MSI Slidebook S20 (11.6-inch) - Slide-out Ultrabook

Slide-out Ultrabook

Taiwanese manufacturer MSI’s new 11.6-inch, Core i5 running Slidebook S20, is the poster-boy of the company's prowess in designing new-age notebooks. The company has been grabbing headlines in recent times for its well balanced gaming notebooks, which the MSI GT70-0NE won our Editor's Choice Award for Best Gaming Notebook segment at our Tech Awards 2013 event.

Likewise, MSI has impressed us with the Slidebook S20 nearly a year ago at Computex 2012 as it was one of the earlier vendors to adopt the sliding convertible notebook design for a mainstream notebook - well before more popular competitors like Toshiba and Sony came about. The company has also been a forerunner of introducing really slim and lightweight notebooks with the X-Slim series, well before Ultrabooks became a standard. We first shared their X-Slim line-up in 2009, following which we've reviewed them here and here.

It took the Slidebook S20 some time before availability improved across the globe, thus eroding its lead in the convertible Ultrabook segment. Fortunately, there are only very few products that fit this new and rising notebook segment and it still has a fighting chance. That's why we are here to present you our review of the MSI Slidebook S20 to increase your options.

As you might have noticed, the S20 starts off as a tablet, but can effortlessly convert to a notebook form factor, just like the Toshiba Satellite U920t and the Sony Vaio Duo 11. Its conversion method is very much identical to the Toshiba Satellite U920t with its rail-like system that runs down both sides of the display, while a steel rod stabilizes the rails so that it slides evenly.

This conversion method allows the S20’s display to be tilted in almost any angle you’d like, even flat down for easy interaction with the screen, just like on the Toshiba U920t. However, because the S20 is smaller, there’s no need for a stabilizing rail in the centre like on the U920t, which distorts the U920t’s display.

While the sliding mechanism for the S20 is pretty smooth, it’s not as silky smooth as the Sony Vaio Duo 11 which also has a sliding form factor, but uses a different mechanism. Also, unlike the Sony Vaio Duo 11, which could convert its form in one fluid motion, the S20 requires a two-step motion. You’d have to flatten the display, and then push it in, just like how you’d do it with the Toshiba Satellite U920t. However, the design adopted by MSI and Toshiba does have an advantage whereby you can prop the screen to any angle you desire and that too is a plus point when trying to use your convertible Ultrabook in various positions and scenarios.

Design and Handling: Tablet Mode

We must say at first glance, the S20 does look like pretty and sleek machine. Its bezel is pearl white (it only comes in white) while the back of the machine is silver machined aluminum. Having said that, we still feel a matte black finish would actually increase the appeal of the Slidebook S20. A quick look at what's on the market and you would realize that white isn't as popular a choice as black and our gut feeling tells us that the S20 would have a more executive look if it was finished in black. On the other hand, white would also help it stand out and that's probably the reason why the Slidebook S20 is only offered in white.

Colors aside, we like how the machine looks when it’s closed in its tablet form. It reminds us of the iPad, except that the Slidebook S20 is a full fledged notebook that's much thicker at 19.8mm and heavier at 1.16kg (1160 grams). This bulk and weight is unfortunately unavoidable if you need the power of a full notebook, which the Slidebook S20 delivers. As expected, it is quite heavy to hold the device in tablet mode for a long duration and you would quite likely use it on your lap or table. Since the device can slide the keyboard out, we often found that it can help act as a base while you prop the screen at any angle you desire for maximum comfort. So unlike most tablets in the market, we found the Slidebook S20 more adaptable - as long as you don't mind the extra bulk of the device.

General handling in tablet mode was good as we didn't notice any creaks or flex on the machine, most likely thanks to the aluminum underbelly. However, we did encounter one annoyance that might affect users depending on how one holds the Slidebook S20. As pointed out in the below photo with a red arrow, that's the location of the machine's power button and it's right smack in the way where we handled the device. As such, if we exerted more pressure, the system would accidentally transition to standby mode or power-up unexpectedly. MSI should have really paid more attention to basic handling behaviors.

