Generally speaking, a convertible tablet PC is on which can be transformed from a laptop configuration to that of a hand held tablet. The main driving force behind development of these machines is the requirement by many users for handy portability and the ability to work requiring less space.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are 2 distinct camps within the Tablet PC market. There are lightweight tablets, or slates, which do not have a keyboard and rely solely on the touch screen interface, such as the Apple iPad and there are laptops which convert into a touch screen tablet by rotating the screen and laying it flat on top of the keyboard, such as the Dell Inspiron Duo. It is the later category that this article is concerned with simply because the computing power of the iPad and its slate clones do not have a powerful enough processor to allow them to carry out the full range of tasks and run the typical business applications that a laptop can.

Tablet PC Pros

The greatest advantage of Tablet PCs is their mobility. Small and light, the tablet pc allows you to work in any situation. All tablet pc’s share one thing in common, they use touch screen technology to allow you to input data on the very screen you are working on. This is why these machines are so small; in tablet mode you dispense with the keyboard and instead type on a virtual keyboard or handwrite with a stylus.

Another advantage of Tablet pc’s is that they can be used for drawing and illustration with the aid of a stylus. This allows for a more creative and free-flowing interaction with the digital paper.

Touch screen technology has advanced greatly over the last few years with the arrival of the iPhone & iPad and this has percolated throughout the entire industry to help create a whole new generation of devices that are easier to use and boast an enhanced user experience. With the widespread adoption of this technology, the prices for convertible tablet pc’s has also dropped rapidly and for the first time ever, this technology can be acquired for the same price as a standard mid-level laptop.

Tablet PC Cons

While these machines are much more portable than their desktop & laptop ancestors, they do tend to be heavier than the slate style tablet as they require more processor, graphics and hard drive space. However, newer models such as the Dell Duo offer netbook sized computing with the benefits of touch screen tablet usability while still having the power of a mid-level laptop.

Some of the older convertible tablet pc’s have an outdated touch screen which can be sluggish or can only be used with a stylus. This will indeed make them harder to use and the inclusion of finger touch screen capability would be preferable on any convertible laptop you are considering acquiring.

The Apple iPad has the best touch screen available at present. It is unfortunate that the manufacturer’s of convertible tablet pc’s have not been able to match its performance as the computing limitations of the iPad mean that it can really only be used for internet surfing, minor tasks and games/entertainment. Over the last few months we have seen the gap close with the release of the Dell Inspiron Duo and some of the expensive high level Hewlett Packard machines coming very close indeed.

Conclusion

If you want to have a mobile, multi-purpose touch screen tablet pc, that can cope with real computing tasks and run real application based software then you will need more than an iPad or Android based tablet. Convertible Tablet PC’s offer the best of both worlds. Despite being heavier and thicker than an Apple ipad, their benefits far outweigh those of the smaller lightweight tablets as they allow for real computing power as well as for entertainment.

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• AMD E-350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics (dual-core CPU at 1.6 GHz and dual DX-11 SIMDs at 500 MHz)
• 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 HD glossy display with LED backlighting
• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• 3 GB DDR3 memory
• 320 GB, 7200 rpm HDD (Hitachi Travelstar 7K500)
• Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n wireless
• Bluetooth 3.0 (Ralink Motorola BC8)
• 6-cell Li-ion battery (51Wh)
• Dimensions: 11.45 (L) x 8.45 (W) x 0.9 – 1.25 (H) inches
• Weight: 3.53 pounds

Build and Design
The new HP Pavilion dm1 is an evolutionary update to last year’s Pavilion dm1z and the dv2 from 2009. Stylistically, the dm1 has more in common with the dm3. In fact, if you place the new dm1 side by side with last year’s dm3, you’ll see that this 11-inch notebook is basically a smaller version of the dm3. At first glance it’s easy to mistake the dm1z for one of the dozens of HP netbooks that have shown up over the last few years. Fortunately, the Pavilion dm1 has a lot more to offer than those low-performance netbooks.

