MSI CX640 Laptop Review (Core i5/Nvidia)

1. Introduction2. MSI CX640 Laptop Review (Bundle)3. MSI CX640 (The Machine /1)4. MSI CX640 (The Machine /2)5. MSI CX640 (Internal)6. Installed Software, Hardware Configuration and Testing Methodology7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: PCMark 79. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra11. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark12. Synthetic: HDTack 3.0.4.0.13. Synthetic: ATTO Benchmark14. Real World: BluRay Playback With PowerDVD15. Real World: Flash HD Performance16. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink Media Espresso17. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.018. Gaming: Total War Shogun 219. Gaming: Dirt 320. Gaming: Dead Space 221. Gaming: Alien V Predator22. Gaming: Witcher 223. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Battery Life25. Technical: Acoustics Performance26. Technical: Screen Quality27. Closing Thoughts28. View All Pages

MSI have been consistently releasing some of the finest enthusiast grade hardware in the last year and today we are looking at their competitively priced CX640 15.6 laptop which features a capable Core i5 processor, Nvidia discrete graphics, 500GB hard drive and 4GB of DDR3 memory. For under £600 is this an ideal all round machine for gaming and work duties?

The CX640 can be currently bought online for £576.95 from Amazon, which puts it firmly into a very competitive, mid to low end bracket. With a Time stamp function, the machine can automatically back up and restore information. There is a less expensive version available, called the CR640, which is supplied with just the onboard Intel HD Graphics.

Time Stamp has been one of the selling points for MSI, as there is a dedicated button which can automatically return a system to a prior state, ideal for dealing quickly with a data corruption issue for instance. The safety features continue, with the hard drive being placed into a reinforced protection package, a little like a low profile airbag, to help protect against platter damage.

CPU	2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3 / i5 / i7 Processor
OS	Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (MSI recommends upgrade to Genuine Windows® 7 Professional)
Chipset	Intel® HM65
Memory	DDR3 1333,2 slots, Max: 8GB
LCD Size	15.6″ HD 1366×768 (16:9)
Graphics	nVIDIA Geforce GT520M Graphic Card
Graphics VRAM	DDR3 1GB
HDD (GB)	320G/500G/640GB SATA
Optical Drive	Super-Multi / Blu-Ray
Audio	2 Speakers
Webcam	1.3M Webcam
Card Reader	MMC/SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/HG
LAN	10/100/1000
Wireless LAN	802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 3.0 (Optional)
D-Sub (VGA)	1
HDMI	1
USB 2.0 port	2
USB 3.0 port	2 (optional)
eSATA	N/A
eSATA/USB Combo	N/A
Mic-in/Headphone-out	1/1
Line-in	N/A
Express Card	N/A
Modem port	N/A
Keyboard	99 keys
AC Adapter	90W
Battery	6 cells / 8 cells
Power Management	N/A
Dimension	380mm x 260mm x 27.1~34mm
Weight (KG)	2.6

The MSI CX640 is shipped in an attractive, muted box with the company name top left, and an artistic side view of the laptop in the center. There is a list of some specifications along the upper area.

As this is a lower cost machine, the bundle isn't that extensive. There is a manual, a software disc, power adapter and battery.

The battery is branded with the MSI name and is a 4400mAh, 47Wh model with a +10.8V rating.

The machine itself is available in two different colour schemes – plain grey or all black, as pictured above. MSI have opted for a brushed metal style appearance but it is in fact plastic, immediately noticeable on first touch.

The CX640 opens up to reveal a rather workmanlike, if slightly dull looking 15.6 inch laptop. It weighs 2.55kg so it is no flyweight. We noticed that in a very short time it gathered a wide array of fingerprints all over it. The lid also groans slightly and we noticed a bit of flex when moving it back and forward. My immediate impression was certainly not positive, it feels like a budget model. There is a web cam and light sensor at the top of the screen.

The rear of the laptop has various vents to help with airflow, and the battery slots into the upper area.

The left side of the CX640 has two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and VGA out, GB lan, and the power connector. The right side has the power button, headphone and microphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, and a DVD or Bluray optical drive. At the very back is a security locking system.

