per cent network signal strength where my iPod showed 80 per cent.

While like many other netbooks, MSI too has done away with the page up / page down keys, it was nice to see an additional Function key on the right hand side next to the arrow keys which makes it easy to go to the top or bottom of the page and is more ergonomic. But this also means you have a smaller shift key to work with on the right.

The 10” screen runs at a native resolution of 1024 x 600, so some sites don’t open up properly, but then this is a problem with most netbooks. The machine looks slim from the front, but is thicker towards the rear to give the battery air room to cool. The U160 sports three USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks, a VGA port, and an Ethernet port. There is also a Kensington lock port if needed.
The MSI U160 will cost Rs 24,999 when it is launched in India mid-April.

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The above review appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday 4th of April 2010