HP Mini 110 Review (with HD display + Broadcom Crystal HD Card)

01/10/10 / Netbooks

Review Summary

This model has just been superceded by the new HP Mini 210 with an Atom N450 processor.

Very happy with the HP Mini 110 in all areas, except the battery situation. 3-cell battery is flush but gives you roughly 2 hours of battery life. 6-cell battery adds too much height and sticks out like a tumor. With that out of the way, everything else is really good. The best display I’ve used on a netbook. Excellent keyboard. You get used to the vertically challenged touchpad and strange button arrangement. Not many netbooks have a free, usable PCI-e slot that is relatively easy to get to, and here you can take advantage of it with a Broadcom Crystal HD card and get 1080p video playback.

Where to buy the HP Mini 110?

Pretty much any store: Amazon, Newegg.

The HD 1366 x 768 display is only available as an option from HP Home & Home Office.

Pros

HD 1366 x 768 display (bright too)
Smooth anti-glare (matte) coating w/ no loss in sharpness
Easy to disassemble
Free PCI-e slot (for Broadcom HD Decoder)
Large keyboard
Wi-Fi switch

Cons

Gets slightly noisy when CPU stressed
3-Cell Battery - ~2 hour battery life
6-cell Battery - sticks out like a monstrous tumor
Touchpad buttons on sides / could use more vertical space

HP Mini 110 Deals & Coupons see all

Specs

10.1” 1366 x 768 matte display
Atom N280 processor (1.6GHz)
Intel GMA 950 graphics
1GB RAM (2GB max)
250GB HDD (2.5” SATA)
802.11b/g Wi-Fi
10 / 100 LAN
3x USB 2.0, 5-in-1 card reader, VGA, combo headphone / mic jack, kensington lock, Wi-fi switch
3-Cell 2,500mAh, 10.8V, 28 Wh battery
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
0.3MP webcam
Windows 7 Starter
1.16 kg / 2.55 pounds weight (3-cell)
262mm x 171mm x 28mm - 36mm / 10.3” x 6.7” x 1.1” - 1.4” size

Design / Layout

Inside: no buttons.

Front: power switch, Wi-Fi switch.

Left: Kensington lock, power, air vent, 1x USB and combo headphone / mic jack.

Right: 2x USB, card reader, VGA, LAN

Back: nothing, SIM card slot behind battery.

Bottom: Completely flat. Single access panel for RAM.

Keyboard

Note that I have a Japanese keyboard so the layout varies slightly.

Fantastic keyboard. Takes up the whole HP Mini 110 chassis with zero wasted space. It’s a flat styled keyboard but not totally flat like on the Acer Aspire One 751 / 1410 / 1810T notebooks. Each key is slightly curved to catch your fingers. Tactile feedback is excellent. No undersized keys. Overall fantastic keyboard and not once did it ever feel cramped.

Touchpad

HP is using the same touchpad as they did with the original HP Mini 1000 netbook. You can also see it on the original Acer Aspire One 8.9” netbook. I’ve used a lot of netbooks with this style of touchpad that I am used to it but if you’re new to it, it might take a day or two to get used to it. No multi-touch on this touchpad.

Would have been nice if they made the touchpad a little larger vertically. Heck, there’s a lot of wasted space above the touchpad where the on/off button for the trackpad used to be on the original HP Mini 1000. HP got a bit lazy here.

Surface is slick enough, but like with most glossy or semi-glossy surfaces, it’s not as slick as a matte surfaces. I haven’t had any issues yet on this touchpad however like I have had on the ASUS Eee PC 1005x series or other netbooks that have really glossy touchpads.

Display

I have a pre-configured model with the HD 1366 x 768 display and I have to say this is the best netbook screen I’ve used, bar none. It’s not glossy however it does not have the subtle anti-glare grit you have on matte displays, so the display is smooth with no loss in sharpness. It’s the same kind of screen you get with a lot of desktop monitors. Sadly this type of display is very rare on netbooks and I have only seen it previously on the Sony Vaio X netbook.

Colors are a bit blue-ish without any calibration like most displays but good once that is done. I measured a maximum brightness in the center of the screen at 282 cd/m2 which is extremely bright for a netbook and I’ve only seen the ASUS Eee PC 1005x series, using EeeCtl, beating that.