Build quality is on par with what we’ve seen from the rest of the HP Pavilion Ultraportable notebooks and HP mini netbooks. The plastics used in the chassis are durable and thick enough to prevent flex or cracking under pressure. The plastic screen lid provides adequate protection for the screen but the middle of the lid does bend inward under firm pressure (be careful jamming this into overhead compartments on your next flight). The lid also features an attractive matte black paint job with black pinstriping done in glossy paint. This makes fingerprint smudges far less visible than what we see on laptop lids with glossy paint jobs.  Opening up the screen, the hinges have enough tension to hold the screen in place when it’s motionless but not enough tension to hold the screen in place when you’re carrying it around. The rest of the body of the notebook seems to be well designed with minimal chassis flex and no obvious creaks from the plastics.

One area of the design that will probably get a mixed reception is the bottom of the notebook. HP decided to give the new dm1 a clean look with a single massive bottom plate secured by screws that are hidden beneath the foot pads. At first glance there is no expansion bay access panel here and no way to quickly upgrade the RAM or replace the hard drive. Granted, the overwhelming majority of people who buy a $450 laptop will never open it up to make upgrades. However, if you remove the battery, slide the battery release switch again and pull forward on the bottom plate, the entire bottom of the notebook will slide forward giving you access to the RAM, hard drive and wireless cards. I just wish this was a little more obvious for owners who want to upgrade the notebook themselves.

Ports and Features
Port selection on the HP Pavilion dm1z is fairly standard for a modern netbook or 11-inch ultraportable notebook. HP gives you three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-out, VGA, Gigabit LAN (hidden behind a rubber door), and a single audio jack for headsets, microphones or headphones. It also features a SDHC-card slot for loading images off your camera while traveling or expanding your available storage. The only port that’s missing here is a USB 3.0 port. Since we’re starting to see USB 3.0 on more consumer notebooks and there are many USB 3.0 external hard drives on the market, we really wish HP had found a way to put at least one USB 3.0 port on this notebook. Also, since USB 3.0 has more voltage than USB 2.0, it would mean that USB accessories and phones could be charged in half the time it takes than to charge over a USB 2.0 port.

Screen and Speakers
The 11.6-inch LED-backlit screen on the HP Pavilion dm1z is like most of the other glossy screens we’ve seen on 11-inch notebooks and netbook alternatives. The 1366 x 768 resolution is great for browsing the web, editing photos, or even watching 720p HD movies. Color and contrast are average thanks to the glossy surface and LED backlighting. We recorded a real-world contrast ratio of 216:1 in our lab and a maximum screen brightness of 226 nits; bright enough for indoor use under almost any artificial lights and bright enough for outdoor use (as long as the unfiltered sun isn’t shining directly on your screen and creating reflections). If you tilt the screen forward or back, the colors start to look dim or very washed out. Horizontal viewing angles were better; staying visible until roughly 60 degrees.

The onboard speakers are located on the front edge of the notebook and push sound forward toward the user. These speakers carry the Altec Lansing brand name with Dolby audio processing. Overall the sound quality is good for a pair of small stereo speakers. The speakers had very little low frequency response to speak of and a reasonable amount of midrange. This is fine for listening to Windows alert sounds or watching a YouTube clip, but isn’t the best solution for sharing music or a movie in a small room. The speaker orientation also causes problems if you have the laptop laying on a bed or pressed against thick clothing on your lap. I was able to easily obstruct the speakers on my bed comforter making the audio sound muffled. In short, music and movie lovers would be better off using a nice pair of headphones or connecting the notebook to a stereo through its HDMI-out port.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The nearly full-size keyboard on the Pavilion dm1 is comfortable for typing with the perfect amount of key feedback and quiet, cushioned clicks. HP decided to use a raised Chiclet-style (also called island-style) keyboard with relatively large keys and plenty of space between each key to help prevent typos. The keyboard support structure is simply fantastic with absolutely no flex or “bounce” under heavy typing pressure. The keys themselves have a soft matte finish on top which helps increase fingertip traction but might be prone to collecting skin oils over time.

