HP Mini 311 — Battery Life
We run many scenarios for our battery life tests. Most netbooks don't include optical drives, but since we had the external Blu-ray drive we were able to run our DVD and Blu-ray tests… sort of. We couldn't get DVD playback to work in Windows Media Player (or Media Player Classic - Home Cinema) due to "copy protection errors" (aka DRM rearing its ugly head — probably some codec or software we installed), but DVD playback worked fine with the included Arcsoft TotalMedia Theater 3.
TMT3 also supports a DVD up-sampling technology dubbed SimHD that's supposed to improve DVDs to "HD quality". Don't let that fool you! It's essentially a sharpening (sometimes over-sharpening) filter applied to every frame from the movie. It can look good in some scenes while adding noise to others, but some users might prefer the experience. SimHD isn't without its drawbacks, as it resulted in significantly lower battery life.
As a point of reference we ran the DVD playback tests with files copied to the HDD as well as from the external DVD; as you might expect, spinning a disc results in lower battery life — worse even than SimHD from the HDD. Honestly, DVD playback is so pre-2005, and this is the last you'll see of it in our testing of laptops. Rip a disc to your HDD and you won't have to worry about scratches or DRM issues, and you'll get better battery life to boot — a win-win-win scenario. Don't tell the MPAA and Media Conglomerate lawyers….
In addition to the above, we tested DivX HD, x264, Internet, Idle and even Gaming battery life. GPU decode acceleration is used where possible (and it's required for the Blu-ray test). DivX is also supported natively within Windows Media Player now, and a quick sanity check shows that it improved battery life slightly compared to decoding within MPC-HC (using ffdshow).
The battery life results are rather interesting. You can now get 9400M graphics performance (slightly slower than 9300M since it shares system memory bandwidth) with battery life that's at least close to some GMA 950 netbooks. The Mini 311 trades blows with the M1022 in our battery life tests, and it's very close to the old ASUS N10JC running in GMA 950 mode. In 9300M mode the Mini 311 offers clearly superior battery life compared to the N10JC. Unfortunately, that's only looking at half the picture.
The ASUS 1005HA still offers significantly better battery life in all tasks. The closest result is in x264 decoding, where the ION LE can help out, and the 1005HA still offers 40% better battery life. In other tests, the gap is as high as 80%, with the average advantage being closer to 60%. The 1005HA does have a larger batter (63Wh vs. 53Wh), though, so the real power advantage is 17% to 50%, depending on task.
As a whole, battery is generally good, but clearly certain tasks put a major load on the system. Blu-ray is still a killer, even with GPU acceleration, resulting in just over two hours of battery life. We don't have a chart (since we don't have results from most of the other laptops), but simulated gaming battery life (looping 3DMark at native resolution) lasted 160 minutes, actually surpassing Blu-ray playback time. However, as we discussed on the gaming performance page, that result should be taken with context: despite the ION graphics being plenty fast for low detail gaming, the Atom CPU just can't manage to run the majority of current 3D games. You'll want to stick to 2D games (a la Popcap) or titles from the early Pentium 4 era to get acceptable performance on the Mini 311.
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ninjackn - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
I think a more fair comparison would be to mention all 3 tiers: netbooks, netbooks with video acceleration and CULV laptop. Netbooks have tempted me for a long while but the lack of ability to watch practically any video have long been a turn off from them.The ION netbooks are something like $100 more over a netbook without video acceleration. That $100 gets me the ability to watch youtube, hulu, 1080p H264 content and play games like plants vs zombies, WoW or Quake Live. Then for another $100 more I can get a laptop that can possibly do the same but have better battery life, build quality and start office faster? The $100 more is seeming less appearing, especially since it is a non-primary system.
It seems like an interesting trade off, a weaker GPU and more powerful CPU (CULV + 4500MHD) or a strong GPU and weaker CPU (Atom + ION). The ION is defiantly a stronger GPU than the 4500MHD but I’m interested as to how the balance of CPU/GPU will play out in benchmarks for reasonable games.
