Final thoughts and rating
Built firmly on the foundations laid down by the original Wind, MSI's new netbook baby, the Wind U120H, is more of the same, but with a slight twist.Everything that was good about the erstwhile MSI netbook standard-bearer is here too, including super-bright screen, decent keyboard and above-average build quality. MSI adds to this by including an HSDPA card, internally, that when paired with an appropriate SIM, provides go-anywhere connectivity. No longer are you tied to a particular home network and there's no (relatively) bulky USB dongle in sight.
But the Wind U120H isn't without its fair share of detractions. Firstly, MSI removes the easily-accessible DIMM slot from the original Wind, meaning that 1GB of on-board memory is your lot. Next, whilst mechanical hard-drives remain cheap, there's no listed option for changing to an SSD at the time of purchase, and SSD + netbook make an implicitly good fit.
Competitors, and there are many, have released netbooks that use some nifty features, from flash-augmented storage to fingerprint readers. MSI, though, has kept the U120H's guts the same. Is that saying the new Wind is bad? Of course not, because the original was so good.
As an interim stopgap, the U120H is a decent-enough netbook shipping with a projected street price of around £319, with the three-cell battery, putting it at the higher end of the scale.
What we'd like to see is a Wind that uses a low-power Silverthorne Atom processor, paired with an energy-efficient Poulsbo chipset and shipping with an SSD as standard. There's always the Wind U115, we suppose. That or an NVIDIA-powered ION Wind would be nice.
Bottom line: the Wind U120H represents a minor update from the incumbent. It's better in some ways (HSDPA) but not as good in some (lack of RAM expandability), but choice is always a good thing for the consumer.
The good
Super-bright, easy-to-read screen
HSDPA allows for dongle-free, go-anywhere Internet
Decent battery life with the six-cell battery
The not so good
A lack of RAM expansion
Other than HSDPA, practically identical to the original, hinting at a lack of innovation in six months
Advent 4213, priced at £280, available for a couple of months, does pretty much the same job.
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
MSI Wind U120H (HSDPA)