The touchpad on the new dm1z is a Synaptics model with adequate sensitivity, minimal lag and integrated touchpad buttons located under the bottom left and right corners of the touchpad surface. On one hand, this is the ideal type of touchpad to use on an ultraportable notebook because it allows HP to put the largest possible touchpad surface in a small space without having to sacrifice room for separate touchpad buttons.

On the other hand, we ran into the same problems we’ve seen on most touchpads with integrated buttons. Namely, if you happen to be one of those laptop users who rests one of your fingers or thumbs on a button while you move the cursor with the other, it’s possible that the touchpad will interpret the two fingers on the touchpad surface as a two-finger gesture or quickly move the cursor between the two fingers when you lift one finger off the touchpad surface.

Another potential problem I ran into when testing the dm1 is that the touchpad buttons often won’t register a click unless you press the extreme edge of the corner with a good amount of pressure. Sometimes this phenomenom was more problematic than others, so I suspect HP might be able to improve the button sensitivity via a driver update.

Performance and Benchmarks
The HP Pavilion dm1 offers impressive performance despite its entry-level price. Although there are many notebooks on the market with faster processors and superior graphics, our laboratory test results show you will have a hard time finding another notebook with superior real-world performance in every category for as little as $449.

The secret is the new AMD Fusion technology. In this case, HP selected the new AMD “Zacate” E-350 accelerated processing unit (APU) which combines a dual-core CPU with a 1.6 GHz clock speed with a Radeon graphics processing unit (GPU) on a single processor die. Not only does this allow HP to squeeze more computational power into a smaller area, but it means the Pavilion dm1 offers a lot more video and graphics horsepower than a similarly priced netbook with an Intel Atom processor.

The closest competing Intel-based netbook is the ASUS Eee PC 1215N ($499) with a dual-core Intel Atom processor and NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics. While the ASUS netbook generates some impressive numbers in our synthetic benchmark tests, our real-world performance evaluation was less than impressive. The dual-core Atom wasn’t as “laggy” as single-core Atom processors found in budget netbooks, but it was still slow in a Windows environment and the Nvidia graphics struggled with newer games even at the lowest settings due to the weakness of the Intel processor.

The Acer Aspire 1830T-68U118 ($899) is a similarly sized 11-inch notebook boasting an Intel Core i7-680 1.46 GHz ultra low voltage processor with Intel Turbo Boost Technology running at speeds of up to 2.53 GHz. The Aspire 1830T was roughly twice as fast as the new 11.6-inch Apple MacBook Air ($999) or the HP Pavilion dm1 according to the wPrime synthetic benchmark, but the Pavilion dm1 substantially out-performed the higher-priced Acer notebook in both synthetic and real-world video/gaming performance tests.

Speaking of gaming the new dm1z provided perfectly adequate frame rates while playing Left 4 Dead 2. While this notebook doesn’t deliver the same in-game performance of the Alienware M11x ($799) it did far better than expected for a netbook alternative. We even tested Mass Effect 2 on the new Pavilion dm1 just to see how far we could push it. Mass Effect 2 was “barely” playable on this notebook since frame rates were relatively low, but there were no graphic glitches or crashes during gameplay and you can do it if you don’t mind a few dips in the frame rate.

Another strong indication of the video performance of the Pavilion dm1 is that HP sells an optional external Blu-ray drive so you can watch Blu-ray movies using this $450 laptop. I connected the dm1 to an HDTV and didn’t have any problem watching stutter-free 1080p movies on the HDTV while also checking a few websites on the notebook’s built-in display.

In other words, you’ve got to spend a lot more than $449 if you want an Intel-based notebook that offers better performance than the HP Pavilion dm1 in the same 11-inch footprint.

There were few surprises when we put this notebook through its paces in our lab. Most of the synthetic and real-world performance tests matched what I saw in the AMD E-350 testbed notebook last year. The only reason that some of the testbed benchmarks surpass the the numbers for the Pavilion dm1 is that the testbed was using an 80 GB solid state drive (SSD) instead of a cheap hard drive.

