HP Mini 311 — Design
Moving on to our pictorial overview, here's our gallery of the HP Mini 311 along with the included accessories.
The HP Mini 311 is available in either a black or white swirl pattern. We received the black version, and the white casing is an extra $20. If we were purchasing this for ourselves, we'd be inclined to go with the white model, simply because it's not as likely to show fingerprints as the black casing — and the black model definitely picks up fingerprints, with the typical glossy plastic finish found on many laptops these days. Thankfully, the palm rest and keyboard are silver instead of black and they don't have a glossy finish, so they don't show smudges very much at all by comparison. The LCD is also glossy (reflective), but we really didn't expect anything else considering the last time we saw a matte LCD in a laptop was several years back. (Yes, I know, a few companies like Apple still offer it as an option on higher end notebooks.) The LCD also has a low contrast ratio, similar to most other budget laptops/netbooks.
While the overall appearance is good, the design and construction warrant a few criticisms. For one, the placement of the touchpad with the buttons on the edge of the chassis is not something we like. Others may disagree, but the button placement in particular just wasn't something that we got used to during the course of testing. It's not a horrible touchpad by any means, but we've seen better. The touchpad also lacks gestures/multi-touch support, though it does include a vertical scrollbar along the right.
Like the touchpad, we also had concerns with the keyboard. The feel of the keys just isn't very good, with several wobbly keys on our test unit. (And this is actually the second test unit; the first one had a space bar that didn't work properly to the point where I asked NVIDIA to send a different unit!) The buttons on the keyboard and touchpad just don't have a precise fit in the casing. Over time, we expect that the keys would become even looser. I ran through some typing tests and definitely couldn't reach my normal ~60 WPM on the Mini 311; I managed 53 WPM and accuracy dropped from nearly 100% to around 95%. That's not a huge decrease, but comfort also comes into play; simply put, if you care about keyboard quality you should definitely think twice before purchasing the HP Mini 311 — or at least try it out in person.
Our overall impression of the HP Mini 311 is that it has a very good set of features, but the design and construction are lacking. If it were priced lower, we would be more forgiving, but the base model is priced about $100 higher than competing netbooks that don't use the NVIDIA ION chipset. The improved performance in certain tasks is good, but for this price we would like to see a better LCD (higher contrast ratio if nothing else), and the keyboard definitely needs some reworking. With a few minor upgrades, the price is very close to laptops like the Acer Timeline series with CULV processors and GMA 4500MHD graphics. Unlike the GMA 950 in most netbooks, the 4500MHD has video decoding support and the CPUs are generally more than twice as fast as the Atom offerings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
51 Comments
View All Comments
hybrid2d4x4 - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - link
Excellent review! Looks like you hit all the important points and I like how the game selection is more relevant to this class of notebook. IMO, this raises the bar for comprehensive notebook reviews. Kudos!OhHenry - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
How come they don't give smaller SSD like 32GB or 40GB as an option. I honestly don't need 160GB for a netbook; I do not know what to even put on it. They offered a 80GB but it was quite expensive. On a second note, wouldn't a SSD increase the battery life as well?chrnochime - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
Are you sure the samsung nc510 has the DX10 ION? Read elsewhere that the NC510 also has the ION LE, something about keeping the cost down.piroroadkill - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
You end up paying more for Ion, getting worse battery life, and still have completely useless gaming performance.Seems like a lose-lose to me. I guess it's useful for video acceleration, but that seems like a pretty fringe case for a netbook
araczynski - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
looks like exactly the kind of junk HP likes to push at a price point that would leave anyone with half a brain scratching their head, wouldn't have expected anything more from them.Jaggins - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
I would like to see if an older game like Eve online or WOW would run on these ION netbooks.Lunyone - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
I think they would be fine, just only when you get into RAID situations (or where there are alot of people and things going on). I think normal solo/small group playing should be fine. I haven't experienced it myself, but I used to game on WoW with a P3 800 mHz w/onboard graphics (Intel Extreme II, I think). Now mind you this was before the first expansion and the laptop wasn't all that special either, but the Atom would be about equivalent to a p3 at 1.6 gHz (if my reading is right).therealnickdanger - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - link
Great article, I was contemplating buying this, but now I'm not so sure. My ONLY gaming requirement is Halo PC (multiplayer). It's an old game, but has some quirks when it comes to its demands on CPU performance. So I really need to know what the 311 can do with this game. I'll mail you a copy if you'd like.The game also has a timedemo mode. Just add
-timedemo
to the command line. It takes about a minute to rum.
Devo2007 - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
A few days ago when ASUS announced their new dual-core Atom-based netbook, I ended up thinking that a CULV-based laptop would be a better idea (especially since that netbook has a 12" display, and only a 5 hour battery life).Good to see I'm not alone in this line of thinking. :)
JarredWalton - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
Exactly. This isn't really for you, but for anyone else reading that's still wondering I've got numbers. The review is still pending, but just as an example:Acer Timeline AS1810T-8679:
"63Wh" battery (11.1V, 5.27Ah/5600mAh)
Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.30GHz)
4GB DDR2 RAM
320GB HDD
Cost: http://www.onsale.com/p/5887001?dpno=7958665">$600
Battery Life
Idle: 592 minutes
Internet: 461 minutes
x264 720p: 259 minutes
Internet Minutes/Wh: 7.42
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CPU Encode: 18.04 FPS
Compare that with the Mini 311:
Battery Life
Idle: 362 minutes
Internet: 290 minutes
x264 720p: 225 minutes
Internet Minutes/Wh: 5.47
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CUDA Encode: 18.04 FPS
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CPU Encode: 7.27 FPS
So here's my point (spoiling my own upcoming article). For $600 you can get a Timeline 1810 that's about 2.5 times as fast in the CPU department, it has twice the RAM, it comes with Win7 64-bit, and battery life is anywhere from 15% to 65% better. Oh yeah, and while the CPU is "10W TDP", you'll note that the HP Mini 311 and the Timeline 1810 both have roughly the same size battery (the Timeline's is about 12% more capacity). For Internet use, the result is 35% better relative battery life.
Sure, the 1810 I just listed costs $600 and the HP Mini 311 I'm comparing it with goes for about $480. (Unless you really want to save the ~$100 and get XP with only 1GB?) If you get the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">Acer AS1410 (or Gateway EC1435u), you're closer to $400 and you still get 2GB RAM and Win7 (64-bit no less, though with only 2GB that's not a huge deal). A 1.2GHz SU2300 is still going to be at least 75% faster in CPU tasks than Atom N280.
You can try to make an argument for GPU performance over CPU performance on other laptops, but with Atom the CPU deficit is just so huge that outside of video decoding (something you get with GMA 4500MHD as well) and perhaps CUDA apps, it just doesn't matter much.