MSI CX640 Pro Reviews

On the face of it, MSI's good-looking CX640 laptop has most of the bases covered. £600 is a reasonable outlay for a 15.6in machine with an Intel Core i5 2410M chip, discrete GeForce GT 520M 1GB graphics card, 4GB RAM, USB 3.0, and 500GB hard-drive. The seamless switching between integrated graphics and GeForce is taken care of by NVIDIA's excellent Optimus technology, and battery life, via Intel's HD Graphics, is decent, hovering around three hours for movie playback. But specifications are just one part of a modern laptop. MSI's build quality could be better, particularly for the keyboard and trackpad, which are both sub-par, and a little more care with the bundled software wouldn't go amiss. It's little touches like these that dictate a laptop's appeal, we think, and MSI would do well to take another look at what competitors such as Dell are doing in this space.The MSI CX640 plies its trade in a cutthroat market that demands excellence to stand out. With average integration of quality components, the laptop floats in a sea of mainstream homogeneity. Worthy of being put on a basic shortlist if you're after an all-purpose notebook, it's a a distinctly reasonable proposition at £600.

Aside from a keyboard that lacks the quality we'd like to see, the CX640 has no significant downsides. The combination of excellent performance, long battery life, vibrant screen and solid build makes this a fantastic all-round laptop that will suit a variety of tastes and users. Most importantly, it will handle anything you care to throw at it.

Our final summary of the MSI CX640-i547W7P contains some good and some not so good points. We like the new design of the series, and the updated specs and range of ports are also moderately impressive. Demanding users will be less impressed by the not wholly robust case and the spongy input devices, however. The miserable speakers are also out of place; we expected more from a multimedia notebook. The only thing that can partially excuse MSI on this front is the laptop’s price of around €600.

A fast processor can't make up for the CX640's poor keyboard and terrible touchpad, and build quality isn't the best either.