If you’re not concerned with looks or fancy extras, your eye may be drawn to the HP Mini 110. At only £216 inc VAT complete with Windows 7, it’s cheap even by netbook standards.
At first, it’s unclear why. It’s plain, but the keyboard feels comfortable, with a good solid base and a light, crisp action, and the keys are nicely spaced. The touchpad is responsive and predictable, and there’s nothing major missing in terms of ports: the Mini 110 has an SD/MMC slot, three USB 2 sockets and even Bluetooth.
Examine it more closely, however, and you’ll see where the cuts have been made. The core specifications are basic, with a single-core 1.66GHz Atom and Intel’s GMA 3150 graphics. This gave it a score of only 0.17 in our real world benchmarks.
Coupled with the basic graphics, this doesn’t bode well for gaming and video streaming; you can forget all about smooth, full-screen YouTube HD or BBC iPlayer playback.
The 1,024 x 600 matte display can’t match the best either, and its maximum brightness of 220cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and contrast ratio of 252:1 mean images look wan.
But the HP’s weakest link is its 2,550mAh battery. It lasted a mere 4hrs 35mins in our light-use test.
With that kind of weakness we couldn’t recommend the HP Mini 110 outright, but that price means we can’t write it off completely. It’s a perfectly usable netbook that undercuts the competition, so if all you want it for is basic web browsing, it’s not such a bad deal at all.
Warranty | |
---|---|
Warranty | 1yr collect and return |
Physical specifications | |
Dimensions | 268 x 194 x 24mm (WDH) |
Weight | 1.180kg |
Travelling weight | 1.5kg |
Processor and memory | |
Processor | Intel Atom N450 |
RAM capacity | 1.00GB |
Memory type | DDR3 |
Screen and video | |
Screen size | 10.1in |
Resolution screen horizontal | 1,024 |
Resolution screen vertical | 600 |
Resolution | 1024 x 600 |
Graphics chipset | Intel GMA 3150 |
VGA (D-SUB) outputs | 1 |
HDMI outputs | 0 |
Drives | |
Capacity | 250GB |
Hard disk | Seagate ST9250315AS |
Optical drive | N/A |
Battery capacity | 2,550mAh |
Replacement battery price inc VAT | £0 |
Networking | |
Wired adapter speed | 100Mbits/sec |
802.11b support | yes |
802.11g support | yes |
802.11 draft-n support | yes |
Integrated 3G adapter | no |
Bluetooth support | yes |
Other Features | |
Wireless hardware on/off switch | no |
Wireless key-combination switch | yes |
Modem | no |
USB ports (downstream) | 3 |
3.5mm audio jacks | 2 |
SD card reader | yes |
Memory Stick reader | no |
MMC (multimedia card) reader | yes |
Smart Media reader | no |
Compact Flash reader | no |
xD-card reader | no |
Pointing device type | Touchpad |
Integrated microphone? | yes |
Integrated webcam? | yes |
Camera megapixel rating | 0.3mp |
TPM | no |
Fingerprint reader | no |
Smartcard reader | no |
Battery and performance tests | |
Battery life, light use | 4hr 35min |
Overall Real World Benchmark score | 0.17 |
Responsiveness score | 0.29 |
Media score | 0.14 |
Multitasking score | 0.08 |
Operating system and software | |
Operating system | Windows 7 Starter 32-bit |
OS family | Windows 7 |
Recovery method | Recovery partiion |
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