The 320 GB, 7200 rpm hard drive is fast enough to quickly load most basic applications like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop but it simply doesn’t offer the extreme bursts of speed that you get from a SSD or a hybrid hard drive like the Seagate Momentus XT. Sure, HP would have to raise the price of the Pavilion dm1 if they added a SSD (HP currently offers a 128 GB SSD as an upgrade for an additional $290), but it’s worth mentioning that this notebook runs even better with a faster drive.

Heat and Noise
Under stress the low-wattage AMD E-350 APU barely raised the outside case temperature of the HP Pavilion dm1. After 30 minutes with both the CPU and GPU stressed, the bottom of the notebook never even came close to reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Under normal conditions at or near idle, the same spots were about 5-8 degrees cooler. The system fan works harder in this notebook when the graphics are being stressed, but it’s similar to the fan volume we heard from the Acer Aspire 1830T and shouldn’t be too annoying for most people in a typical school or office environment.

Battery Life
At the time of this writing the HP website makes a particularly bold claim that the new HP Pavilion dm1z delivers “up to 9.5 hours of battery life” from the included 6-cell battery. I don’t have the specific testing procedures used to arrive at that number, but I suspect this figure comes from using the MobileMark benchmark with the notebook running at an essentially idle state with the screen set to minimal brightness. We assume most notebook users will set their screens a little brighter for average daily use and will be actively browsing the internet most of the time they are using their notebook.

In our tests with the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active while refreshing a website on regular 60-second intervals, and Windows 7 set to the Balanced profile, the HP Pavilion dm1 continued running for 6 hours and 49 minutes. I have little doubt that you can extend the battery life past the 7-hour mark if you lower the screen brightness and aren’t actively loading pages every 60 seconds. By comparison, the ASUS Eee PC 1215N netbook with dual-core Atom processor and Nvidia ION graphics stayed on for 5 hours and 34 minutes and Apple’s new 11.6-inch MacBook Air delivered 6 hours and 15 minutes.

Conclusion
At the end of the day, it’s hard not to like the new HP Pavilion dm1z. HP and AMD resolved all of the main complaints that people had with the previous generation of AMD-based ultraportbales: Poor battery life, high temperatures, and only adequate performance.

The new AMD Fusion APU technology really delivers some impressive results in terms of HD video playback, gaming, and even adds some “snappiness” in a basic Windows environment. At the time of this writing (January 2011) consumers will have a hard time finding an Intel-based ultraportable notebook or netbook that delivers better real world performance and battery life across the board for the same price … and that’s saying a lot.

Several other companies announced other notebooks and netbook alternatives at CES 2011 that use the same AMD E-350 APU, so it’s hard to say if the HP Pavilion dm1 is the best of the bunch, but it certainly is better than any netbook we’ve reviewed to date.

Pros:

• Best video and gaming performance in the price range
• Nice keyboard
• Good battery life and low price

Cons:

• Occasional touchpad glitches
• No USB 3.0 port
• Doesn’t deliver claimed “9.5 hours” of battery life in real world use

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Specifications:

• Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1035T (2.6GHz/3MB L2)
• Memory: 8GB DDR3-1333 (4x 2GB)
• Hard Drive: 1TB WD Caviar Green SATA 3.0Gbps (WD10EADS)
• Optical Drive: SuperMulti Blu-Ray with LightScribe (LGE-DMCH10LS20)
• Sound: Realtek High Definition Audio
• Graphics: ATI Radeon HD5570 1GB
• Networking: Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
• Wireless Networking: 1x PCI-e 802.11n
• USB Wired keyboard and optical mouse
• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Power Supply: 300W
• Weight: 18.3 lbs.
• Dimensions: 16.5 x 10.5 x 7.0 inches (DxWxH)
• Warranty: One-year limited parts and labor

The sticker price weighs in at $999.99, but as of time of this writing, the HPE-235F could be found for as little as $900 online.

What’s in the box
The HPE-235F is packaged in a standard, utilitarian series of boxes. When you pop the box open, you’re presented with the system and two small boxes. Box one holds the keyboard while box two contains a mouse, the standard assortment of “READ ME FIRSTS” you’ll never read, and My First PC color coded guide to sticking round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square holes.

