HP Mini 5101 netbook review roundup

The HP Mini 5101 netbook is marketed to business users and is the successor to the well-received HP Mini 2140 that will be discontinued in the next few months. It features a magnesium alloy chassis, a fast 7200RPM hard-disk drive, a 95 percent chiclet keyboard with HP DuraKey finish and a protective HDD system called HP 3D DriveGuard.

A couple of sites (Laptop Mag and PC Mag) have published reviews of the HP Mini 5101 netbook. Both sites praised the Mini 5101 for its solid and attractive design (important if you’re on the road a lot) as well as its performance. However, battery life wasn’t as good as some netbooks that are cheaper than the 5101. Check out the key review points after the jump.

The Mini 5101 comes with a 10.1-inch (1024 x 600) display powered by a 1.66GHz N280 Atom CPU and 1GB RAM. Various HDD and SDD storage options are offered along with a choice of Windows XP Home, XP Pro, Vista Home Basic, Vista Business, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 operating systems.

Key Laptop Mag review points:

• The 5101 is not the slimmest netbook, but is still easy to carry. The extended battery bulges slightly from the bottom.
• Keys are well spaced and right shift key is in right place. It is comfortable to type on for long periods.
• The touchpad is a bit small and has too much friction making it difficult to navigate. The mouse buttons (below the touchpad) are coated in soft rubber, which responds crisply.
• Matte display has good horizontal and horizontal viewing angles.
• 720p video content played smoothly.
• Forward-facing speakers are loud and balanced.
• 2MP webcam offered excellent images when chatting over Skype.
• The 5101 ouperformed other netbooks with the same spec (1.66GHz N280 Atom, 1GB RAM). On PCMark05, the 5101 scored 1,626, compared to the average of 1,383.
• The 7200RPM HDD also outperformed other netbooks as did the graphics performance.
• The middle of the underside became an unpleasantly warm 95 degrees.
• Wi-Fi performance delivered a throughput of 37.7 Mbps at 15 feet, and 21.4 Mbps at 50 feet from our access point. This compares to the netbook averages of 19.0 and 15.8 Mbps from those respective distances.
• The Mini 5101’s six-cell battery lasted a very good 7 hours and 52 minutes, exceeding the netbook average.

Key PC Mag review points:

• The 7200RPM HDD was noisy and drains the battery quickly, despite the speed.
• The high-resolution (1366 x 768) display should be available at the end of the month.
• Whilst the 5101 comes in black only, another colour should be available by the end of the year.
• The 6-cell battery provided over 5 hours of battery life.