Design and Handling: Notebook Mode

Sliding open the Slidebook S20 to use it in its notebook mode, you would notice that most of the interior is also plastic like its display front. The entire keyboard area, including the left and right space of the machine beside the keyboard, and the space behind the screen is all plastic. The only metal you’ll see when operating the device in this form factor are two metal strips that protect the edges from scratches from the rail mechanism behind the display. The decision to use mostly plastic on the interior and exterior is most likely the byproduct of the device's price point. It doesn't look bad, but neither does it look fabulous. Instead, we think of it as a decent compromise. After all, it doesn't flex, creak or bend thanks to the aluminum alloy structure underneath that makes the device rigid.

One thing we appreciate however, was that the external ports and connectivity options are clearly marked, which enables users to easily locate the ports on their convertible Ultrabook without flipping the machine around or craning your neck around the sides of the machine.

In general usage, we actually found the MSI Slidebook S20 to be very versatile as its convertible nature allowed it to prop the screen in any angle, while the compact keyboard formed a study base that you could use it in various undocumented positions on your lap or prop it anywhere on yourself while on the bed, couch, sofa or just about anywhere you can think of. The short distance from the screen also meant that in any situation where you felt you needed the mouse, you would actually reach out and touch screen to interact. Of course the drawbacks still persist such as when you need a precision input, the Slidebook S20 doesn't have a solution for you as there's no trackpoint or trackpad integrated; you would instead need to plug in your own mouse. Further to that, if you recall earlier when we mentioned the power button wasn't in an ideal position, that's still a problem in its notebook form factor when you're trying to juggle or prop the device. As photographed below, it's obvious that the location of the power button is in the way of handling the device. Of course if you intend to strictly use it on a table top, you're unlikely to encounter any issues.

We’re also not a fan of the tiny physical Windows button on the front of the S20. Other vendors either have a more manageable sized physical button that's easier to activate, or a soft Windows button. And for those who're really noticing the nitty-gritty details, the Windows button is also off-centre to make way for the MSI logo.

Keyboard and Input Options

So we already know that the keyboard area and the keys are entirely made up of plastic but yet, we enjoyed typing on it as the keys were shallow but springy and rigid. But we should forewarn those used to larger keyboards on desktops or 14-inch (or larger) notebooks that it will take time to transition to the more cramped keyboard layout (a common issue for notebooks sized like the S20) and key placements like the shortened right shift key and the presence of dedicated but small arrow keys. For the more observant end-users, you might notice the shoddy screen printing on the plastic keys that unfortunately detract from the decent quality of the keyboard.

That's not all. Unfortunately due to its small frame, the S20 forgoes a trackpad and neither does it have trackpoint stick. While the Sony Vaio Duo 11 faced similar space constraints, it at least has an optical trackpoint and left/right buttons as a trackpad replacement when reaching out to touch the screen gets tiring or when you need a more accurate mouse-like input option. The S20 on the other hand, doesn’t have any other input options save for the keyboard and touchscreen. As such, we found this to be annoying at times and we even encountered an issue where the display’s multi-touch wasn't as responsive as we hoped it to be (this was in a full screen PC game).

This wouldn’t affect users who generally use a mouse with their notebooks, but for those who prefer not to lug around a mouse, the Slidebook S20 might make it mandatory so do take note.

Display & Speakers

The S20’s display is a 10-point multi-touch screen, but it's unfortunately not using Gorilla Glass that's more resistant to scratches. We guess costing was a key factor in positioning the device to a different audience group than the Sony and Toshiba equivalent convertible notebooks. It is however, like Gorilla Glass based devices, extremely prone to smudges and stains from general handing and there’s no avoiding it unless you get a matte screen protector for the device. Fortunately, the screen is a full HD display supporting 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution that we found was bright, vibrant and crisp, as well as sporting good viewing angles thanks to the IPS LCD screen used. At a price point of S$1,599, you can't have it all (referring to the lack of tougher glass), but it should satisfy most users who do handle their products with care and use carriers or other protective covers for their tablets and notebooks.

The only usability concern you might face is that icons and text in the desktop environment in default settings would be too small, and strain your eyes. There’s an easy fix for that - you can actually scale the entire desktop and all its elements (Windows 8 has a desktop scale factor setting) or your could choose to just increase the text size. The latter might be preferable if you would like to retain the usable screen space though some items like the icons wouldn't scale with the text. This isn’t the S20’s limitation, but rather a problem that all small form factor, full HD display notebooks face when using the Windows OS. Your preferences may vary, but suffice to say, Windows 8 should be able to appease most users with either desktop scaling or individual text element sizing.

