MSI X370 Notebook Hands-On: Familiar Design, Whole New Platform

We’ve long been fans of MSI’s X-Slim series of notebooks, but their low-voltage processors often left something to be desired in the performance department. Our favorite X-Slim notebook of all was last year’s X350, which featured a raven black chassis, gorgeous textured deck, and .8-inch thin frame that were sometimes overshadowed by its mediocre 1.3-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. After releasing the X360, a Core i5 ULV version of the same design, in Taiwan only, MSI has decided to ditch Intel’s low-voltage chips and release the X370 with AMD’s new Fusion E-350 CPU and associated AMD Radeon 6320 graphics.

We had a chance to ogle the X370 at MSI’s booth today at CES and we fell in love all over again with the design.There is absolutely no change to the 0.8-inch thin, 3.8-pound chassis we liked last year, but with the new AMD Fusion processor, we expect battery life that’s at least as good as the 7 hours we saw on the X350 and performance that’s a whole lot better. Other specs include a 13.4-inch 1366 x 768 screen, 320 to 500GB hard drive, and up to 4GB of RAM.

We didn’t get to benchmark the system yet, but we hope to test an X370 in the near future and see how it stacks up. This could be the MSI X-Slim we’ve been waiting for.

MSI expects to ship the X370 sometime this Spring. There’s no definitive word on pricing, but an MSI rep said it should cost at least $100 less than the X350 did at launch. Check out the hands-on video below for a closer look at the MSI X370.