Just below the screen, there are two speakers with SRS support. The CX640 has actually a rather capable sound system onboard, and it is much better than the majority of laptops we review. It still certainly won't be replacing a dedicated sound system, but there is a surprisingly good depth from the sound system, with even moderate bass available.

The keyboard is acceptable to type on, but I would certainly not say it was anywhere near the best I had used. It feels rather ‘spongy' although the spacing is decent. There is a three key number pad offset to the right.

There is some flex, but it certainly isn't the worst we have seen in the last year.

Down at the bottom left is an LED readout which highlights various functionality, such as keyboard and num lock, battery charging, wireless on and off etc. As the image above right shows, even after a small amount of use, the surface does look really dirty, even if handled carefully.

The trackpad has a textured surface which feels rather unpleasant, but tracks quite well. Again, we would use a mouse for anything serious, but it is perfectly acceptable for light use when traveling. The buttons along the bottom are incredibly stiff, and I often had to apply a fair bit of pressure to get them to activate.

Bottom right, there is a huge sticker which details the hardware inside. There is also a focus on the Nvidia Optimus hardware with a special sticker. We would remove all these if it was ours but it will help sell it in a retail store display.

The CX640 looks great when it is turned on. The power light at the side glows, and the Time Stamp section above the main keyboard also glows green. If you press this button it records a snapshot of the system, taking between 10 and 20 seconds, depending on how much data has been stored. If problems occur, you can restore the system to an earlier time.

Getting inside the machine is straightforward enough. There are a handful of screws to remove, then a center panel can be removed with minimal effort. This gives access to the memory, hard drive, wireless and the main motherboard.

MSI are using 2x2GB of ‘Elixir' branded memory which is rated to 1366mhz. There is a dual heatpipe system offset to the left (right from the back) of the machine. This transfers heat from the CPU and GPU with a fan set to force the warm air out of the side of the machine.

The hard drive is encased inside a protective bay, which MSI claim offers protection from damage. Obviously at this price point, MSI aren't using an SSD so any additional safety measures are welcomed. MSI call this an ‘air bag'. MSI are using an Hitachi TravelStar 5k500 2.5 inch drive which only spins at 5,400 rpm. It is eco friendly however, demanding a power draw of only 1.4W.

The MSI machine has a fairly slow boot up time and we were concerned initially that something was actually wrong with the unit.

On first boot up, you are presented with a menu which allows some adjustment of the default software installation. After a few reboots we noticed that the machine is backing up data via the Time Stamp switch, which can add around 10-25 seconds to the start up time. Its not a major issue, but noticeable. For the security protection perhaps it will be worth the delay.

Above is a complete list of all software that can be installed. There are some programs we wouldn't want to see, such as the bloated Norton Internet Security, but generally it isn't a bad install.

The Windows Experience Index isn't a particularly detailed system test, but we include it just for the sake of being thorough. We can see that the system is limited to 5.7 by the graphics score.

By default, the 500GB hard drive is configured into two separate partitions, one for the operating system install and the other for data and backups.

CPUz and GPUZ highlight the system components. Our CX640 is using the Intel Core i5 2410M which is rated at 2.3ghz, built on a 32nm architecture with a 3MB level 3 cache. The memory is running at 1333mhz with 9-9-9-24 1T timings. The motherboard is tagged with ‘PEGATRON CORPORATION' with an American Megatrends bios. The Nvidia GT520M has 1GB of GDDR3 onboard and is connected to a 128 bit memory interface. 16 ROP's and 48 unified shaders round out the specifications. It is clocked at 600mhz core with memory running at 900mhz.

This system retails for £576.95 on Amazon.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
ASRock Ion3D – Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
MSI GT680 – Intel Core i7 2630QM
MSI FX623 – Intel Core i5 460M
MSI FX600 – Intel Core i3 330M

Software:
3DMark 11
PCMark 11
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HD Tach
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2
Alien V Predator
Total War Shogun 2
Dead Space 2
Dirt 3
The Witcher 2

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter
Nikon D300S SLR with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes)
Panasonic Lumix TZ10

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score of 871 at entry preset is not a wonderful result from the CX640, but this is a tough Direct X 11 test and a struggle for the modest graphics hardware.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

The sluggish hard drive lowers the overall score, although the rest of the system seems quite responsive according to these results.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

A score of 2.57 is respectible for a mobile Core i5, and while it wouldn't be the kind of system you would want to handle rendering on a daily basis, in a pinch it could perform some duties on the move.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

A very strong showing from the Core i5 2410M processor, outperforming the Core i5 460M in the CX623 by a considerable margin.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate the Intel 510 250GB from the onboard SATA 6GBps controller.

