Getting “Back to School” Ready With MSI Cubi N

Performance

There are no benchmarks here, as that’s not really what this review is about. We, by which I mean myself and the family, wanted to get hands-on with this one and just use it, so that’s what we did. I even set it up on the dining table, as it seemed fitting to the compact “put it anywhere” design. The first boot led me through the usual Windows 11 setup, very easy, and within ten minutes, it was updated and ready to rock; very beginner friendly! The curved monitor looks great, and the 24″ panel has a great pixel density at Full HD, leading to a clear and detailed image.

The panel is a nice size for some casual media consumption, and running Plex on here worked well enough too. Albeit, I ended up using my Plex Server to stream to this device instead, as the internal storage can only hold so much.

I didn’t watch all of Dune, but had a good flick through its muddled movie (the old one, not the new one). What does surprise me is the colours on this monitor. Nothing groundbreaking, but surprisingly clean and vibrant, covering sRGB very accurately.

I think it’s better demonstrated in cartoons, the contrast and black levels are very good overall, and I really like that slim bezel. Plus, having the system behind the monitor, well it just frees up the desktop front distractions too, which is great; stops the kids from playing with the wires too.

Bit of Fred Dibnah just sneaking in there. Trying to show some distinction that the kids used it for cartoons and then the grown-ups, but it was all me really.

One thing I have noticed is the speakers, they’re lacking in power and some videos did seem too quiet overall. For general navigation and a few light videos? No problem. Otherwise, I’d be tempted to chuck a small set of Bluetooth speakers, or even a little soundbar under this monitor for daily use. Or, of course, a set of headphones will do nicely.

It’s not completely gutless for gaming either, those little iGPUs are pretty potent these days. RetroArch ran great, and emulation up to the PS2 and Gamecube era ran really well. The boy ripping it up on Altered Beast today!

I even got Soul Calibur HD running and it looked fantastic.

GTA IV was a stretch, but I amazingly got to around 40 FPS with minimal settings at Full HD. It’s playable, but it makes the PC game look like it came out on the PlayStation 2.

So I tried San Andreas, ran like a dream at stock settings!

Still, though, less demanding games will run well enough. Sonic Mania, 60 FPS, no problems.

The kids love their Indie games, so Stardew Valley, Super Meat Boy, Inside, OwlBoy, Flashback, and a bunch of other retro ports and stuff like that, they all ran great. I have bloody quick internet with low ping too, so Game Pass Cloud works great for systems like this. Honestly, it’s a very capable machine, and the whole time, we never got any homework done either, making it even more fun! It’s a nippy machine given the limited specifications, and the whole time I ran it, it was basically silent too, which is fantastic.