There are no recovery media, but there is a recovery partition on the hard drive which will come in handy if the hard drive crashes.

Build and Design
The HP Pavilion Elite HPE-235F is another in a long line of shiny black monoliths. If you have a taste for glossy black and chrome trim, this is the box for you. I found, however, that with even light usage during the review period, the front bezel became absolutely littered with fingerprints and superficial scratches.

Conversely, the matte side panels show no wear whatsoever. So, it looks nice enough as long as you don’t touch it. The keyboard has a matching gloss and chrome finish and the corresponding fingerprint malady. Unfortunately, they skimped on the bling for the mouse; it’s just a combination of matte and gloss black.

As far as construction goes, the chassis is sturdy. I wouldn’t use it as a step stool, but it serves its purpose as a computer-part-holder-togetherer. The front bezel is plastic, but it’s fairly thick and doesn’t feel chintzy. Even the plastic doors should stand up to years of dutifully opening and closing-barring an errant foot-if you keep it on the ground.

There are two doors covering the 5.25-inch drive bays and one on the front panel connectors. Any sleekness gained from their inclusion, however, is marred horribly by the large silver text labeling everything (HP seems to be afraid users might confuse  ”multimedia optical bay” with, say, a toaster). In a curious move, HP put the power button on the top front right corner of the bezel instead of someplace sensible like the front, next to the power indicator light. If you’re inclined to use the top of your tower as a repository for various doodads, manuals, and cables, mind their placement!

The included 3 button mouse is unremarkable. It’s rigid, but light, so while it should hold up to a heavy use, the weight requires some adjustment if you’re used to a heftier mouse. Left click; right click; click-scroll wheel; optical tracking. You’ve seen this all before. HP made the mouse ambidextrous, so it’s equally usable in both left and right hands.

The keyboard features a standard load out and 10-key pad. There is a Fn key like you’d find for most laptops, but it only works with five keys: four for media control and one for sleep mode. Beyond the three volume control buttons, the only other thing of note is the warning label lovingly embedded into the keyboard advising you to read the included safety documentation to “reduce the risk of SERIOUS injury”. Apparently, keyboards are not to be taken internally.

Inputs and Expansion
Aside from the 15-in-1 media card reader, the HP Pavilion Elite HPE-235F’s input options are underwhelming. The front of the box is host to three USB ports: two above the optical drive with the media reader and one toward the bottom accompanied by headphone and mic jacks behind a plastic door. The most exciting feature of the back side is the optical digital audio port.

Beyond that, it’s a fairly standard compliment of 6 3.5mm jacks, a single Gigabit Ethernet, 1 FireWire, 4 USB 2.0 ports as well as 2 blazing fast USB 1.1 ports (fast enough for, and designed to be used with, the included keyboard and mouse, but it’s still an odd decision). There are VGA and DVI ports on the board, but they are capped off due to the inclusion of the Radeon HD5570- which features 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, and 1 DisplayPort.

Since the motherboard inside of the HPE-235f falls into the microATX form factor, there aren’t a lot of upgrade options.  The board hosts one PCI-e 16x slot used by the graphics card and three PCI-e 1x slots, one of which is used by the included wireless-N card.

The chassis has two internal 3.5-inch bays (one used), one external 3.5-inch bay, and two 5.25-inch bays (one used). All four RAM slots are occupied by 2GB DIMMs, so any upgrade there (to a system max of 24GB) would require replacement.

One potential limiter in upgrading the HPE-235f is the 300w PSU. Not only is its wattage lacking for something beefier in the graphics department, but the mass of cables attached to it take up a good deal of room and make the tiny chassis a troubling experience for anyone looking to change components..

Performance
The HP Pavilion Elite HPE-235F is more than competent at day-to-day tasks as well as gaming with “recommended” settings. The six-core AMD processor paired with the ATI Radeon HD 5570 will afford you lots of eye candy or high resolutions; however, the midrange card doesn’t allow for both.

The system handles recent games well at 1080p but you have to make concessions with anti-aliasing, high quality textures, and high detail shadows. Fortunately, noticing the difference between high and medium with textures and shadows requires side-by-side comparisons while differences in resolution are glaringly obvious.

