MSI X-Slim X340 Features

As its name suggests, the X340 is extremely slim and tapered around the edges to give it an fifty-fifty slimmer look. The organization is just a pilus thicker than the MacBook Air, measuring .24" at its thinnest indicate and .78" at the thickest. By comparison, Apple's laptop is a mere .16" and .76", respectively.

The outer lid is black plastic with an embossed MSI logo in white. Looking at the system head-on with the hat closed, you tin can barely spot eight small LED activity lights in the center forth the lesser bezel. From left to right these bespeak: Bluetooth, Wireless, Power On, Bombardment, Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Hard Drive Activeness.

Moving to the right side of the X340 there are ii USB two.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks and the power connector. The back side of the system is evidently aside from the removable battery compartment, while on the left you'll find a VGA out port, Ethernet jack, HDMI port and a 3-in-1 bill of fare reader (SD, SDHC, MMC). All of the ports utilise chrome accents which look slightly tacky in my stance.

On the bottom is a big battery compartment as well as a SIM card slot and ventilation holes near the front of the system. Likewise, in what has to be the strangest speaker placement I accept ever seen, one speaker is behind the left vent slot, but the other is positioned under the keyboard near the backspace key.

Our review sample came equipped with an 8-cell battery. As you lot can see on the pictures, it's quite bulky and significantly adds to the overall thickness of the system. When installed and measuring with the hat open, the X340 is roughly .94" thick -- a practiced deal more than than MSI's touted .78 inches. This is a bit misleading as all photos on the manufacturer'due south website show the slimmer 4-cell bombardment, and thus a thinner looking notebook that's probably closer to their .78" claim.

Also note that there's no fashion to access the hard bulldoze and memory expansion slots without voiding your warranty, which is something to keep in mind if you lot are planning on upgrading to a solid state drive for instance.

MSI uses magnets in the two top corners of the lid to keep it firmly in place when in the closed position. With the lid open up, nosotros observe a thirteen.4" glossy screen with a black bezel, a webcam and microphone on top. The deck surface is like to that of the Averatec N3400 as there are no additional keys aside from the power push.

The keyboard on the X340 leaves a lot to be desired. The layout is fine, but some keys are shorter than usual. Specifically the Shift, Enter and Backspace keys on the correct experience a chip cramped, which is unfortunate seeing that there is plenty of unused real estate on either side of the keyboard to make them full size.

I would be able to overlook those things, but not the quality of the keyboard itself. Buttons take an ever-so-slight concave feel to them, which is alright, only overall the board feels very cheap and mushy, especially near the heart. We noticed a lot of flex even without fully depressing keys. MSI definitely earns some negative marks hither for non paying enough attention to the typing experience.

The touchpad is subtly offset to the left. It is molded from the same piece of plastic as the deck and is slightly inset. In that location is no dedicated button to disable the touchpad like we saw on the Timeline; but not all is lost. The pad on the X340 is nearly half an inch wider than those on both the Averatec N3400 and Timeline 4810T.

Similar to the same notebooks, the mouse click buttons on the X340 consist of a single piece of plastic, which may look good from an aesthetics indicate of view, only as I've said before for actual usage I prefer two separate buttons for the left and right-click actions.