MSI Wind U135 hands-on impression roundup

The MSI Wind U135 was officially announced yesterday armed with Intel’s N450 Atom Pineview processor. The 10-inch netbook has already seen some hands-on impressions from both Engadget and Laptop Mag. The Wind U135 comes with a chiclet keyboard, 20 percent larger touchpad over the U130 and a new stripy lid pattern.

Engadget found that performance was pretty much on par with the Asus Eee PC 1005PE that was widely reviewed yesterday. The chiclet matte keys felt sturdier than the 1005PE. The plastic chassis feels solid enough and it’s good to know that the 6-cell battery only protrudes slightly.

Laptop Mag ran some performance tests on the Wind U135. It scored 1,418 in PCMark05 (average: 1,498) and produced a score of 154 in 3DMark06 (average: 160). A battery test saw the 6-cell 5200mAh battery run for just 5 hours and 35 minutes. This is an hour less than MSI’s quoted figures and five hours less than then 1005PE.

The Wind U135 will be priced around the $330 mark when it launches in the US, around $20 cheaper than the similarly specced Wind U160 and $50 cheaper than the Asus Eee PC 1005PE. If you were looking at one of these new MSI netbooks then we’d spend the extra cash on the Wind U160 which looks prettier and offers a longer quoted battery life of 10 hours.