The MSI CR610-013UK is a widescreen media centre laptop which provides Blu-ray functionality. While Blu-ray laptops are becoming increasingly common, it is still rare to find them for less than £599.
Letting you watch the latest high definition (HD) movie releases, the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive is the key selling point of this laptop.
Of course, a movie is only as good as the screen you watch it on, but thankfully the 16-inch widescreen panel used here is excellent. With impressive brightness, colour and contrast, photos and videos look great.
However its worth noting that the Super-TFT screen coating is highly reflective, and it lacks a Full HD 1080p resolution.
Where this machine misses a trick is in its limited graphics performance. While HD video runs comfortably and smoothly, a powerful graphics card would have added to its multimedia potential. Unfortunately, the ATi chip used only suits the most basic gaming and media editing.
The same is true of the home and office abilities of this machine. Despite using a dual-core processor, the performance is suited to home and office applications. There is still ample power for most daily use, but don't expect the cutting-edge power of the Samsung R580, for example.
Another flaw is the less than pleasing keyboard. Many keys are small and thin and placed too closely together, making it easy to strike adjacent keys when typing. Another frustrating choice is that the left Ctrl key is indented, making it less accessible than on rival machines.
More pleasingly, build quality is generally excellent. Resilient plastics have been used and all panels feel firmly attached throughout. The black and gunmetal grey design scheme lacks the flair of the HP and Dell, but provides a suitably stylish look for the home or office.
Basic mobility
Inevitably for such a large laptop, mobility is limited. While this isn't the heaviest machine around – weighing just 2.5kg – the 186-minute battery life provides basic mobility; but you can still work comfortably around the home when necessary.
A pleasing set of features compensate somewhat for the MSI's flaws, however. High-speed wireless and fixed network connectivity is on offer, an eSATA port provides speedy access to external hard drives and a 500GB internal hard drive provides truly capacious storage for all your data and files.
Overall, the CR610-013UK is a competent entry-level media centre and its combination of a stunning screen and Blu-ray compatibility is a rare find at this price.
Unfortunately, its poor usability and limited performance prevent it from achieving our highest recommendation.
Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview
Your comments (1) Click to add a new comment
wiak
August 7th 2010
1. "Weak 3D performance"
its a mainstream laptop, its miles ahead of any intel laptop with Intel Integrated Crapstics that you have to compare it to to be fair
"Battery life"
again its a mainstream laptop 2 hours and 30 min is good enough, its has alot more performance than a 10 hour Atom laptop...
you also forgot to tell everyone that this laptop has a ExpressCard slot, that allows you to upgrade to USB 3.0, eSATA 6Gbps, unlike some other laptops on the market that just does NOT have expresscard, and it also has a HDMI slot! yey!
CR610 comes in varius models with or with out blu-ray, the one i have has DVD Burner and a Athlon II M300 CPU with Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Graphics
btw its making no noise for me, and does not get hot, for me the screen had crappy colors compared to a real screen, other than that its exellent for surfing, office work, email, watching a movie on a big sceen using hdmi!
lets not forget it also has a Realtek PCIe Gigabit Ethernet and Ralink 11n Wireless Card built in ;)
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments