HP Mini 110

Full review

As the slim, snazzy HP Mini 1000 is one of our favourite netbooks, we were excited to hear of a less expensive sequel. While the new Mini 110, which will be available in August for around £280, doesn't stray far from the Mini 1000 mould, there are some subtle changes that are not always for the best.

Design
At first glance, the two systems seem identical, but, when we pulled out our 1000 for a comparison, we saw the 110 is slightly thicker and heavier. When you're dealing with netbooks, a tiny change like that can make a big difference, especially when compared with something like the new Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell, which is slimmer than its predecessor -- not the other way around.

Other than that, the 110 sports a standard set of netbook components, including an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, Windows XP and a 160GB 5,400rpm hard drive. The biggest advantage is that, at £280, the 110 is very competitively priced. You're essentially trading size and weight for price, as a comparably equipped 1000 would cost about £60 more.

The 110 has the same excellent keyboard as the 1000, with wide, flat keys, but the touchpad remains a weakness. The wide-but-short surface makes scrolling a pain, and the mouse buttons are pushed to the far left and right sides, rather than sitting below the touchpad. We're also not fans of the 110's power switch, which is a small slider on the front edge that's hard to hit, although it does make it unlikely that you'll accidentally turn the system off or on when you don't mean to.

The 10.1-inch widescreen display's 1,024x576-pixel native resolution is slightly lower than the 1,024x600-pixel resolution standard for a screen this size. It's generally fine for most Web surfing, but long, vertical pages and Word documents can require a great deal of scrolling to read. The edge-to-edge glass of the previous model has been replaced by a standard inset panel. It's not as slick a look, but the display itself is matte, instead of glossy, which is a very hard-to-find feature in a netbook, and especially good news if you're bothered by screen glare.

The 110 has more ports and connections than the 1000, with a third USB port and a standard VGA output for video. Watch out, though, for the split single headphone/mic jack, which can cause problems if you need to record and monitor audio at the same time.

Features
One new feature that did catch our eye was the inclusion of a third-party software app called Syncables, which promises to connect different machines on your local network, allowing you to easily share documents, photos, video and music, and sync email accounts, even across Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

In theory, it seems like a good idea (we often use Gmail and Google Docs for this kind of thing). In practice, we found the Syncables software difficult to use. The screens are clearly not designed with the 110's 1,024x576-pixel resolution in mind, the layout and navigation are confusing, even when we installed the software on our desktop computer, and the entire process seems fairly unintuitive.

Performance
Intel's single-core 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU offers enough computing power for the basic tasks for which netbooks are designed -- namely Web surfing, working on documents, and some basic multimedia playback. While the Seashell offers a slightly faster Atom N280 CPU, the 110 performs on par with previous HP Mini netbooks.

Netbook buyers must usually choose between three-cell and six-cell battery options. The smaller batteries commonly run from 2 to 3 hours, while a six-cell battery can be good for 5 hours or longer -- but at the cost of added size and weight.

In our video-playback battery-drain test, the 110 ran for 2 hours and 22 minutes using the included three-cell battery. That's somewhat less than we'd expect, as the original 1000 ran 20 minutes longer in the same test. In casual use, for Web surfing and office work, you should get closer to 3 hours or longer of battery life.

Conclusion
The HP Mini 110 may be easier on the wallet than the Mini 1000, but some design compromises have been made to achieve the lower price tag. Despite that fact, however, it's still a respectable netbook.

Additional editing by Charles Kloet