From an aesthetics point of view, you may or may not like the Slidebook S20's rather wide bezel that seems to have a black and white border surrounding the screen, thus making the usable screen area seem smaller than it really is. If the S20 comes in a black (which it unfortunately doesn't), the dual-layer of bezels might not have been prominent, but nevertheless, you still have a rather thick bezel. Then again, most other competitive devices like the Sony Vaio Duo 11, Toshiba Satellite U920t and the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro all have equally thick bezels. There's a combination of reasons for this and it comes down to the limitation of the platform underneath it, the design of the individual devices and of course the need for a reasonable sized bezel to assist in handling the device. Unlike smaller 7-inch tablets, bigger devices would require more grip, hence the thicker bezels to assist their cause.

The speakers on the S20 are decent for a machine of the S20’s size. Audio is loud and crisp enough for casual usage. However, take note that the speakers aren’t symmetrically positioned. The grill on the left is placed further upfront than the grill on the right. That said, in actual usage, we didn't hear any disparities from the uneven speaker positioning. Speaking about audio, the Slidebook S20 is endowed with Creative's THX TruStudio Pro Audio technology software suite, just like some of MSI's more premium products like the GT680 and GT70 gaming notebooks. It helps improve surround sound as well as improve audio delivery in general with further controls for tweaking in the control panel. This is probably why the audio on the S20 sounded reasonable for its compact form factor, but don't expect anything spectacular as it's still bounded by the hardware aspects like driver size, quality and audio circuitry.

Performance and Benchmarking

As you’d already know by now, the Slidebook S20 is a 11.6-inch Ultrabook that converts into a tablet or notebook form as required. As such, the machine sports components that are found in most top Ultrabooks. There’s a Core i5 consumer-ultra-low-voltage (CULV) processor on board, as well as 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. For the sake of easy reference, we’ve included other similarly sized machines such as the Sony Vaio Duo 11, ASUS Taichi 21, and Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro. Most of these machines are similarly configured and should score about the same (barring the usual variances expected due to slight hardware differences and implementation).

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PCMark 7

PCMark 7 is a benchmark we use to gauge a notebook’s overall performance. The benchmark tests several of the machine's subsystems, especially its CPU, GPU and hard drive. The final score given is a rough indication of how you can expect the machine to perform compared with other similar products. As tabulated above, most of the compared machines here sport similar components, hence the differences are kept to a minimum.

The Slidebook S20 performed to expectations here. The reason why it lags behind the ASUS Taichi 21 and Sony Vaio Duo 11 is due to the processor type used. Both the ASUS and the Sony sport Core i7 processors that are clocked higher and have a larger L2 cache, thus helping them to get the slight edge. The take away here is that while Core i7 CULV processors are slightly faster, most consumers won’t be able to discern the difference during casual use (for which Ultrabooks are designed for) like web browsing, online games, movies or even light photo or video editing. The latter tasks will definitely benefit from a better processor, so it depends if you want to top up a few hundred dollars more for a marginally faster notebook.

Benchmarks aside, the MSI Slidebook S20 is one of the fastest notebooks we've encountered in recent times as it's able to start the machine from cold boot in about seven seconds before the system is usable in Windows 8. Wake-up from sleep mode is quicker yet. A system restart is so fast, we actually thought it never even initiated our restart command (when this reviewer turned around to take a sip of water). We got to hand it to the well optimized set of components that come together to make the S20 one of the fastest modern notebooks around - swift and responsive.

3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is used to check the graphical performance of the tested devices. The fact that all the notebooks here are using the same Intel HD 4000 onboard graphics makes this benchmark look pretty pointless. Nevertheless, we gave it a go to help readers know that all the tested notebooks are performing similarly. 

Here, the S20 doesn’t perform as well as the Sony Vaio Duo 11 and the Taichi 21, again because of the slight boost they got from their faster CPU clock speeds. This means if you want to squeeze every bit of performance from your Ultrabook, you’d have to go for the Intel Core i7 models. Unfortunately, the S20 only comes in one SKU, and it’s the Intel Core i5 model. However, like PCMark 7, the difference in performance numbers don’t translate to a worse off experience for users. The actual difference is small enough that most users won’t be bothered at all.

In a nutshell, vital performance stats are looking fine for MSI Slidebook S20.

