HP Mini 311 Reviews – impressive Netbook with HD display

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 5:15
Laptops
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The Netbook market has become very competitive over a couple of years. The manufacturers are competing by offering faster Netbooks with better HD displays with an eye on making more profit by pushing the price close to $500 from the standard $299-$399 price range.

The recent Netbooks from Sony that are equipped with HD display, are priced close to $600 but the new HP Mini 311 has upped the ante by offering 11.6-inch display with 1,366x768 pixel resolution along with Nvidia Ion graphics chip at just $399. The unit in this review is priced at $494 and has some improved hardware over the basic model.

Measuring 11.4 inches wide by 8 inches deep by 1.2 inches high, the Netbook is fairly lightweight at 3.3 pounds. For $494, the Mini 311 offers 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 along with white lid design, and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Other hardware niceties include 1GB, 1066MHz DDR2 RAM, 160GB 5,400rpm hard drive, and Nvidia MCP79 chipset. The Mini 311 comes with preinstalled Windows XP. But the main USP of the Mini 311 is its Nvidia Ion GPU. Though it is an integrated GPU, the Netbook is capable of playing HD video files as well as basic gaming without any glitches.

The Mini 311 is competitively priced with some high end features, which means that there are some cost cutting efforts from HP. The HP Mini 311’s cost cutting effort is evident in its design as the Netbook is very simple in its outlook. The Mini 311 is designed with gray plastic chassis and black or white lid. However, there are no compromises when it comes to the build quality. The Netbooks looks solid and sturdy.

Other than the Nvidia Ion GPU, the biggest attraction is the 11.6-inch wide-screen LED display, which offers 1,366x768 pixel resolution, which is offered by very few Netbooks such as Sony Vaio W and Asus Eee PC 1101.

The HP Mini 311 has fairly standard array of ports and connectors along with some attractive additions. These include VGA-out, HDMI-out ports for video, stereo speakers, single headphone/microphone jack, three USB 2.0, SD card reader, Ethernet, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.