HP Mini 311 Netbook Review

Introduction:
HP 311 is one of the highly price compensative mini notebook designed by HP. High definition graphics, superb battery life performance, stylish and sleek design. All these features offered at low price! This is how HP mini 311 differentiates itself from other brands in the market.

There are few shortcomings of course, for mini 311, such as the slightly rough touchpad and slow processing performance. Still, these can be overlooked as long as you are happy with the features list and the price tag!

Look and Feel:
As is the case with other HP notebooks, the design of HP mini 311 is highly compact. Moreover this model belongs to the mini notebook category, hence the compactness matters the most! The covering lids are black-colored and carry the HP’s swirl design on their body. The rounded corners of the lids remove the boxy appearance from the design and the silver-colored platform for the keyboard and the touchpad add up the HP pavilion spice look to this model.

The 11.6” LED display (offering max resolution of 1366 X 768) is supported with NVIDIA ION graphics and presents the best quality video display. Fixed into a rectangular frame, the keyboard looks well structured and glossy. Another rectangle at the lower end of the platform is of course the touchpad, which is two buttoned and is up to the quality standards of HP.

Processor and Performance:
Mini 311 is built on a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, supported by 1GB RAM (which is extendible up to 3GB). Along with this, the netbook consists of NVIDIA ION LE GPU. This distinction in GPU, works well for HP mini 311. On PCMark05, the average score by all mini netbooks supported by Windows XP is 1423, whereas the HP mini 311 scored 1917, which is the highest in this category. Undoubtedly, processing performance by mini 311 with XP leaves the competition in this category much behind.

Even though the XP compliance score for HP mini 311 is notably good, when it comes to the crude CPU processing, it performs the same as in its other competitor brands. Another remarkable point to be noted about mini 311 is the graphic performance. The category average score is 99, whereas mini 311 scored 1386. This clearly indicates the picture quality that user can enjoy!

Storage:
HP mini 311 is configured a base storage of 160 GB (5400 RPM) with a SATA hard disk. This is perfectly suitable with the price range of HP mini 311. Moreover, the user is able to upgrade the configuration by using the extra HDD port.

Battery Life and Weight:
The other netbooks, belonging to the mini category uses integrated Intel graphics chipsets and the HP mini 311 netbook uses NVIDIA Ion graphics chipsets. Even with this configuration differentiation, the HP mini 311 delivers battery life of 5 hours and 40 minutes. This is notably larger than the category average of 4 hours and 55 minutes. In short, HP mini 311 scores well in terms of battery life.

Mini netbooks from all brands weighs light. The average weight in this category is 3 pounds. The new HP mini 311 weighs 3.2 pounds. That’s surely not much over-weighed!

Pricing:
Price for HP mini 311 netbook is $399. A glimpse at the feature list and the performance statistics, reveals you that the HP mini 311 is undoubtedly price compensative.