The Hitachi drive certainly feels sluggish, and the CrystalDiskMark results verify our initial real world findings. The 5,400 rpm drive seems to be limited to around 70 MB/s with both sequential read and write tests.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get close to the physical performance of the device.

Again, the average MB/s rate scores under 70 MB/s with the burst rate just over 230 MB/s. This clearly shows performance limitations of a 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch ‘eco friendly' drive.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Drive performance again is limited to just under 70 MB/s read and under 50 MB/s write.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of TRON LEGACY.

CPU utilisation averages 9 percent across all the 1080p content testing.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

The Core i5 CPU has no problems displaying HD flash content, supported by the Nvidia discrete card. Plenty of CPU cycles free for multitasking, if the need is there.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Nvidia Cuda acceleration is disabled, then enabled. Both times are recorded.

Nvidia CUDA acceleration makes all the difference in this test, reducing the encoding times by a whopping 18 minutes, from almost 37 minutes to around 19 minutes.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evaluate motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on BluRay. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content, so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

We connected the MSI GX640 to an external LaCie 730 monitor for image quality testing.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	MSI GX640
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	3
Bridge Traffic	3
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	2
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	179

The nVidia GT520M is capable of delivering a very high level of image quality.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are testing in Direct X 11 mode.

At these settings, the game doesn't look great but the frame rate never drops below the sweet spot of 30. It is perfectly playable however and many people will accept the lower settings for on the move gaming.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

At these settings, the game is generally playable, with occasional dips under 25 fps. A few settings lowered even further might make the game slightly smoother, but it is a fair balance of frame rate and image quality.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

At these settings, the game is playable, dropping a few times under the 30 fps sweet spot.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1366×768 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality High, MSAA Samples 0, 0 af, ambient occulsion off, shadow complexity medium, motion blur on.

The Nvidia hardware struggles to find the the horsepower to power through the engine at these settings with the frame rate dropping below 20 fps a couple of times.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a third-person role-playing video game developed by Polish studio CD Projekt RED. It is a sequel to the 2007 video game The Witcher and just like its predecessor, the game is based on the book series of the same name by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings contains many different paths and storylines, along with multiple endings. As in the first game, the player takes control of Geralt of Rivia, one of the few remaining Witchers. Witchers are humans that have been genetically enhanced and trained to fight monsters from a young age.

The Witcher is a demanding game, and the system struggles to maintain a solid frame rate. Lower resolutions such as 1024×768 would probably need to be used for a smoother experience.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together.

Under extended load the CPU temperatures hit 85c and the fan is actively spinning to maintain stability.

We also attached 5 diodes to the rear of the machine to measure the load temperatures of various parts of the chassis. These were measured after 1 hour of intensive work.

The underside of the laptop is generally very cool, although there is a hot spot on the left (right from the underside view). Those who remember the opened chassis from earlier in the review will already be aware this is the position of the heatpipes and CPU/GPU. Unfortunately, when placed on a lap, the hot spot is easily felt and can end up a rather unpleasant experience.

To test the battery today we put the machine through three sets of real world situations. One as a media movie lover on the move, a person wanting to watch HD media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness (any less and quality suffers). Secondly as a business man, using the machine for productivity with wireless enabled and balanced power settings with a mid way (around half) brightness setting. Thirdly as a gamer on the move, with the nVidia solution fully active and screen brightness up high.

Battery life is actually pretty good, averaging just under 4 hours use under general ‘light' duties. When watching media, this drops by around an hour, and when gaming the time available is around 1 hour and 50 minutes. The battery supplied is actually rated quite low, so if MSI offered a higher specification battery, the life would be dramatically improved.

We measure from a distance of around 2 foot from the chassis with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The system is clearly heard when loaded, generally producing noise emissions between 34 and 38 dBa. Not the quietest of machines and we feel another fan on the other side of the chassis would have helped lower overall volume, with both fans able to spin much slower.