I also ran into stuttering issues that I would pin on the Western Digital 1TB green drive. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t playing 7 versus 1 in Star Craft 2 or 200 versus 1 in Left 4 Dead 2. It was playing a humble game of Bejeweled whilst listening to Pandora and uninstalling the standard assortment of bloat-ware. A minor annoyance as I could play games and listen to Pandora simultaneously without issue and it’s not like uninstalling pre-bundled software is something you’d do frequently.

Gaming
While the HP Pavilion Elite HPE-235f isn’t exactly marketed as a gaming machine, it’s as close as you can get from HP these days, since the computer giant exited the high-performance gaming arena.

Bear in mind tests were performed with all settings maxed out. If you need eye candy set to 11, you’re going to want to invest in a bit more OOMPH graphically. Playing most games at recommended or medium settings, however, provides enough flash without too much of a performance hit. Extensive “testing” with StarCraft 2 with medium settings at 1920×1080 was quite enjoyable in both performance and quality.

Power, heat and noise
Outside of playing 3D games, you’d never know the HPE-235F was running if it weren’t for the subtle blue glow of the power button. Get right on top of the system and you’ll find the CPU fan barely audible. Under load, the fans do kick up significantly, however, any fan whirring is easily drown out by whichever movie or game you’re watching. The only time I noticed the fans was when benchmarking alone with music off, but even in that scenario, you can still hear a pin drop.

When it comes to power consumption, the HPE-235F is a dainty sipper; casual desktop usage hovered at 68-74 watts. Even going full throttle, the draw was a mere 187 watts. There are GPUs that devour a good deal more than that.
Given its light power usage, heat isn’t much of a problem, which is good considering the cramped case and gnarly wire job. While expected of a 300W power supply, it’s also worth noting that the PSU does not have a 6- or 8-pin lead for graphics cards. You’d also likely have issues fitting any card that required additional power.

Conclusion
The HP Pavilion Elite HPE-235F is a good choice if you’re looking for a versatile, middle-of-the-road system. The Blu-ray drive, optical digital audio, and quiet fans make it a great choice for media enthusiasts, while the ATI HD5570 makes it an adequate game machine. It certainly wouldn’t disappoint your average PC user.

As the gaming benchmarks showed, however, if you simply can’t live without anti-aliasing and graphics sliders set to ultra, you’ll find the HPE-235F lacking. Honestly, though, if the previous statement describes you, you likely aren’t looking for a sub $1,000 system.

In short, the HPE-235F is small, black, and a solid performer. It may lack bells and whistles, but it does deliver high performance on low budgets.

Pros:

• Sturdy Case
• Optical Digital and 7.1 audio
• Low power draw (For a gaming PC)
• Quiet enough for a home theatre.
• Wireless N networking

Cons:

• Fingerprint magnet
• Poor cable management
• Poor upgrade potential

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Our HP Mini 311 (311-1000NR) features the following specifications:

• Operating System: Genuine Windows XP (32-bit)
• Processor: Intel Atom N270 Processor 1.60GHz (533MHz FSB)
• Memory: 1GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Storage: 160GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD
• Display: 11.6-inch diagonal WSVGA+ (1366×768)
• Graphics: Nvidia Ion LE
• Wireless: 802.11a/b/g
• Expansion: 4-in-1 media card slot
• Dimensions (H x W x D): 0.78-1.20 x 11.4 x 8.0 inches (including feet)
• Weight: 3.34 lb (not including weight of AC adapter).
• Power: 6-cell Lithium-Polymer battery
• Warranty: One-year standard warranty
• MSRP: $399.99

Build and Design
The HP Mini 311 looks like an obvious evolution of the HP Mini design. In fact, if it weren’t for the larger size of the 311 you could easily mistake this netbook for the old Mini 1000. In short, nothing substantial has changed in terms of the build or design of the latest generation of Mini netbooks. That said, this isn’t a bad thing. HP engineers did a lot of things right with the earlier Minis, and the Mini 311 likewise offers a nearly fullsize keyboard, large touchpad, and acceptable build quality at a low price. The clamshell-like design gives the Mini 311 a very clean look and the “Black Swirl” Imprint finish features a nice spiral pattern design that looks like either a bunch of black/silver galaxies bumping into each other or a bed of black roses. This Imprint design not only gives the lid a distinct appearance, but also helps protect the lid from scratches.

