Advent 4211

We’ve had cause to mention the Advent 4211 a few times in the last few weeks, but if you missed our previous coverage, here’s one-sentence recap: the Advent 4211 is essentially the MSI Wind U100 under a different name and with a much lower price.

MSI sells the Advent 4211 to Dixons Sales Group under an OEM arrangement and it does something similar with Medion and the Akoya Mini E1210 in Germany. The price difference, according to MSI, is due to the Advent having a lesser 12-month warranty (the Wind has two years) and less sparkly finish, but we suspect DSG’s more aggressive pricing strategy plays a part, too.

We were very impressed with the MSI Wind U100 we first saw it, but much of that love stemmed from its big battery that promised six hours or so of use. But when the Wind actually went on sale, MSI had downgraded the battery to one that’s good for only a couple of hours. Not a huge problem per se, but MSI didn’t lower the price to compensate and at around £350, the Wind U100 ceases to be great value.

At £280 though, the Advent 4211 is a much better deal and yes, it really is identical to the Wind U100 in every respect. It’s obviously a different colour, but we don’t dislike the dowdy grey finish, since if anything, it’s less likely to draw attention when you whip out your netbook in public. We stopped short at dismantling both netbooks to perform an internal examination, but SiSoft Sandra reports the same set of components of both models.

Actually, we did spot one minor difference between the Advent 4211 and MSI Wind – the Advent’s screen is marginally dimmer when set at full brightness. It’s still crisp, clear and luminous enough to qualify as “great” and we’d need to see a few more models before making a definitive statement on this.

Both performance and battery life of the Advent 4211 and MSI Wind are the same, but the Intel Atom N270 processor in both fares a little better than in the Asus PC 901 and 1000. It seems that the SSD of the Asus netbook’s is a bit of a bottleneck when it comes to our multi-application test  – just look at the 20% performance increase it bestows upon the 4211 and Wind.

That’s really all we can say about the Advent 4211 and if you want a more detailed analysis, we’ll point you at our MSI Wind U100 review rather than rehash it here. We awarded the Wind 5 out 6 and it only missed on that extra star because of the small battery and comparatively high price. Now that we’ve seen the Advent 4211, we’re almost tempted to knock another star off in order to highlight the gap between the two models.

In fact in hindsight, we wish we’d been a bit less generous with the Acer Aspire One too, though it’s still fair to say that it’s still the best interpretation of the small, light netbook concept we’ve seen.

At £280, the Advent 4211 represents remarkable value – much more so than the MSI Wind. The small battery is still a problem, of course, but one that we’re more inclined to overlook at this price – as is the lesser warranty. So, if you’re looking for a small, cheap portable that’s more laptop than netbook, the Advent 4211 is the one to go for.

[Related: See all Mobile Computer netbook reviews to date]