If you've been following our reviews of Windows 8 laptops, you know we haven't been too kind to the slider form factor. It's not like we set out to pan these machines, but time and again we've found that the propped-up display ruins the typing experience. Keep that in mind as we begin our review of the Slidebook S20, MSI's flagship Win 8 device, priced at $1,200 in the US. It's a bold move from a company whose bread and butter is not ultraportables, but gaming systems. In fact, the 11.6-inch S20 is the outfit's only high-end Windows 8 Ultrabook. So the company must have quite a bit of confidence in that form factor, then, if it didn't bother with dockable tablets or some other kind of convertible design. Could that mean the S20 has something all the others don't?
Though we're not normally into sliders, the S20's display, ironically enough, might be our favorite thing about it. For starters, it comes stacked with excellent credentials: IPS technology for wide viewing angles, with 1,920 x 1,080 pixels crammed into an 11.6-inch panel (talk about dense). Just as important, though, MSI did a very smart thing in making the screen angle adjustable -- something you won't find on other sliders, or most dockable tablets, for that matter.
The S20 has two speakers, each located on the bottom side, though not in any sort of symmetrical arrangement. Despite the asymmetry there, the soundstage feels balanced -- until we went hunting for the speakers, we weren't sure exactly where the audio was coming from. And that's a good thing: no one wants to watch a movie with the sensation that all the explosions and sound effects are coming from somewhere on the left. I also found that although the speakers sit on the underside of the device, the sound didn't really get muffled when listening to music with the laptop in my lap. As you can imagine, the quality itself is a bit tinny, but it's no worse than most other laptops we've tested. Keep the volume somewhere short of the top level, and you should get by without much distortion.
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