When open, the glossy black plastic extends around the glossy 11-inch screen. The entire exterior of the chassis is a combination of glossy black plastic, glossy silver plastic, and matte black plastic. Obviously, whenever we look at a laptop with this much plastic we’re concerned about build quality … and the Mini 311 was a bit of a mixed blessing. On one hand, the keyboard feels nice and firm with no flex. Likewise, the screen and rear of the netbook feel quite solid even under significant pressure. On the other hand, the front of the netbook suffers from some annoying “creaking” in the plastics of the palmrests. if you pick up the Mini 311 from either palmrest you will hear some unpleasant creaking sounds and feel some uncomfortable flex in the plastic. That said, we suspect the Mini 311 will hold up about as well as any plastic netbook priced below $400. The various parts of the chassis come together with tight seams and good attention to detail. The Mini 311 is also available in white just in case black isn’t your color of choice.

Screen and Speakers
The new 11.6-inch screen on the Mini 311 is a nice LED-backlit display panel with a 1366×768 native resolution. The glossy screen surface helps to improve color and contrast, but we noticed the colors look a bit “washed out” or “pastel” compared to what our test desktop background looks like on other laptops. Although the 1366×768 resolution is a nice step up from the 1024×600 resolution seen on most netbooks the washed out colors made the viewing experience less than perfect. Vertical viewing angles are average with some color distortion when viewing from below and some over-exposed colors when viewed from above. Horizontal viewing angles are better with colors remaining unchanged at extremely wide viewing angles; you won’t have trouble sharing a YouTube video with friends using this display.

The built-in speaker performance on the Mini 311 is extremely good for an 11-inch netbook. I’m not a fan of the location of the built-in speakers since they’re located on the bottom front edge of the netbook, but the audio quality is quite good. The speakers produce excellent volume (enough to fill a small room) and there is minimal distortion even at higher volume levels. The speakers lack much bass, but the range of highs and midtones are perfectly enjoyable.

Granted, most audiophiles will want to use external speakers or headphones for a better listening experience … but the built-in speakers work well in a pinch. The audio output from the dual-function headphone jack/microphone jack produced some high frequency background noise/distortion with some of the headphones we used during testing, but other headphones worked fine with no distortion.

Keyboard and Touchpad
As previously mentioned, the HP Mini 311 features a nice and large keybaord that is 92% of full size. Most of the primary keys are the same size as the keys you’ll find on a typical notebook and the spacing is likewise normal, but the space bar and some of the keys that are used less frequently are smaller than normal. If you prefer the shape and feel of traditional keys then you’ll probably like this keyboard. That said, I personally prefer the “Chiclet” style keyboard used on many netbooks and ultraportables since there is more space between the keys to prevent me from accidentally hitting the wrong key when working in tight quarters. Still, the keyboard on this netbook is quite usable and should be perfectly fine for typing quick emails or editing documents while traveling.

The ALPS touchpad used on the Mini 311 is a multitouch gesture-enabled model that allows you to use multi-figure gestures such as “pinching” your fingers together or “pulling” your fingers apart to zoom in or out. The ALPS control panel in Windows also allows you to customize these gestures as well. Sensitivity and tracking seemed accurate even when you move your fingers quickly over the touchpad surface. Speaking of which, the touchpad is covered in a glossy smooth surface that sometimes makes it east to slide your finger across the surface and other times causes your finger to “skip across the surface because of the lack of texture/traction. The left and right touchpad buttons are located beneath the touchpad and each button has shallow feedback with loud clicks when pressed.

Input and Output Ports
In terms of port selection the HP Mini 311 offers a few more bells and whistles than your average netbook. You get three USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 media card reader, dual-function headphone/microphone jack, Ethernet port, and two video out ports in the form of VGA and HDMI.

