When the first Netbook came out three years ago, the only thing that really excited us about it was its size, and more importantly, its price. First-generation Netbooks in comparison to what we've got today were horrible in terms of usability.
Today, we've reached new highs where Netbooks aren't only utilized for the three humble tasks they were originally designed for, like light internet surfing, office productivity and basic multimedia. They play 1080p HD videos these days, and can manage a bit gaming as well.
But that isn't the case with all. Still, most Netbooks today concentrate on affordable pricing, but tend to fall short in terms of quality. HP Mini series of Netbooks have always been known for their hightened level of usability; thanks to a good keyboard and accurate touch-pad.
Today, we've reached new highs where Netbooks aren't only utilized for the three humble tasks they were originally designed for, like light internet surfing, office productivity and basic multimedia. They play 1080p HD videos these days, and can manage a bit gaming as well.
But that isn't the case with all. Still, most Netbooks today concentrate on affordable pricing, but tend to fall short in terms of quality. HP Mini series of Netbooks have always been known for their hightened level of usability; thanks to a good keyboard and accurate touch-pad.
The HP Mini 210 for test today is the latest variant of this series. It costs a little more than typical Rs. 15,000 Netbooks, but aims to give you a few things in return for the extra money you spend.
Design and Build
The HP Mini 210 is a great looking Netbook; probably the most awesome one we've seen in this price range. The mixture of silver and a solid metallic color is quite a head-turner. Of all the colors available, we simply adored the red one. The build quality also feels sturdy, but more importantly, feels premium. It's no unibody-aluminum like the Macbook Air, but is pretty good in its own way. The screen hinge is also reassuringly stiff.
The design smartly keeps the bottom part of the Netbook flat, while the meaty 6-cell battery's protrusion is right underneath the display. This is a better design as compared to the earlier generation Netbooks, where downward protruding batteries have an ugly bump, which is not comfortable to use as well. The only problem we had with its design was its weight, which in today's day and age felt a little excessive for a Netbook.
On the inside, you've got a typical 10-inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD display that is fairly good to view, with natural color tones and an adequate brightness. Due to its highly glossy covering, viewing it at an angle isn't good, as you can see reflections. The webcam had a grainy, pixillated quality when viewed under full-screen mode; we hope a smaller video-chat window will have better quality than that.
Underneath the display is what I believe to be one of the best Netbook keyboards I've typed on, period. The chic-let design keys are proportionate to each other, and their placement eliminates typos to a great extent. Even the texture of the keys is smooth, which makes typing a pleasant affair. The Function keys primarily perform frequently used tasks like changing brightness, controlling media playback and volume etc.
Below the keyboard is HP's trademark touch-pad that's seen on its laptops. The 'Clickpad', as it is called, is a spin-off on the Macbook's track-pad, where the entire surface is touch-sensitive and the entire thing moves when clicked. Those demarcations differentiate between left and right click, but that surface is also used to manuvere the mouse pointer. The sensitivity is pretty accurate. Multi-touch gestures like two-fingered scroll work alright; not Macbook-smooth, but fair.
The Mini 210 is loaded with a typical array of ports -- three USB, a VGA, a LAN, headphone and a card reader. The speaker grille is placed smartly right under the curve of the lower-body, and is quite loud to satisfy listening to music or movie dialogues without having to plug in a pair of earphones.
There are no heat dissipation vents at the bottom, instead there's just one vent to the left side along with the ports. In our usage, we did not feel the machine overheating at any point of time.
The HP Mini 210 comes with slightly meatier internals than typical Netbooks; the Intel Atom N475 processor clocked at 1.83 GHz (the typical N450 model works at 1.66 GHz), 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive spinning at 7200 rpm (traditional netbooks have 5400 rpm ones). It comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 Starter.
If you compare synthetic benchmarks, the recently tested Acer Aspire AOD260, with its Atom N450 1.66 GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 160GB 5400 rpm hard drive was able to churn out a PCMark05 score of 1458, while our HP Mini 210 pulled a little further with 1520 PCMarks. Do does this slight bump improve day-to-day usage? I believe so; Windows overall felt a little swifter (actually, less laggy) than typical-spec'ed Netbooks like the Aspire model mentioned above.
720p HD video playback is possible, but not guaranteed -- as some videos played smoothly, while some others didn't. 1080p videos are out of the question, obviously.
Other than Windows, the HP Mini 210 also has the SplashTop 'Instant ON' operating system. It is basically a skimmed version of Linux that boots in a few seconds after you turn the PC on. It has a web browser, a chat client, skype, mail client, calendar, music and photo viewer. Now, in one simple word -- it's useless. The fonts appear blurry, any kind of scrolling does not work (two-finger or even side-scrolling). There is no file manager to quickly access stuff on your hard drive (or possibly, backup files in the case of a Windows malfunction). No thanks, I would rather wait for 20 more seconds and use Windows instead.
Battery Life
The HP Mini 210 comes with a 62 Whr, 6-cell Lithium-ion battery -- a typical battery rating seen on most Netbooks today. But the Mini has a couple of power-sucking components, like the slightly faster Atom N745 processor that takes 6.5 Watts of power as compared to the 5.5 Watts of a regular Atom N450. Then there's the faster-spinning 7200 rpm drive.
In the 720p HD video drain test, with full brightness and sound, the Mini 210 ran for a total of four-and-a-half hours. In our real-world test, where it was hooked to the Internet over Wi-fi, we began typing this article in an online document editor with brightness kept at max. Here, it gave us anywhere between 4.5 to 5 hours on different instances. This is lower than the usual 7 and 8 hour runs of Netbooks in this test, but its still acceptable given the benefits of a noticeably smoother operation.
Verdict
The HP Mini 210's top-end version that we've tested sells for Rs. 19,999. Although it is around Rs. 5,000 more than a usual Netbook, what you get in return is worth it. The excellent keyboard, the responsive touch-pad, the sturdy build quality and charming looks, not to forget the slightly better internals. If you're looking for a Netbook and are willing to spend a little more for finesse, then the Mini 210 will not disappoint.
If you're already sold on the Mini, but want HD playback as well, then hold your horses. The HP dm1z is an AMD Fusion based model that shares all the good design aspects of this model, plus brings in 1080p HD playback, a bigger 11.6-inch higher-res screen, and a supposed 5-hour battery life. It's already selling in the US and we can't wait to get our hands on it once it arrives in India.
