MSI Megabook M670

Look closely at the photos and you'll see that MSI's £383 M670 is virtually identical to Mesh's £680 M677. However, as you'd expect, there are some big differences inside.

You are getting great value, though, since the 15.4in TFT is one of the better examples across every notebook here up to £700. The glossy coating makes colours bright and vivid and, while vertical viewing angles aren't the best we've seen, it still has a 1,280 x 800 resolution.

With a 1.8GHz Sempron 3400+, the MSI is a single-core machine that will never compete with PC Nextday's Core 2 Duo T5500, but the Zoostorm costs £85 more. The MSI has only 512MB of RAM, but there's a spare socket to add up to 1GB more. With an 80GB 5,400rpm SATA hard disk, the M670 scored 0.60 in our 2D application benchmarks. The Nvidia GeForce Go 6100, meanwhile, is something of a red herring in that it sounds better than it is, managing only 12fps at 1,024 x 768 in Far Cry.

It's good, though, that the keyboard uses every last millimetre of the chassis' width, allowing MSI to include a number pad. That's great if you use Excel regularly, but it does result in a few compromises on the main layout: a half-height Enter key and an out-of-place backslash. Above the keyboard are some handy shortcut buttons, and on the left is an integrated microphone. The speakers are here too, although they're not particularly loud or good quality.

The range of connections is comprehensive, and includes mini-FireWire, optical S/PDIF, ExpressCard/54, a card reader and four USB ports. A dual-layer DVD writer is also included.

Battery life is reasonably good at this price, lasting 2hrs 25mins under light use and 1hr 27mins with heavy use. The warranty, however, is in a different league; MSI provides the same cover as with its more expensive notebooks, which means a year of international collect-and-return cover followed by a year of return-to-base.

But when Advent includes 1GB of memory and Home Premium, the MSI lacks functionality in everyday use. The M670 is still a bargain and worth considering if you don't need Home Premium's features.

Author: Jim Martin