The HP Mini 110 is one of the brightest netbooks on the market:

Before my first ever experience with a 1366 x 768 display on a 10.1” display, I thought that I would never want to use one in real life, that it would be really hard on my eyes. It hasn’t been this way and I can easily overcome small text by zooming in on webpages and for outside of the browser, I can set larger text globally in the control panel appearance settings.

Four examples of web browsing on the 10.1” 1366 x 768 display:

Mind you, not everything is perfect. Zooming in on webpages slows them down slightly and without plugins you have to zoom in on every new website you visit. When you globally increase text size in Windows, text size increases as well as icons. Some icons don’t inflate gracefully and become blocky. However it’s a rather minor issue for me and the benefits of having more resolution far outway this issue.

Opening range of the lid is quite decent at 129 degrees (measured flat on a table). There were no positions where I could not get an optimal viewing angle.

Noise

Noise levels are pretty decent on the HP Mini 110 when you’re just web surfing. Definitely not quiet and you can easily hear the fan. In a quiet room web browsing for several hours, it’s perfectly fine for me. Once you once really stressing out the CPU with HD YouTube, or something take will tax the CPU close to 100% the fan goes full blast and it can be a little annoying. Once Adobe sorts out the Flash drivers this shouldn’t be an issue with YouTube videos, as long as you have the Broadcom HD Decoder card inside.

Heat

I had my HP Mini 110 left idling for an hour and the bottom gets slightly warm and the top remains cool. After 20 minutes of stressing out the CPU with some HD YouTube the whole top section feels warmer (especially the right palm-rest) than when it was idle but the bottom remains slightly cool. Overall pretty good temperatures.

Top temperatures

Top left palm-rest: 97 F / 36 C
Touchpad: 86 F / 30 C
Top right palm-rest: 100 F / 38 C

Bottom temperatures:

Bottom left: 95 F / 35 C
Bottom right: 86 F / 30 C
Top left: 91 F / 33 C
Top right: 80 F / 26 C

Sound

The speakers are actually located at the bottom of the display bezel, something I haven’t seen before on a netbook. Despite that sound quality is very decent. Of course it could use more bass / clarity like most netbooks but I am not cringing as I’m listening to tunes with the in-built speakers. Volume is good too.

Webcam & Microphone

Webcam quality seems pretty good for a 0.3MP webcam. Images are sharp even with dim lighting. Refresh rates are quite smooth but that doesn’t really matter. Resolutions go up to 640 x 480 (VGA) resolution. I used ArcSoft WebCam Companion 3 which was bundled with the HP Mini 110.

I used Audacity to test out the microphone. With every setting maxed I didn’t get as loud a voice as I’d hoped but I think it is fine enough. There was no noise or hissing and my voice was clearly heard.

Battery Life

I have a 2,500mAh,10.8V 3-cell battery. I was unable to get a 6-cell battery, not that I really want it, as it sticks out like a tumor and makes it very difficult to slip into a case.

Here are some battery life figures. You could probably make it to 2.5 hours by reducing the backlight, a little more by turning off Wi-F and BT. Web browsing involved checking out various sites, no videos and music.

2 hours, 19 mins	Web browsing	Wi-Fi and BT on / 63% brightness
2 hours, 8 mins	480p video playback	Wi-Fi and BT off / 63% brightness
1 hour, 38 mins	720p H.264 video playback	Wi-Fi and BT off / 63% brightness
1 hour, 33 mins	1080p H.264 video playback	Wi-Fi and BT off / 63% brightness

Overall, for the 3-cell battery, you’re looking at over 2 hours of battery life for web browsing. 1.5 hours for watching HD video - if you have the Broadcom HD Accelerator card installed.

Upgrades

You can easily upgrade to 2GB RAM via the access panel. If you want to access anything else (storage, free PCI-e slot, Wi-Fi) you’ll have to open up your HP Mini 110. HP provides a manual with step by step instructions. I’ve followed the guide and it’s pretty straightforward with just a few catches you need to be aware of. I’ve noted these in the video below:

Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator

Once you’ve taken it apart you can easily place a Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator card inside the free mini PCI-e slot. They cost about $25 on ebay and come with a little CD with drivers, but it’s best the get the latest software and drivers from HP and Broadcom.

With the card installed you can now play smooth H.264 / WMV videos in either 720p or 1080p resolution. You can use AcrSoft TotalMedia provided by HP however it’s better to get MPC-HC, since that works as well, as long as you get the freshest build.

