With the Mini 210 HP took their popular netbook formula and updated it once again, this time focusing even more on HP’s target buyers. Netbook buyers want good looks, light weight, and a low entry price, and HP was able to deliver, though with some sacrifices compared to HP’s higher end Mini 5102.
Note: If you go to HP.com now you’ll notice that the Mini 210 has been replaced with the Mini 210 HD. It’s essentially the same computer, but the starting price is $329 and the Intel N455 processor is standard. The Broadcom HD video accelerator is bundled with the Intel Atom N475 as a $40 upgrade. The “HD” in the the name refers to the standard equipment 720p-capable display.The Mini 210, HP’s mainstream netbook model, starts out at $280 but this unit was configured a bit higher than that. The Mini came equipped with Intel’s Atom N450 1.66GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB of storage (5400RPM), Intel GMA 3150 grpahics, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. It has a webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g WiFi, and not too much else. The 10.1-inch display runs at 1366×768. Exterior ports include a card reader, three USB 2.0 ports, ethernet (hidden under a cover), Kensington lock port, VGA, and a headset jack. The “Sonoma Red” exterior our unit features is a $20 upgrade.
The Mini 210 comes with a new, sleek body design that is a major improvement over HP’s previous low priced computers. It’s thin (just 1.1-inches), curvy, and attractive with satin-feel materials and no hard edges. The system is mostly plastic but it looks well designed, especially with the edge-to-edge display and a small battery that fits perfectly into the contours of the computer. The computer weighs just about 3.0 pounds and feels like it’s put together well. The design overhaul makes the Mini 210 one of the better looking netbooks on the market, thanks to some design cues borrowed from HP’s Envy line.
One of the new perks of the HP 210 is that the bottom cover can be removed without tools so owner can easily access the components inside. It’s a nice feature but it’s probably not something people will use much. It’s a bit tough to put all the clips back in place once they are removed and they are plastic so there is the issue of wear, which means it’s best to use this feature sparingly.
The computer comes in a number of snazzy color options, including the metallic red featured in this review. It’s a handsome color that I’d definitely consider (even for the extra $20), but after a few weeks of usage I noticed a number of scuffs on the top and bottom. So the metallic paint job might look great, but the coated plastic lacks the durability of HP’s better equipped systems. See the gallery below for a close-up shot.
The keyboard on the Mini 210 is as good as ever, giving the 10-inch system a very good typing experience with just one exception–the arrow keys. Typing with the Mini 210 really is quite good, even for extended periods of time and the layout is just about standard, complete with full-sized Shift keys, but the up and down arrow keys had to be crammed into the space normally alloted for a single key. It’s not a major problem, but it’s a flaw that I ran into a few times.
With the netbook HP opted for their buttonless clickpad, using a design also seen in HP’s Envy series (which it borrowed from Apple’s MacBooks). The clickpad works well enough and it’s a pretty slick addition to the otherwise barebones computer, but HP still has a long ways to go before they can match what’s found on the MacBook. It works for general use and it does look cool. It does not work well when precision is necessary and it often messed up when I had an errant finger on the pad. I like the concept, but it never quite won me over.
At the top left of the clickpad is a LED that shines when the trackpad is turned off. Without reading the instruction manual few users will probably never figure out how to operate this and the few times I got it to turn on (and the pad to turn off) I couldn’t figure out how to re-enable the pad. It turns out that you have to double-tap the top left corner to use this function. It seems obvious now, but at the time it’s not clear just what the pad is up to.
The 10.1-inch HD LED “BrightView Infinity” widescreen display runs at 1366 x 768, which is a nice improvement over the netbook-standard 1024×600. It’s crisp with good colors and OK viewing angles. The gloss adds to the image quality when you are looking directly at the display but does cause a number of issues with glare and smudges. Sound is better than expected for a netbook (or any computer this size) so HP has clearly been working on that.
Performance is standard for a netbook equipped with this build, which is to say, not great. Windows 7 Starter would be a downside, but when you are only packing 1GB of RAM it doesn’t really matter. Buyers would do well to get the upgrade to 2GB for $39 which will make the system more bearable (or just upgrade themselves using the easy-access underside). With just 1GB the computer drags when doing anything more intensive then light internet browsing and it could not reliably play a movie I had transcoded to 480×368. YouTube video played back fine, so long as you were not using 1080p or 720p, and Hulu in normal resolution went well. The system is available with a Broadcom HD accelerator (the Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator), which is well worth the money if you are considering watching any video at all. Installing and uninstalling programs was painfully slow, making for another low point for the Mini 210 after its problems with non-web video playback. So the Mini 210 doesn’t have issues that other netbooks don’t, but choosing the right components makes a big difference.
The battery life on the Mini 210 is limited by the fact that our test unit has the flush 3-cell battery not the slightly extended 6-cell (a worthwhile $20 upgrade). The 3-cell is said to be good for about 4.5 hours and the 6-cell 10.2 hours, but my usage put the Mini 210 with the smaller battery at more like 3 hours. Anything you do on this computer is relatively intensive so the battery life gets eaten up pretty quickly, especially since screen glare meant I usually had to keep the backlight higher than I would have liked. The 6-cell should put real-life usage at around 6-hours, which isn’t particularly impressive but it’s a much better number.
Overall I like where HP is going with the Mini 210, but I have some problems with this computer. I like how it looks, but the scuffs on the exterior were bothersome and I enjoy the portability, but the extended battery would have really helped as the computer kept dying on me whenever I took it away from my desk. Similar to the the battery life, poor performance and video playback problems could have been avoided with minor upgrades–in fact less than $100 in upgrades would have made this a much better computer. It still wouldn’t be in the running for my top netbook, but it would be much more competitive than I found it to be.
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