MSI W20 3M Hands-on: AMD-Powered Windows 8 Tablet

At today's AMD Accelerate 2013 conference, AMD showed off a number of products featuring its processors. Among them was the MSI W20 3M, an 11.6-inch tablet running Windows 8. We went hands-on with this new tablet to see how it measures up with other Windows 8 slates on the market.

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While it doesn't feel as solidly built at Microsoft's Surface tablet, the W20 does have a brushed aluminum rear panel, and at 1.5 pounds, is half a pound lighter than Microsoft's tablet. At 12.1 x 7.7 x 0.39 inches, it's also very thin, and feels all the more so owing to its tapered sides. Also on the back of the W20 is a fingerprint reader, a nice security feature, as well as a power button and volume controls, which seem somewhat inconveniently located.

The W20 has an 11.6-inch 1366 x 768-pixel IPS display with a 10-point multi-touch touch screen. While that's a lower resolution than the Surface, which has a 1080p display, it should mean that the W20 will have a lower price point. For example, while it's not a tablet, the $399 HP Pavilion Touchsmart 11z also has an A4 CPU.

The W20 is powered by an AMD A4-1200 processor with AMD Radeon HD 8180 graphics and 2GB of DDR3L RAM. Consumers will have a choice of either a 64GB or 128GB SSD. THe W20 lacks USB ports, but a plastic tab along one side covers a microSD card slot. Connectivity includes 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

With a 2-cell, 34.78-watt hour battery, MSI claims the W20 will last up to 9 hours on Windows idle, and 6 hours of 1080p video playback.

Pricing and availability of the W20 3M has not yet been announced; we're certainly looking forward to testing the tablet.

Michael was the Reviews Editor at Laptop Mag. During his tenure at Laptop Mag, Michael reviewed some of the best laptops at the time, including notebooks from brands like Acer, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, and Asus. He wrote in-depth, hands-on guides about laptops that defined the world of tech, but he also stepped outside of the laptop world to talk about phones and wearables. He is now the U.S. Editor-in-Chief at our sister site Tom's Guide, where he oversees all evergreen content and the Homes, Smart Home, and Fitness/Wearables categories for the site..

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