You can also now play HD YouTube videos quite well. The Flash 10.1 drivers are still in Beta and haven’t been perfected just yet.

Here’s a test of 720p H.264 video using MPC-HC player:

For a more complete list of compatible players and drivers:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/crystal_hd/

Size & Weight

The HP Mini 110, with the 3-cell battery, is a bit slimmer overall since there’s no bulging battery, it’s completely flush and not as heavy as with the 6-cell battery, which makes it really nice to carry around. Weighs 1.16 kg / 2.55 pounds with the 3-cell battery. Dimensions: 262mm x 171mm x 28mm - 36mm / 10.3” x 6.7” x 1.1” - 1.4” size. The thickness includes the extra height added by the rubber feet.

Power brick is very small, on par with the Eee PC power bricks.

Keyboard measures 252mm x 99mm in size.

Reader Comments (11)

dave 01/11 at 10:05 AM

latest broadcom drivers integrate with WMP11/12, not just TMT and MPC.

Andy 01/12 at 12:49 AM

Yes fonts will be smaller as there is a higher pixel (dots) density. Dots per cm squared (or other unit) if you like. This means the text takes up the same number of pixels but the pixels themselves are in fact smaller meaning that the text is.

You can actually make text larger within windows by reducing the resolution in display settings giving what appears to be a lower pixel density - which will should stop you squinting and struggling to read text (I assume that is what is giving you the headaches), however this technique does reduce the sharpness of the display (then again this could be a plus depending on your POV).

One of the many problems of smaller devices such as these is that windows, most web content and desktop applications are designed for large high resolution displays (say 15’’ plus with HD ready or better screens). By the sound of it, I would suggest outright looking at slightly larger devices - maybe a 13.3’’ device (macbook) size. Personally I would recommend MSI’s X slim series which offer similar, if not better performance than this netbook, and at 1.6KG and less than 1’’ aren’t significantly less portable and can still be used on your lap whilst in confined spaces - commuting etc. They are a bit more expensive however by about �50 - of course in the UK everything is comparatively expensive so it may not be that much of a premium.

Hope this helps.

Andy 01/12 at 01:01 AM

Thats really werid - just posted comment in reply to mike and appeared before his comment. Its not the time zones since I’m in UK and its 9pm.

TC 01/12 at 01:05 AM

So does the awesome brightness come with a loss of decent blacks? I’ve noticed that a lot of bright netbook displays tend to have dark grey “black”. I’m considering getting either the 210 or 5102.

Also, did you test Linux compatibility on this model? I’ve been dual booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 on my Samsung NC10 and have really started liking Ubuntu.

Thanks for all of your great reviews!

Mike 01/12 at 01:37 AM

I’m wondering how OK is that resolution on such a small display .

I know that back when i tested a HD ready 11.6 inch Asus i really had problems reading stuff on that display and got some intense headaches after a couple of tens of minutes of using it.

I reckon it’s actually worst for this one, as fonts are even smaller, right?

name 01/13 at 03:19 AM

that is a terrible terrible thing they have done with the trackpad buttons- looks like they outsourced the design to the devil himself- .... terrible.. terrible

Beck 01/13 at 07:13 AM

I don’t know why they went with a glossy display on the new 210-HD version! It seems it would be perfect otherwise. The standard (low-res) 210 has the ‘anti glare’ display. :(

If it weren’t for the 2-hr batt., this 110 might be the one to have…

Beck 01/17 at 04:02 AM

Where can you actually get this in N. America? Amazon/Newegg only seem to have the standard 110.

Signetring54 03/07 at 11:56 PM

Hello! Thanks for your review and notes concerning the Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator? Do you know if this work with any MS operating system? I have the Windows 7 starter on my HP Mini 110-1125nr.

Rachelle 04/11 at 08:26 PM

Hi! I always watch your review about HP Mini 110. I’m planning to buy netbook and I can’t decide between HP Mini 110-1036TU and HP Mini 311-1002TU. I know the latter is better but does the mini 110 worth the money? Thank you. When it comes to price, the difference of the two is like $200 when converted. The HP Mini 311 is too pricey here.

dave 06/25 at 06:40 AM

My Hp Mini 110 has a problem.Whenever I turn it on this werid noise comes on,like a syran but not going high and low just like mmmmmmmmmmm.

Spare a thought...

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