HP Mini 311-1000NR 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life

by HP

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002ONCBVC
• Item model number: VM257UA#ABA
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,728 in Computers & Accessories (See Top 100 in Computers & Accessories)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 11, 2009

Product Description

The Internet is at the center of modern life keeping you connected and informed through email, IMs, RSS feeds, social networking sites and Search. Keeping up often requires time shifting with companion devices like netbooks. Powered by energy-efficient Intel Atom processors, the HP Mini 311 is optimized for Web access and can handle standard productivity apps - but is light enough to carry everywhere at just 3.22 lbs. Its 16:9 11.6-Inch diagonal HD LED BrightView display makes viewing HD content and two documents side by side possible. The 92% of full-size keyboard enables much more efficient and comfortable use than texting (or typing on smartphone keyboards) for most. The touchpad has buttons at the bottom for intuitive use. The HP Mini 311 is the perfect device for staying productive, informed, in touch and entertained on the go.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

197 of 198 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better performing netbook for a little more money, November 7, 2009

By 

Ben Myers - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HP Mini 311-1000NR 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life (Personal Computers)

I am lucky enough to work in an IT department that has a few netbooks floating around, so I have had a little time to mess with several netbooks offered by Asus, HP, Dell, and Acer. The majority of netbooks offered by these companies come similarly configured, although with a smaller 10" screen and without the Nvidia ion video. This netbook performs op par with others that I've tested, with several notable exceptions.

First off, it's video and 3D performance are way ahead of other netbooks I've used, as well as some standard laptops that I've used which have integrated Intel graphics chips. To test its video capabilities, I grabbed a couple of video files I had stored including a SD, 720p, and 1080p video. All three played without any stuttering or dropped frames, both on the laptop and when connected to my 1080p TV over HDMI. The 1080p video took several seconds to start (probably 15-20), but once it fired up, no problems at all. I also tested both SD and HD videos streaming from Netflix and had the same results, no dropped frames or stuttering. On a standard netbook (non-ion), HD video is unplayable, and SD fullscreen videos have quite a few dropped frames. However, the HP 311 still struggles with HD flash video, but I've heard there is a new version of flash in the works which will make use of discrete video processors which should be out in the next month or two, and should address this issue.

To test the 3D video performance, I tried a couple of games that I've played on and off over the years. I'm sure there are a few WOW players out there who are wondering if WOW is actually playable on this machine. The answer is yes. I am not a player myself but have dabbled with WOW in the past, and am familiar enough with the game to know what frame rates would be playable or not. I installed the WOW free trial and messed around in starting areas and entered a major city. The frame rate did dip a bit once I entered the city, but never dropped below playable levels. Might not be the ideal choice for major raiding, but good enough for getting your WOW fix on the go. You will notice that session changes take a bit longer due to the low voltage Atom processor, but this also occurs at speeds that I would consider acceptable.

I also tested a game which I do play frequently, Eve Online. Again session changes took a bit longer than what I'm used to, but the frame rate in busy systems stayed pretty steady and always what I would consider quite playable.

I'm not going to go super deep into features like the keyboard and screen, they're about what you would expect on a netbook, I can type well on the keyboard but find myself slowing down slightly due to it's smaller size. The 11.6" screen is clear (although it is reflective, keep this in mind if you plan to be using it in sunlight), and quite a bit more usable than the 10" screens of slightly smaller netbooks in my opinion. The touchpad is definitely not the best I've used, sometimes taking several tries for it to recognize taps. I will mess with the sensitivity settings and see if I can iron this issue out.

My one true gripe about this netbook is it's lack of RAM. I reviewed it as it came, running 1 GB. I took me about an hour of use to go back on Amazon and order another 2GB. It's usable, but there are quite a few pauses when running several programs at once. Increasing the RAM should help this out quite a bit, and the session changes in games that I mentioned earlier should take place quite a bit quicker once you add RAM.

All in all, I like this netbook a lot, it meets my requirements and I am happy with the purchase. It is the best netbook I have used thus far, and look forward to when my RAM arrives, which should make the machine about perfect.

Note about upgrading the RAM: this machine will take a 1 or 2 GB chip, PC3-8500 DDR3-1066. It uses the 204 pin DDR3 rather than the 200 pin DDR2 RAM that most netbooks use. The 1 GB that this netbook comes with is not removable, and it has 1 free upgrade slot.

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HP Mini 311 - truly the Cadillac of netbooks, October 20, 2009

By 

D. Pates - See all my reviews
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This review is from: HP Mini 311-1000NR 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life (Personal Computers)

Okay, okay, you've probably read the reviews plastered all over the likes of PC Ragazine, C|Net, and other sites. You've probably seen the reviews that say "Ugh, it can't play Crysis, what's the point?" Forget that. Consider what you're buying - a netbook. A *small*, low-to-middling performance system. It should be fairly power-conservant, but have the horsepower to actually run some applications, browse the Web, watch some videos (even HD, maybe), and play some games (3D games would be nice).

Fortunately, the Mini 311 does everything you could ask for from a system of such small stature. I personally received mine, and proceeded to wipe out its Windows install in favor of the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (aka karmic). So far, I've been nothing but impressed. The CPU, while being low-power, seems to do just fine with everything I've thrown at it - web browsing, e-mail, text editing, office apps (OpenOffice.org 3.1, which is also available for Windows), and even some mid-level gaming (several titles from Telltale Games), music playing, video playback (with nVidia's PureVideo hardware-assist functionality), and so on. It's not going to replace your desktop - but then, that's not the idea. However, if you're sitting on the couch, or want a small computer you can take with you with respectable functionality, this machine is a good choice. You can even hook it up to your HDTV with its HDMI port and watch HD video content - even Blu-Rays, if you get the external BD drive.

I haven't personally put its battery life to the test, but I've heard numbers in the 5+ hour range, and they seem completely reasonable based on my use of mine to date. The Atom CPU draws very little power, and the Ion chipset, though somewhat more power hungry than Intel's, more than makes up for it with the functionality boost it offers.

In short, the HP Mini 311 is a very complete, very functional little system, and for the asking price, it's completely worth it. If you're looking for a netbook with some gaming potential, it's a good choice. No, it's not going to approach a $2000+ desktop system with nVidia's latest high-end graphics hardware, so if you're expecting that, you're going to be disappointed no matter what netbook you buy.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great netbook for Windows 7 (and I'm a mac zealot ...), November 9, 2009

By 

Chris Dagdigian (somerville, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: HP Mini 311-1000NR 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life (Personal Computers)

I bought this exact model and did the following:
- Installed an additional 2GB RAM
- Wiped out the XP install and replaced it with an OEM copy of Windows 7 Home Premium

I'm a scientific computing geek who uses a loaded Macbook Pro for daily work. I wanted something a bit smaller for the days where I just needed to do email, documentation writing and web browsing. I also wanted to check out Windows 7 as well. I'm not a gamer.

Overall I'm very pleased, this is a great little notebook and the larger size is more than made up for in the graphics and display performance. Even with the 1GB standard RAM the system handled Windows 7 quite well (I was very suprised). Adding additional memory is quick and cheap so I'd recommend it.

For email, media playing and web browsing it has been great. I've never come close to running the battery down during half or three-quarter day sessions when I'm away from my desk. Works great with my Verizon high speed internet dongle (Verizon USB 760) as well.