Also, if you buy a mini 311 with Windows 7 then it comes equipped with the full ION. Granted that ION LE really IS a full ION with the DX10 disabled through drivers but it can be enabled either through a BIOS hack or forcing full ION drivers. The Windows Experience Index score for gaming jumps from 3.9 to 5.4 I'm curious how that plays out (311+full ion vs timeline for "light" gaming).
As for video playback I have no idea if the 4500MHD is any good for H264 decoding. All I’ve heard about it is from forums or comments and I would really appreciate if there was a more definitive source (anandtech) discussing the matter. I glossed over the flash 10.1 article and it would seem that either are fine for youtube or hulu but what about videos we acquired through other means?
And talking as a "typical" anandtech-reader/power-user type of guy: The ion is more interesting over the 4500MHD because no apple laptop comes with a 4500MHD but they do come with a 9400M.
JarredWalton - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
4500MHD provides enough GPU acceleration of x264/H.264/Flash decoding that when combined with a CULV CPU you can easily watch 1080p videos.The real comparison is Acer 1410/Gateway EC1435u (essentially the same thing) vs. the HP Mini 311. All are ~$400 base price, with a slight advantage in specs (i.e. RAM) to the Acer/Gateway CULV laptops.
I can't say for sure how the Celeron SU2300 stacks up to the Pentium SU4100, but half the cache and 100MHz should mean it's about 80-85% of the performance. That should still be enough for video decoding (I'll verify with Flash 10.1 on SU4100 in the next couple days).
For graphics, GMA 4500MHD is about 1/4 the gaming performance of 9400M, but Atom really holds 9400M (ION) back it seems. If the 9400M can only run at ~1/3 it's regular gaming performance because of CPU bottlenecking, we have a real fight. If it's more like 1/2 speed, it's not as close.
I'll be looking at all of this in the next week or so....
AstarothCY - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
The HP Mini 311 is multitouch-capable. Yes, the Windows 7 models ship with a driver that inexplicably does not recognize multitouch gestures, but if you install the following driver, they will work:http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloa...">http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/soft...%A9=en&a...
You may experience an issue with the function of the left touchpad button being unset from "Click", causing some issues after you wake up from hibernate, just make sure it is set properly. HP should really release a proper Mini 311 ALPS driver for Windows 7.
BelardA - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
Yeah, it sucks that some idiots decided that WE would want glossy LCD screens for our portable computers. *I HATE THEM*.But there are notebooks with WindowsXP & Windows7 with excellent matte screens.
They are called THINKPADS. Some of the cool-looking, lower end SL series has non-glossy screens. And the other series: R / T / X / W come with matte screens by default (Some are/were optional gloss).
So starting at about $550 (SL) or a typical SL / R with core2duo at $600~700 are matte screens.
I love my ThinkPad, and the screen was the #1 reason I bought it for $650. Many of my friends buy them now because of the screens and of course the quality. Something that HP can't touch.
BTW: I also like netbooks... for $250~300, willing to deal with the glossy. But it looks like a ThinkPad Netbook may come out and it has glossy :( (rumored)
cgramer - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
FWIW, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE has a matte screen, though its case is as glossy as any of them (i.e., a fingerprint magnet).AstroGuardian - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
ThinkPads are marvelous piece of technology. Definitely untouchable by competition. But costly also!fokka - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
dell (and afaik hp) buisnes-lineups also offer matte sceens, though at least in the dell vostros, they arent that great considering viewing angles, contrast, colour.Etern205 - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
The HP mini 311 uses DDR3 not DDR2 as you guys have stated in the specifications table.JarredWalton - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
Sorry... typical cut/paste typo. :)irev210 - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
Lots of talk between comparing the Acer 1810 to the ion platform.You can get the 399 dual core celeron CULV for 399 in the acer timeline 1410.
The HP ion platform vs the Acer celly CULV platform is a no brainer comparison, as they are both 399.
Acer celly CULV is by far the best value in the netbook space atm.