NbC: MSI Wind U115 Hybrid Review

Display

The MSI Wind U115 has a 10-inch LED backlit LCD panel with the typical 1024 x 600 resolution. It’s becoming a rare thing nowadays, but the Wind U115 ships with a matte display with anti-glare coating.

The netbook didn’t feel any brighter than the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which also used a matte display, however I don’t think anyone will have problems with the brightness, as at the maximum level it is definitely quite bright.

You can see the anti-glare matte display in action below. We placed it under direct lights and you can still make out what’s happening on the screen.

Even when directly facing a window during the daytime, proved no problems with legibility. Text was crisp although as you might expect with a matte display, colours were not as vivid as you would find with a glossy display.

The picture below shows the Wind U115 in direct sunlight. As you can see the display could still be read and in no way hindered its use. Not having to worry about the angle of the netbook when faced with direct light is a major advantage of matte displays.

Whilst maybe not as vibrant as a glossy display, we still found the colours to be well separated. The display also had good contrast levels. Viewing angles were also very good, owing to the matte display.

Speakers

Having been treated to the very good sound on the Samsung N120 it was a bit of a step back coming to the U115. However, it’s difficult to be too harsh on the U115 as the N120 has one of the best speaker systems found on a netbook in our view.

The MSI Wind U115 has two speakers located either side on the bottom of the netbook. Sound quality was your typical netbook fare. There was no mid-range from what we could tell, which means playing music at high volumes can just end up giving you a headache. Volume certainly wasn’t an issue with the U115 either, even at 75 percent it was sufficiently loud for us.

Heat & Noise

This was an area where the Wind U115 really excelled. We didn’t notice the netbook getting too hot, even after significant use. Even the air blown out of the main side vent was never uncomfortably hot. This result is probably due to the energy-efficient Z series Atom processor used to power the netbook.

As a result of this, noise levels were also kept to a minimum. Yes, if you were stressing the CPU quite hard (like when watching a YouTube video) then you could hear the fan whir, but under normal use it was very quiet.