HP Mini Beats 210

HP Mini Beats 210 review

The spotlight on netbooks has pretty much faded these days. But these stripped-down laptops offer an excellent alternative choice when considering a potential holiday companion. The HP Mini Beats 210-3025sa will offer you basic performance and a pretty decent battery life wrapped up in a chassis that is light, portable and perfect for taking on your travels. As netbooks go, the HP Mini Beats is a bit of a looker. The smooth black and silver chassis has plenty of curves and isn't plastered with stickers or markings. Even the recognizable Beats audio branding is limited to a small logo on the screen bezel. The all-black isolation keyboard also looks great. Unfortunately, like other netbooks, typing is a bit of a cramped affair. We preferred the experience of the Eee Pad Slider's slide-out keyboard to the HP Mini Beats. Another sour point is that while the screen is bright and crisp, the bezel we mentioned earlier is particularly thick and a little distracting. Other netbooks, such as the Samsung NC110 have managed to cut the bezel size to improve the screen and we'd have liked to have seen that here. Predictably, the smaller 10.1-inch screen means a lesser resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels - matching the Asus Eee Pad Slider for density.