Mesh MSI M670-S2 review: Mesh MSI M670-S2

Just a couple of years ago if you wanted a decent laptop you'd expect to fork out well over a grand, but now you can get your hands on a machine with an impressive specification for less than half that price. The Mesh MSI M670-S2 is a good example. Despite its lowly price of £499, it ticks almost all the boxes on the average buyer's checklist.

7.5

Mesh MSI M670-S2

The Good

Good battery life; impressive performance; stylish looks.

The Bad

Off-centre track pad placement.

The Bottom Line

The M670 offers more than you have a right to expect for its low price tag of £499. The combination of a beefy processor and a decent helping of RAM means it’s quite a nippy performer and the screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a budget machine. All in all, it’s top performer for the money

The only sop to budget considerations is its use of Windows Vista Basic, the entry-level version of Microsoft's new operating system. One thing to note is that although it's being sold by Mesh, it is in fact made by MSI and branded as such. You won't be able to buy it from the Mesh site until Monday 7 May, but until then you can ring 0844 736 0440 to place your order.

Design
Budget laptops usually have as much style as the attendees of a comic-book convention, but the MSI is actually a rather snappy dresser. Its tasty matte-black finish gives it a certain air of sophistication and makes it look more expensive than it really is.

The styling isn't perfect, however, as when you open up the lid, a surprise awaits. Rather than sitting centrally under the keyboard, the track pad is shifted to the left. The reason for this is that MSI has fitted a full keyboard, complete with a numerical keypad on the right-hand side. However, the odd arrangement does give the machine something of an off-balance appearance.

In most other respects the laptop is quite traditional and while the build quality isn't too bad, we have to say it doesn't feel quite as sturdy as either the budget Evesham Quest or Toshiba Satellite Pro models we've looked at recently. Weight-wise, it tips the scales at 2.85kg. This means it's light enough to carry around on the odd journey, but it won't suit frequent flyers.

The M670-S2 has a full keyboard with number pad, which makes it slightly lopsided

Features
Despite its low price tag, the MSI boasts a good range of ports. As well as four USB sockets and a mini-FireWire port, there's also a very useful multi-format card reader that sits at the front under the lid latch. And while the VGA socket is par for the course, it's less usual to also find a TV output at this price point.

More impressive still is the 15.4-inch widescreen display. It uses a similar coating to that found on Sony's X-Black displays, so colours look exceptionally bright and vivid, making it ideal for watching DVDs.

When you get down to writing emails or typing out documents, however, the odd keyboard and trackpad arrangement really do start to jar. Because your typing position is shifted to the left, the keyboard initially feels quite cramped, as if you are being forced towards the edge of the laptop.

Performance
Budget machines often struggle to produce decent performance -- many have good processors and then skimp on memory. This can be a serious issue on machines running Vista, because the operating system is much more memory-hungry than Windows XP. Thankfully MSI hasn't made that mistake here. The laptop's AMD Mobile Sempron 4300+ processor, which has plenty of power to handle everyday tasks, is backed up by a decent 1GB helping of RAM.

This helps greatly when you're running more than a couple of applications at the same time, as the machine remains responsive when switching between the various open windows. It also helped the laptop put in a solid PC Mark 05 performance. Its score of 1816 was very healthy for a budget machine.

Things are similarly rosy when it comes to battery life. From a full charge it managed to run for 1 hour 54 minutes. That's a good 20 to 30 minutes longer than some of the other budget laptops we've looked at recently.

As you would expect from a machine with a GeForce Go 6100 chip, gaming performance isn't really anything to write home about. The chip could only help it crawl its way to a score of 179 in 3D mark, which means it hasn't really got the grunt for the latest games. But let's be honest here, nobody buys a budget laptop to play Half-Life 2.

Conclusion
There's plenty to like about this machine. The wonderfully bright and vivid display and the impressive battery life make it an excellent choice for watching DVDs on the move. And the beefy processor combined with the decent helping of RAM means that, by budget standards, it's a powerhouse when it comes to running multiple applications at the same time.

The only real issue we have is the slightly odd keyboard arrangement. Still, if you can live with this quirk then you'll find it a seriously impressive budget option.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide