HP Mini 210 Review

Posted by John Jordan
2
Oct 19, 2010
538 Views
Netbooks for all! We're convinced that's the motivational saying plastered for the wall within your HP lab especially where the institution births Minis for everyone but your family pet fish. But of all the company's Pine Trail offerings, we're most excited concerning the $425 Mini 210, which carries a 10.1-inch HD display as well as a Broadcom Crystal Accelerator chip that promises decent HD movement image playback, even with Flash. With an fascinating new slim design, enhanced chiclet keyboard and that guarantee to look after high-def content, the Mini 210 has the possible to kick one other people for the curb. offered the problems we experienced using the Broadcom-powered Dell Mini 10 and HP's newer touchpads, though, we experienced to place concerning the eyeglasses and hold a closer look. sign up for us previous the break for the whole review, will you?
HP Mini 210 review






Look and feel


Of all the netbooks we've reviewed within your last many weeks we may properly just be one of the most impressed using the HP Mini 210's look. We know that's a bold statement, but we such as the understated layout and how the best and bottom from the method are covered within your exact same smooth, however not-too-glossy plastic. HP's also developed it fast to swap the RAM and hard drive: two latches at the rear of the back again from the battery allow you detach the whole back again lid to acquire for the goods. The subtle imprinted X pattern on our unit's "silver crystal" lid wasn't especially our thing, but we're huge fans from the good red, blue and dark color options. possibly way the simple fact how the lids don't collect fingerprints tends to make us need to throw a celebration with spiked punch. 

The three-pound method not merely feels solid, but its inch-thin whole body is pretty slender. The three-cell battery option fits flush using the system, however the six-cell battery adds an additional half an inch within your back. in contrast to preceding HP Minis, the Mini 210 has all the required netbook ports, such as three USBs, VGA, Ethernet, SD card as well as a headphone jack. 

Keyboard, touchpad and display


Since the earlier times from the Mini 2133 HP has utilized a flush matte keyboard on its netbooks, however the Mini 210 modifications problems up using a chiclet keyboard. Our fingers didn't need to element using the gentle touch from the dark matte keys, at the same time to the make from the whole panel feels firmer than that concerning the ASUS Eee PCs as well as the Toshiba Mini NB305. 

Unfortunately we don't have precisely the exact same positivity when it arrives for the Mini 210's touchpad. We're content that HP sooner or after obtained rid from the vertical mouse button buttons, we just need they hadn't integrated them to the whole pad itself. The ClickPad, as HP calls it, is comparable for the one we saw concerning the HP Envys, and although the ask has long been updated it's nevertheless hair-pulling frustrating at times. for the reason how the pad has integrated buttons and facilitates multitouch gestures, the ClickPad carries a hard time distinguishing in between finger placement concerning the buttons and concerning the pad itself. The end result is really lots of mistaken zooming as quickly when you just need to drag one thing throughout the screen. We get that HP has long been attempting to attempting to emulate Apple's touchpads, however the ask and two key combo just hasn't been working 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 believe that is forgivable. at the same time to the simple fact that HP enclosed a $24 matching mouse button with our evaluation product tells us it's possibly mindful from the problem. 

The Mini 210's 10.1-inch screen's flush bezel tends to make the 1366 x 768 resolution show appear increased course than most other netbooks, but even although colours appear vibrant at the same time to the additional pixels make 720p composed content appear crisp, the glossy coating is pretty reflective. Vertical viewing angles very good enough once the display was tilted back, but horizontal viewing angles experienced been pretty horrendous. Sharing this display using a good friend even although laying in bed required a reasonable amount of relocating on our part. 

Performance, HD playback and battery life


The Mini 210 relies concerning the now common 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU and 1GB of RAM combo for its power, also it handled our common netbook chores ? creating this evaluation in term 2007, surfing in Chrome and hearing to Pandora ? not owning a hitch. We do notice, however, how the left hand sizing from the method heated up all through our frequent utilization from the netbook. It wasn't enough to create us place the netbook down, but our jeans positively stayed toasty. Our product arrived using a more compact 5,400rpm 160GB hard generate than most netbooks, although you can upgrade it to some more quickly 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 precisely the exact same thing!) may be configured using a $35 Broadcom's BCM70012 Crystal HD accelerator -- it's a slightly more mature style compared to Dell's BCM70015. released just yesterday, Flash 10.1 Beta three was optimized to support the Broadcom card, at the same time to the Mini 210 positively reaps some from the benefits of it, but that's only subsequent you obtain it from Adobe's website after which update the Broadcom drivers. When that was all mentioned and done, the Mini 210 didn't have any problems actively playing back again a 720p Avatar trailer on YouTube, but in contrast to the Dell Mini 10 it experienced problems steering up for the 1080p setting. The movement image proof is below, but based on Broadcom the problems should do with Flash 10.1 Beta 3's compatibility using the more mature edition from the card. although that's a bummer, we presume most may be composed content using the 720p playback thinking about the display resolution at the same time to the Pineview chipset's insufficient HDMI support. We have to also be aware that Flash films carried out very much much better in yahoo and google Chrome -- we obtained many "Not Responding" mistakes in Firefox. 


As we come to understand using the Dell Mini 10, actively playing neighborhood HD composed content is extremely dependent on software. A downloaded 1080p metal person two trailer carried out back again not owning pauses within your preloaded ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software, but playback of that exact same movement image was choppier in glass windows mass media participant 11 and VLC Player. There's no doubt within our minds how the HD playback knowledge concerning the Mini 210 is miles forward of that of the Pine Trail netbook not owning Broadcom within and that counts for something. However, we should say that it isn't as seamless since it should be for the finish off person at the same time to the solution goes on to possess very much more restrictions than NVIDIA Ion-based netbooks. 

The very good information may be the simple fact that for individuals who do control to acquire some HD films to play, the HP Mini 210's six-cell battery will allow you check out about two films not owning having to dig near to for an outlet. When looping precisely the exact same HD movement image the Mini 210 lasted for 4 several hours and 45 minutes, as well as a lengthier 5 several hours and 15 mins when examined using a standard-def video. That's not as lengthy as other netbooks we've tested, but when we utilized the netbook to compose this masterful evaluation and listen to some tunes we obtained near to 7 several hours of runtime. offered how the three-cell battery obtained a disappointing two and 15 mins of juice on our movement image loop test, steering using the six-cell appears like a no brainer. 

Despite our hesitations about instant-on OSes, HP has executed a wonderful occupation 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 ask that streams mass media from one PC for the netbook, and its CloudDrive that offers 2GB of storage space to allow for simply transferring data for the mini-laptop. concerning one other hand, the HP support Assistant ask couldn't be any very much more annoying with ongoing pop-ups. No, we do not need your help! 
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