Advent 4211c review

Advent’s 4211c is almost identical to MSI’s Wind U100, except it has an understated matt black and grey case instead of the Wind’s glossy black. The other major difference is the price: the 4211 costs £36 less than the Wind.

Like the Wind, Advent’s 4211c has a comparatively large 10in screen, which makes the 1,024×600 pixel resolution seem much more spacious than the same resolution on the 8.9in screens of Advent’s own 4489 and the 7in screen of Kohjinsha’s SC3-VB. Unlike most of the other netbooks here, it has a matte finish, reducing glare. Images look bright, but they also appear a little grainy and viewing angles aren’t very wide.

The 4211c’s keyboard shares the same layout as the Wind’s. It’s large enough for typing long documents comfortably, but some of the punctuation keys are narrower than other keys, which may trip up touch-typists. The touchpad’s tracking feels smooth and accurate, but the single pivoting button feels too small and doesn’t give enough feedback when pressed.

Unlike the Wind, the 4211c comes with a 120GB instead of a 160GB hard disk. You’ll miss the extra 40GB if you want to store photos, music and videos. With its 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor and 1GB of RAM, the 4211c had no trouble working with multiple applications, such as a web browser, word processor and email program. Standard-definition DivX videos and streaming video from the iPlayer website played back smoothly.

Unfortunately, the 4211c isn’t suitable for working for long periods away from a power socket. It lasted for just two hours and 38 minutes in our light-usage test. This compares badly to MSI’s Wind U100, which lasted nearly five hours.

Although not as cheap as Advent’s 4489, the 4211c is good value if you need a second computer to use around your house and want decent performance and a large screen. If you intend to travel regularly, MSI’s Wind U100 is the better choice thanks to its larger hard disk and better battery life.