HP Compaq Mini 311c

After the Samsung N510, the Compaq Mini 311c is the new kid on the block with NVIDIA ION technology. The mini 311c is described by HP as a digital companion with enhanced graphics and HD capabilities for fun multimedia enjoyment in a functional mini format. The ION chipset is indeed excellent in terms of multimedia performance (photo, video, etc.).

Handling, design and build

The Compaq Mini 311c is a nice machine, well finished, slim and with attractive lines. The first impression is however tarnished by the glossy plastic that covers the model. Fingerprints! Everywhere! Particularly on the bonnet, inevitably. Reflections too are very present, particularly on the screen and around it. Only the shell around the keyboard and touchpad is exempt as this area is in a nice silvery grey.

The keyboard occupies a good part of the base. Wide, with nice sized (16 mm) flat keys makes typing very comfortable.

The touchpad disappointed us. Wide as it is we expected it to be easy to use. It’s size is great in as much as you don’t need to get all frantic with your finger movements. The glossy coating is less disagreeable than on some other models. The real problem comes rather from a lack of precision and fluidity. You lose a lot of time, when, with such a large surface area, you ought to be gaining time.

The webcam is quite bad. It lacks fluidity and sharpness. The contrast is also weak, as are the colours (lack of punch).

The Compaq Mini 311c is rather noisy. A fan is on permanently, extracting air from the left hand side. It only slows down when there's no activity. When carrying out processor-heavy tasks, the fan speeds up. This is a shame when you consider that netbooks really don’t consume much energy. You’ll find much better out there on this score.

The sockets are ideally placed on the thickest parts of the netbook, closer to the screen than the front. Indeed, this machine is far thinner towrards the front.
On the left, there’s an HDMI out and a USB 2.0 port as well as the power-supply socket and anti-theft. On the right, a memory card reader, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a headphones/mic combo, 1 RJ45 and 1 VGA.

Under the netbook, a large panel gives access to the hard drive, a mini-PCI-e extension and an extra RAM slot. The 1 GB of RAM already inside are in fact soldered to the motherboard and you can add up to 2 GB of DDR3! Given the current price of memory, this is definitely worth considering for those who envisage installing Windows 7 and it’s a good idea to go for it anyway to give a bit more oomph to the machine even if you stick with XP (supplied with it). We weren’t able to test the performances of the different configurations unfortunately. However, it should make quite a difference, especially with certain video games.

Touchpad	Antitheft, power, USB and HDMI
Memory card reader, headphones/microphone, 2 USB 2.0, VGA, RJ45	Finger marks! (and this with clean hands!)

Processor Power

With an almost identical configuration to the Samsung N510, the Compaq Mini 311c gives a similar level of performance. The Intel Atom N270 processor, as standard as it gets, only scores 19 on our index. Our reference machine (100 on the index), is the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi3650 (equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400).
The Compaq is enough for office docs and internet usage. We would have liked a dual core model, which would have allowed for better multitasking performance and gaming. An Intel ULV processor combined with the NVIDIA ION chipset would certainly be worth investigating.

The real plus on this model is the ION chipset. The GeForce 9400M graphics card that comes with, allows you to decode HD video (HD 1080p, Blu-Ray equivalent). The load is thus taken off the processor (which in any case wouldn’t be powerful enough for HD). When you play an HD 1080p film (which you can play on TV using the HDMI, with sound), processor usage is up to 100% without the ION hardware accelleration (energy consumption 17.5 Watts) and only 10-15% on average with the ION (energy consumption 17 Watts). The NVIDIA ION solution is therefore nice and efficient. In idle, the machine consumes around 12.5 Watts with the screen brightness at max and energy economy options disactivated.
To use hardware acceleration we used PowerDVD 9 and Media Player Classic Home Cinema with the right codecs.

We should also say that the graphics part can also greatly accelerate certain other processing tasks. Photoshop CS4 uses the ION, for example, to accelerate image manipulation. Photo montages also become possible, although our test shows that heavy processing tasks are not necessarily very rapid. With video however, software specially optimised for NVIDIA GPUs, such as Badaboom, accelerate encoding significantly.

Gaming

No surprise here, the results are similar to those for the Samsung N510. On current netbooks, there’s still no model with better 3D performance than those equipped with the NVIDIA ION solution. This makes it possible to do some gaming on the netbook, thanks to the GeForce 9400M built into the chipset.
Don’t get over-excited however as although this solution is of course much better than a built-in Intel graphics solution (such as the very common GMA 950), it remains insufficient for many recent games. Race Driver GRID is for example limited to around 14 frames per second with settings on low while Half-Life 2 (EP2) and Unreal Tournament 3 don’t do any better with 10 and 15 FPS respectively (settings to minimum).
You can however play less demanding titles such as 3D strategy or management games that often require fewer resources and fewer images per second to be playable.

Audio

The sound comes out of the front of the machine. Quality isn’t good, but actually rather dry and disagreeable. Don’t even mention the bass (inexistent, as on all netbooks). Max volume is fine. It’s quiet enough not to drive your colleagues mad! The headphones out is however good quality without any hiss.

Battery life and portability

At 4H52 of video play (Wi-Fi disactivated, headphones plugged in and brightness at 100 nits), the Compaq does better than the Samsung N510 by 46 minutes. A nice showing in spite of the ION chipset. Of course, it’s a long way behind the current champs, which are the Samsung N110 (6H04), Toshiba NB200 (6H10) and Wind U115 (between 7H and 9H52).

With battery, the Mini 311c weighs in at 1.46 Kg. Although you can get lighter, this is pretty good. The machine is not exceptionally slim at from 19 to 30 mm, but it is nice to use with the thinner front allowing for comfortable typing.