Labs

When this laptop arrived from MSI, we had a feeling of déj vu. Back in September 2006, the S271 won a Best Buy award in a Computer Buyer ultraportable group test. It's quite unusual to find the same model still on sale after more than a year, but over that period the price has dropped from £787 to £588. So is it even better value now?

The MSI looks a little beefier than Advent's 8212, but at just 2kg it's plenty light enough to cart around without needing a massage to recover. Despite that light weight, the case feels pretty sturdy. Twin catches hold the lid firmly closed, protecting the glossy screen. Open it up, and the lid itself feels capable of fending off the odd knock. That's more than can be said of

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even some quite impressive laptops these days.

The keyboard stretches right to the edges, so most of the keys can be full-size. Typing on the S271 felt a bit too bouncy, though, and the keys themselves lacked a positive action. The trackpad was far better; despite its funny-looking buttons, cut into the laptop's case, we found it a pleasure to use. The buttons give a satisfying muffled click.

While the S271 is free from serious exterior defects, the same can't be said for its internals. To keep costs down, MSI have employed a dual-core AMD processor running at a mere 1.6GHz. AMD's chips traditionally lag behind their Intel rivals at the same clock speed, and the TL-52 is no exception. A result of 93% in our general (2D) benchmark isn't awful, but was the slowest on test this time, and Windows felt noticeably sluggish.

The ATI Xpress 1150 graphics chipset did run our 3D benchmark, but incredibly slowly. A score of 6% indicates that you'd have a hard time finding modern games that would be playable, even you reduced the resolution and detail settings. Less demanding leisure titles would still run OK.

If the S271's price had sunk a little lower, we might have been able to overlook its (by today's standards) average performance, but as it stands the Advent 8212 has stolen the MSI's thunder.