Performance and Benchmarks
The performance section of a netbook review is generally the most boring part because all netbooks have virtually identical performance. That said, HP hopes the Mini 311 will change that thanks to the use of Nvidia’s Ion graphics. In this case, our test configuration comes with Nvidia Ion LE … basically standard Ion with some of the features crippled via software. Despite this, our performance benchmarks indicate Ion indeed gives the Mini 311 a nice boost over netbooks that use Intel GMA 950 graphics.

Unfortunately, Nvidia’a Ion graphics can’t do anything to overcome the performance bottleneck of the Intel Atom processor. Although the latest version of Flash Player supports GPU acceleration, we didn’t see much (if any) improvement in HD Flash playback because of the weak processor. When we tried to watch Hulu HD on this netbook there was significant lag and the video and audio playback was out of sync. In fact, if you watched a Hulu HD clip with a man and woman having a conversation the audio was so out of sync that it looked like the woman’s voice was coming from the man and the man’s voice was coming from the woman.

Overall performance with the Intel Atom platform is very reasonable for daily activities like web browsing, email, using Microsoft Office, listening to music, and even watching standard definition movies. If you’re in a bind you can even use photo editing software like Photoshop or GIMP for basic image editing. Unfortunately, the Intel Atom N270 processor still feels painfully weak for general computing … which means multitasking. Typical multitasking (such as switching back and forth between a full-screen web browser and Microsoft Office) was sluggish at best and frustratingly slow at worst.

All of the synthetic benchmarks we use to rate the performance of a laptop show the HP Mini 311 offers slight improvements over typical netbooks, but “real world” use is still limited by the weak processor. For example, games like World of Warcraft play flawlessly, but games like Counter-Strike: Source dropped to an unplayable 12-15 frames per second at the lowest detail settings whenever the CPU had to handle a large level map.

Heat and Noise
Temperatures on the new HP Mini 311 are quite comfortable and typical of most current-generation netbooks. Temperature readings taken from the outside of the plastic chassis remained “lap friendly” during normal use. The only time that temperature readings spiked was when I stressed the GPU and CPU when playing games.

The cooling fan often kicks on, particularly when the netbook is plugged in, but the noise wasn’t particularly loud. If you are very sensitive to noise then the fan might bother you in a quiet room, but chances are you’ll never notice it.

Battery
Battery life with the integrated 6-cell lithium-ion battery . In our test with the screen brightness set to 70%, and wireless active, the Mini 311 stayed on for 6 hours and 18 minutes of constant use. Although some netbooks offer closer to 10 hours of battery life, the battery also has to feed the power-hungry Nvidia Ion graphics and larger 11-inch screen. All things said and done I think it’s safe to say 6 hours of battery life will be fine for most people.

Conclusion
At the end of the day HP created a very nice netbook with an 11-inch screen, reasonably powerful graphics, and a nice keyboard … and then crippled it with Intel’s Atom processor. If all you want to do is very basic web browsing, email, social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and play World of Warcraft then the HP Mini 311 is a great ultraportable laptop.

Unfortunately, the Intel Atom N270 processor is still painfully weak for general computing. Although the latest version of Flash Player supports GPU acceleration, we didn’t see much (if any) improvement in Flash playback because of the weak processor. Translation: don’t try to watch Hulu HD on this netbook. Typical multitasking (such as switching between the web browser and Microsoft Office) was sluggish at best and frustratingly slow at worst.

In short, the HP Mini 311 gives you a netbook that’s better than a typical netbook (one that uses Intel GMA 950 graphics) but still suffers from one of the same problems as other netbooks: a weak processor. Although the Mini 311 is a nice netbook we have a hard time recommending this netbook at this time considering that there are a number of Intel CULV-based ultraportables and soon a variety of AMD-based ultraportables for the only $50 to $100 more.

Pros:

• Nvidia Ion graphics boost performance
• Improved port selection
• Good battery life

Cons:

• Still using weak Atom processor
• Good graphics limited by CPU
• Touchpad surface isn’t great