Hp Mini 210 Review

Netbooks for all! We're convinced that's the motivational saying plastered toward the wall using the HP lab in which the business births Minis for everyone but your family pet fish. But of every one of the company's Pine Trail offerings, we're most excited concerning the $425 Mini 210, which consists of a 10.1-inch HD display jointly with a Broadcom Crystal Accelerator chip that promises decent HD movement photo playback, even with Flash. With an fascinating new slender design, enhanced chiclet keyboard and that guarantee to look after high-def content, the Mini 210 has the potential to kick another people toward the curb. granted the troubles we experienced using the Broadcom-powered Dell Mini 10 and HP's newer touchpads, though, we experienced to place near to the eyeglasses and hold a closer look. sign up for us previous the break using the complete review, will you?
HP Mini 210 review






Look and feel


Of every one of the netbooks we've reviewed using the last amount of weeks we may possibly just be probably the most impressed using the HP Mini 210's look. We know that's a bold statement, but we such as the understated design and design and how the best and bottom inside the method are covered using the identical smooth, however not-too-glossy plastic. HP's also made it effortless to swap the RAM and challenging drive: two latches at the rear of the back again inside the battery allow you detach the whole back again lid to acquire toward the goods. The subtle imprinted X pattern on our unit's "silver crystal" lid wasn't precisely our thing, but we're large fans inside the seem red, blue and dark coloring options. both way the fact how the lids don't collect fingerprints will make us desire to throw a celebration with spiked punch.

The three-pound method not merely feels solid, but its inch-thin method is pretty slender. The three-cell battery option fits flush using the system, however the six-cell battery adds an even more half an inch using the back. in contrast to earlier HP Minis, the Mini 210 has every one of the required netbook ports, such as three USBs, VGA, Ethernet, SD card jointly with a headphone jack.

Keyboard, touchpad and display


Since the earlier times inside the Mini 2133 HP has used a flush matte keyboard on its netbooks, however the Mini 210 modifications factors up acquiring a chiclet keyboard. Our fingers didn't desire to element using the gentle touch inside the dark matte keys, along using the make inside the whole panel feels firmer than that near to the ASUS Eee PCs as well as the Toshiba Mini NB305.

Unfortunately we don't possess the identical positivity when it arrives toward the Mini 210's touchpad. We're pleased that HP as a last phase obtained rid inside the vertical mouse button buttons, we just wish they hadn't integrated them in to the whole pad itself. The ClickPad, as HP calls it, is comparable toward the one we saw near to the HP Envys, and although the software program has long been updated it's nevertheless hair-pulling frustrating at times. as a finish off result of the fact the pad has integrated buttons and facilitates multitouch gestures, the ClickPad consists of a challenging time distinguishing amid finger placement near to the buttons and near to the pad itself. The finish off result is severely lots of mistaken zooming while you just desire to drag one thing throughout the screen. We get that HP has long been attempting to attempting to emulate Apple's touchpads, however the software program and two key combo just hasn't been operating for them. This isn't to say it isn't usable � we ended up just tapping to create selections -- but that doesn't necessarily mean we think this could be forgivable. along using the fact that HP bundled a $24 matching mouse button with our evaluation product tells us it's most likely conscious inside the problem.

The Mini 210's 10.1-inch screen's flush bezel will make the 1366 x 768 resolution show glance higher school than most other netbooks, but while colours glance vivid along using the even more pixels make 720p content articles glance crisp, the glossy coating is pretty reflective. Vertical viewing angles excellent adequate once the display was tilted back, but horizontal viewing angles experienced been pretty horrendous. Sharing this display acquiring a good friend while laying in bed required a reasonable amount of relocating on our part.

Performance, HD playback and battery life


The Mini 210 relies near to the now common 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU and 1GB of RAM combo for its power, also it handled our common netbook work � producing this evaluation in term 2007, surfing in Chrome and hearing to Pandora � without any a hitch. We do notice, however, how the left hand sizing inside the method heated up through our frequent utilization inside the netbook. It wasn't adequate to create us place the netbook down, but our jeans undoubtedly stayed toasty. Our product arrived acquiring a more compact 5,400rpm 160GB challenging generate than most netbooks, although you can upgrade it to some a lot quicker 250GB 7,200rpm generate for 30 bucks on HP's site.


The HP Mini 210, such as the Dell Mini 10 (here's an idea: everyone brand their netbooks the identical thing!) may possibly be configured acquiring a $35 Broadcom's BCM70012 Crystal HD accelerator -- it's a slightly more mature product compared to Dell's BCM70015. released just yesterday, Flash 10.1 Beta three was optimized to help the Broadcom card, along using the Mini 210 undoubtedly reaps some inside the benefits of it, but that's only ideal after you obtain it from Adobe's website after which update the Broadcom drivers. When that was all stated and done, the Mini 210 didn't have any troubles actively playing back again a 720p Avatar trailer on YouTube, but in contrast to the Dell Mini 10 it experienced troubles on the way up toward the 1080p setting. The movement photo proof is below, but in accordance with Broadcom the troubles should do with Flash 10.1 Beta 3's compatibility using the more mature edition inside the card. although that's a bummer, we presume most will most most likely be content articles using the 720p playback contemplating the display resolution along using the Pineview chipset's insufficient HDMI support. We will require to also be aware that Flash films done an amazing offer much better in search engines like google Chrome -- we obtained a few "Not Responding" mistakes in Firefox.


As we figured out using the Dell Mini 10, actively playing neighborhood HD content articles is extremely dependent on software. A downloaded 1080p metal dude two trailer done back again without any pauses using the preloaded ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software, but playback of that very same movement photo was choppier in house windows advertising participant 11 and VLC Player. There's no doubt within our minds how the HD playback knowing near to the Mini 210 is miles forward of that of the Pine Trail netbook without any Broadcom within and that counts for something. However, we should say that it isn't as seamless since it should be using the finish off consumer along using the alternative persists to possess even more restrictions than NVIDIA Ion-based netbooks.

The excellent information may be the fact that for individuals that do look after to acquire some HD films to play, the HP Mini 210's six-cell battery will allow you observe about two films without any acquiring to dig near to for an outlet. When looping the identical HD movement photo the Mini 210 lasted for 4 several hours and 45 minutes, jointly with a lengthier 5 several hours and 15 mins when examined acquiring a standard-def video. That's not as prolonged as other netbooks we've tested, but when we used the netbook to create this masterful evaluation and listen to some tunes we obtained near to 7 several hours of runtime. granted how the three-cell battery obtained a disappointing two and 15 mins of juice on our movement photo loop test, on the way using the six-cell appears like a no brainer.

Despite our hesitations about instant-on OSes, HP has executed a good work with its HP QuickWeb -- we such as the three panels one of which could pull in e-mail. HP's also preloaded the netbook with its MediaStream software program that streams advertising from one PC toward the netbook, and its CloudDrive that provides 2GB of storage space to permit for very easily transferring documents toward the mini-laptop. near to another hand, the HP help Assistant software program couldn't be any even more annoying with constant pop-ups. No, we do not contact for the help!