Far Cry 2

To better translate how the 3DMark numbers churned above relate to most readers, we ran an old but popular title like Far Cry 2 to gauge how these anorexic Ultrabooks are able to handle real world games. We stuck with this old benchmark since their GPUs aren't capable of tackling more intensive titles. Overall, the MSI Slidebook S20's results here mirror that of its 3DMark 11 standing, which is to be expected.

Battery Life and Portability Index

One of the more important aspects of a machine like an Ultrabook, built to be portable, is battery life. Factors that determine a notebook’s battery life include the quality and efficacy of a machine’s components (like the display and other system components), and of course the battery capacity that the device is endowed with. The notebooks we’re comparing the S20 against sport somewhat similar components, and more or less have the same battery charge, which is around 35 to 36 watts per hour.

Battery Life and Power Consumption

To test the battery life of the machines, we relied on the Powermark benchmark test, which puts the machines through a variety of tasks like opening and closing browsers, video and photo rendering, as well as document editing. We used the balanced setting which mimics the daily usage pattern of a typical user.

Out of this entire line-up, the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro had the best battery life, with or without its dock. However, the MSI Slidebook S20 almost ties with it with a battery life of 4 hours and 11 minutes - just a few minutes short of what the Samsung machine achieved with its dock. It's also more than an hour longer than what the Sony and the ASUS mahcines are capable of achieving. This difference is again attributed to the difference in platform components which the ASUS and Sony convertible Ultrabooks used a more power hungry processor and thus raked in similar higher power consumption numbers.

Benchmarks aside, it's generally safe to say that under a less intensive usage pattern, users would be able to get through a longer period of battery uptime while away from the wall socket.

Portability Index

Our portability index is an in-house formula that tries to quantify how portable a machine really is based on its battery life, mass and volume to tell us if it's worthwhile your time to carry it about.

Here, it manages to keep up with some of the best in the industry for its form factor in terms of portability. It’s excellent battery life and relatively small form factor allows it to achieve a ratio that’s on par with the Sony Vaio Duo 11. The MSI Slidebook S20 manages to balance a good mix of performance and portability, which is important for an Ultrabook and more so for a convertible Ultrabook.

A Pretty Good Attempt

We must say that MSI did a pretty good job with the Slidebook S20. Its performance is good, while its battery life is even better. Build quality also didn’t cause any usage issues, although we’d prefer if more of the device was constructed from more premium materials. While it's just a wish, we also understand that would drive up the costs considerably and MSI's choice of a metal underbelly along with a rigid plastic front makes a decent go-between for the Slidebook S20's price point.

However, we also have to add that MSI’s choice of form factor wasn’t the best. Due to its sliding mechanism and size, there wasn’t any room for a trackpad, which made it difficult at times for precision input without adding an external mouse. Further to that, we did encounter an instance where the display wasn’t able to accurately register our touch inputs in a full screen game launched in the desktop environment. We can’t be entirely sure if it’s the app’s fault, or the drivers for the machine wasn’t equipped to handle such a situation with finesse. Interested buyers should personally test the machine out as tolerance levels for input sensitivity differs from one user to another. Apart from that scenario, the multi-touch display worked perfectly. Other small niggling aesthetic-related concerns exist that we documented in the first couple of pages, but they aren't deal-breakers, especially with the S20's price point.

At $1599, it’s definitely one of the most affordable 11-inch convertible Windows 8 notebooks out in the market now. With a good build and performance, the Slidebook S20 ranked well where it counts most. If it weren’t for some of the limitations sighted above, we’d highly recommend it to users looking for a dual-purpose small and light Ultrabook for working on the go. However, if you’ve trialed the unit you’re getting, and can work around with just the touchscreen and keyboard inputs, then the S20 would suit you just fine.

It's also an ideal choice for those who can't make up their minds if they would like convertible notebooks that work like tablets but have an add-on keyboard (like the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro), or as notebook with a complimentary tablet mode (like the Lenovo Yoga 13). With the MSI Slidebook S20, you get a device that's more of notebook that's built around the tablet form factor and you have easy access to a keyboard while you use the device as a tablet or as a notebook.

While shopping for the MSI Slidebook S20, take note that there's another slim notebook called the MSI S30. This is not a convertible Ultrabook, so it's just a word of caution to avoid confusion if you think it belongs to the Slidebook series too.

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