MSI X-Slim X340 Ultraportable Review

Keyboard & Trackpad

Being a 13.4in laptop, MSI has been able to incorporate a full sized keyboard onto the X-Slim X340 with plenty of space to spare. Sadly, even though MSI has achieved that, the keyboard could do with a bit of a revamp.

First of all, the layout isn’t exactly brilliant in many respects. The biggest annoyance is not that the Return key is only half height, but it’s actually the fact that the Page Down key is right next to it. Frankly, the whole right hand edge of the keyboard quickly became an annoyance for us because all of the keys on that edge have been compromised.

The Backspace key is much thinner than on most notebooks and the right hand Shift key is also needlessly small – it’s the cursor keys and End key which are to blame for that. Essentially, anyone who has learned to use both Shift keys will quickly find themselves moving back to just using the left hand one.


If that wasn’t enough though, the X340’s keyboard problems continue after a few hours of use – it’s not particularly satisfying to use and that’s not due solely to the keyboard layout issues. The issue is that keyboard doesn’t have a consistent feel to it and you’ll find that there are certain keys that just feel incredibly unremarkable and dead when pressed. Other keys have a solid and positive action, but there’s quite a lot of flex in the keyboard deck which makes it feel a little hollow overall. This makes it quite hard to keep a regular rhythm when typing and we found ourselves making more typos than usual.

On a more positive note, there are no obvious problems with where the hotkeys have been placed. The Up and Down cursor keys control the brightness, while Left and Right control volume. There was, however, a slight confusion on our part because we couldn’t get the wireless networking toggle to work. We found ourselves pressing what looked to be the obvious key based on the icon (F10) but in actual fact, it’s F8 that toggles wireless networking on and off.


Things continued to look up with the trackpad and our first impressions were positive. Although its formed from the same plastic as the surrounding area, it’s slightly recessed, which makes it easy to distinguish between the trackpad and the surrounding wrist rest. The buttons are also pleasingly responsive, giving a positive click when pressed before quickly returning back to their resting position.

One annoyance we did come across after using the X340 for a spot of web browsing one evening was that the trackpad wasn’t quite as good as our first impressions had led us to believe. If anything, it’s a little unresponsive and laggy – it’s difficult to quantify exactly how laggy it is because it’s not until you start to use the trackpad at great length that it becomes noticeable. At first we thought it was down to the low mouse sensitivity the machine was set at when we received it, but even after tweaking that, we still couldn’t get completely comfortable with its responsiveness.

It’s a shame because, apart from this niggling issue, we got on pretty well with the X340’s trackpad.