Review Of HP Mini 311 Laptop

Laptops — on October 27, 2009 at 1:20 am | Comment Now

HP Mini 311 – At such a reasonable price you’ll not get another Netbook with enhanced features such as the high definition display and advanced graphics.

Sum n Substance:

Thumbs Up:

High Definition Display
Nvidia Ion Graphics with HDD Video and basic gaming features
Very Affordable

Thumbs Down:

Touch Pad
Streaming flash in Nvidia Ion spotty
Extra pricing of $20 for white lid

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The HP Mini 311 is a new generation Netbook born in an era where a fierce battle for producing Netbooks with enhanced features at a relatively reasonable price was being fought. Bigger High Definition displays and speedier CPUs working at lower voltage were one of the primary features that were included in these Netbooks with an intention by the marketers to sell their Netbooks at prices higher than the normal $ 299 to $ 399, which is the cost of a basic model. But the Mini 311 offers these features at the old price of $399.

The Nvidia Ion allows smooth playing of HD video files and offers you some basic gaming features. The non-graphic operations do not affect the performance of the CPU much. The flash video GPU support is still in its constructive phases. However, it takes care of a lot of network complaints that you normally come across, without hiking the price.

Though the Mini 311 loo0oks as though it is the Notebook specifically designed for you with a lot of features, I would advise you to wait for a few more days, I.e. till the last week of October for purchasing it because then you can expect it to have Windows 7. Microsoft has not included Netbook upgradations in its free upgrade offer and you’ll not be able to upgrade your Netbook with Windows 7 later unless you pay for it.

Razzle Dazzle:

The Mini 311 is simple. Well, you can reason out that as the company spent money on enhanced graphic features it might have slashed down the costs somewhere else to offer you the additional technology at basic price. So you can expect it to have cut costs in the beautification of the product. You’ll not find a lot of showy components on the exterior of the Notebook. It’s a simple grey with a grey or white cover. The white cover costs $20 more than the black and has a grey swirl on it, which adds to the unattractiveness of the cover. The positive aspect is that, the built is sturdy and the cover does not flex while opening or closing it.

The keyboard is the same as that of the earlier Mini 110. The keys are a bit too flexible. The touch pad is also not very impressive. It is made of the same substance as the wrist rest and is quite a bit resistant to the touch. A more sensitive touch could have helped. The pointer speed is set by default to an earlier slow version and a couple of silver colored buttons which looked like mouse buttons also looked below mark.

After identifying so many negative features, you might feel that I’m simply a critic. Here’s something that I found positive for a change and that is the 11.6 –inch LED screen with a native resolution of 1,366 X 768. You’ll find this in the Sony Vaio W and Asus Eee PC 1101 too. After getting used to this screen, you’ll simply detest reverting back to any screen with a lower resolution. The screen is a bit glossy which might reflect light in brightly lit areas.

HP mini laptop

Inside Dope:

The connections are all the same as what you find in a standard $ 399 Netbook. If you want extra connections, such as, the 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth you need to pay more. Though not as much flexible as Dell Notebooks, you can still customize the CPU, mobile broad banding and networking. For non graphic intensive functioning and basic web surfing, the Atom netbooks are a better choice. The Nvidia Ion allows the Mini 311 to hold a suit of PC games, which is actually a difficult task for other netbooks of the genre. You can play the games quite satisfactorily. The Mini 311 has a single core ATOM CPU with 1 GB RAM space. As the true challenge lies in being versatile, we also have to see how the Netbook performs with respect to gaming with Windows 7. Generally, it is expected to be faster given the RAM is of double capacity.

The video playback quality of the Mini 311 is excellent. A 720p WMV file runs smoothly on this. This is something that no other Netbook has achieved till now.