We tested the MSI panel today with a range of movies and games, including bluray discs. We also used a LaCie measurement gun for some of the analysis results.

The panel with the CX640 is highly reflective and initially we weren't that impressed. Movie content looks fine, but the colours are slightly washed out and there are some backlighting inconsistencies, particularly noticeable at the edges of the screen. We also noticed some banding issues with some of the testing, indicating some compromises have had to be made. Text is reasonably clear and sharp, down to a small size, so it would be ideal for office duties.

Offset viewing is distinctly average and with the high gloss finish, there are potential problems caused by glare behind the user, depending on the environment. Obviously we all expect some glare from a gloss style screen, but it is particularly noticeable with this machine. On a more positive note, we didn't notice any ghosting or artifacting when playing fast motion games, or when watching action movies.

We used Displaymate to analyse the panel and the overall image quality could only be described as average for this sector. The gamut range in Gamutvision is limited, indicating some potential issues for designers. If you need accurate colour representation and reproduction then this is not the ideal machine. There is also a slight red shift overall, which can be dialed out a little with software settings.

White purity shows a shift of around 10 percent in the middle third of the screen, with it rising to over 20% at all edges. It is slightly more pronounced at the upper and lower areas of the screen but in actuality the screen looks relatively ‘clean' when viewing movies. Pure clean whites will have a slight tinge of grey throughout, with a minor red shift, but it isn't that noticeable in the real world. Not a reference set of figures but acceptable for most people, especially those in this price sector.

Black definition is reasonable, with noticeable leak at the edges of the screen, indicating a lower cost panel. It does look worse in the technical representation above, but if you value pure black reproduction then this screen really won't be ideal. It is obviously more noticeable with night oriented movies, such as Batman. Again, the leak is more pronounced from the top of the screen (from the left down), leaking by up to 23%.

Overall the screen is reasonable, but nothing exceptional in any of the key areas. If we were to give it a strength, we would say focusing was strong with good clear text. It is a better option for a businessman, than a media fanatic. We would aim higher up the MSI price range if media is important.

We do admire MSI products, and consistently over the last year they have been producing quality graphics cards, motherboards and computer systems. We have to honest and say that the CX640 isn't one of the most memorable laptops we have tested in the last year.

The choice of processor is a good foundation for the system – the Intel Core i5 2410M is powerful and it delivered great results with our synthetic and real world testing over the last week.

The system on paper seems well balanced, the processor is strong, there is a useful 4GB of DDR3 installed, full USB 3.0 support and a generous 500GB hard drive. In this case however, the ‘on paper' specifications are more impressive than the end result.

Firstly, the build quality gives a little cause for concern. We wouldn't say it will fall apart in a couple of months, but the lid creaks and groans and there is some flex on the movement. The keyboard is spongy and the trackpad while responsive, feels very uncomfortable to use for any period of time.

On a technical level, the Nvidia GT520M is quite weak and only suitable for very casual gamers who don't mind dialing down the image quality settings and resolution. The biggest issue we have with the system however is the sluggish, low performing ECO 5,400 rpm hard drive. Boot up is slow, application response is appalling, and the overall operating system is bogged down by sub 70MB/s transfer rates. Before wrapping up the review we installed an entry level SSD and the whole system was utterly transformed into something we could use daily.

We are aware that computers in this price bracket are built to tight margins and that compromises have to be made, however we would have preferred a smaller, yet faster hard drive. Something like the Western Digital Scorpio 320GB can be picked up for £35 inc vat, so it wouldn't add much cost to the overall system build.

Battery life is respectable, averaging well over three and half hours when used modestly on the move. The screen quality is distinctly average, and when weighing in the overall product it is really not going to stand out in such a crowded marketplace.

To end on a positive note, the speaker system is rather impressive and we were surprised with the quality of the overall sound, especially in the lower mid range registers.

After some recent price deductions, you can buy it from Amazon for £576 inc vat.

Pros:

• good speaker system
• competitive pricing
• good processor
• decent battery life

Cons:

• weak Nvidia GPU
• hard drive is very slow, dragging overall performance down significantly
• build quality is average at best
• keyboard is not great
• trackpad is uncomfortable to use

Kitguru says: Not one of MSI's finer moments, but for the price it is worth a look, especially with recent price cuts.

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