HP Mini 5102 Review

If you're looking for a netbook with great battery life and good durability then the new HP Mini 5102 might be exactly what you need. You can even configure this netbook with a touchscreen for a tablet-like experience. Keep reading to find out if this business-class netbook is worth the price.

Our HP Mini 5102 features the following specifications:

• Operating System: Genuine Windows 7 Starter (32-bit)
• Processor: Intel Atom N450 Processor 1.66GHz (667MHz FSB)
• Memory: 1GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• Storage: 160GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
• Display: 10.1-inch diagonal (1024x600)
• Graphics: Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics
• Wireless: Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
• Expansion: 4-in-1 media card slot
• Dimensions (H x W x D): 0.91-1.25 x 10.4 x 7.25 inches (including feet)
• Weight: 2.64 lb with 4-cell battery (not including weight of AC adapter).
• Power: Standard 4-cell (28WHr)Lithium-ion battery or 6-cell (66WHr) extended-life battery
• Warranty: One-year standard warranty
• Starting price: $749.00 $599.00 $399.00 as of 2/1/2010
  

Our configuration of the HP Mini 5102 is not available for sale at the time of this writing. The closest configuration to our review unit currently available is the HP Mini 5102 model WH236UA ($899.00) which features a total of 2GB of system memory and HP Mobile Broadband (powered by Gobi) with GPS.

Build and Design
The HP Mini 5102 looks like a minor update to last year's Mini 5101 ... essentially a netbook version of HP's "ProBook" line of laptops designed for small and medium businesses. In fact, the Mini 5102 looks like what we would expect to see if someone shrunk down the HP ProBook 4510s to something small enough to fit inside a purse. The Mini 5102 is roughly one inch thick and weighs less than 3 pounds despite a very durable chassis that feels like it can handle years of abuse in your briefcase or backpack. The nearly full-size keyboard makes typing quick emails or editing documents a breeze ... even if you have to work on the tray table in coach class during a business flight. The traditional clamshell-like design gives the Mini 5102 a very clean look and the all-metal chassis means serious business. The brushed metal lid features a durable black finish and only suffers from a slight amount of flex under heavy pressure.

When open, the rubberized metal chassis and glossy black surfaces highlight the keyboard and 10-inch display. The thick bezel surrounding the matte screen offers additional protection and a place to keep your fingers off the screen when opening the netbook. The bezel is also needed in order to provide enough space for the larger keyboard. That said, I can't shake the feeling that the Mini 5102 would look better with either a larger screen or a smaller screen bezel. The screen hinges are made of metal and offer the perfect amount of resistance. You can pick up the Mini 5102 by the edge of the screen without feeling like something is going to break. While we're on the topic of carrying the netbook around, you can order the 5102 with an optional handle that is built-in to the chassis next to the battery for easy transport ... essentially turning the netbook into a tiny briefcase PC. The Mini 5102 is also available in red and blue just in case black isn't your color of choice.

HP engineers also added a few nice little features to the design of the Mini 5102 that I really appreciated. First, the battery features a button and LED meter so that you can quickly see how much charge is left in the battery. Four blue lights mean you've got a full charge and three blue LEDs and one blinking LED means you have somewhere between 75% and 100% remaining. Sure, the on-screen battery meter is more accurate but this little feature let's you know if you need to bring your AC adapter without powering on your netbook.

Another nice feature is the quick release switch for the RAM cover. Simply release the battery and then slide the right-side battery release switch all the way to the left and you can instantly pop off the cover for the RAM module. This makes upgrading the RAM nice and easy. I actually wish more netbooks made upgrading the RAM as easy as this.

Screen and Speakers
The 10.1-inch screen on the Mini 5102 is a nice LED-backlit display panel with a 1024x600 native resolution. The matte screen surface is a welcome change compared to the glossy screens we usually see in netbooks. The matte surface helps to prevent glare and reflection on the surface of the screen under bright indoor lights and helps improve sunlight readability. Despite the nice matte screen surface, we really wish the 5102 used an 11.6-inch screen and 1366x768 resolution seen on many modern netbooks. A resolution of 1024x600 is okay in a pinch, but many websites just don't look right without a minimum vertical resolution of 768 pixels. On that note, HP includes at least some software optimized for lower-resolution screens. Corel Home Office (compatible with Microsoft Office) comes pre-loaded with this netbook and the Corel software looks much better than using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint on the tiny screen.

Vertical viewing angles are average with some color distortion when viewing from below and some over-exposed colors when viewed from above. Horizontal viewing angles are better with colors remaining unchanged at extremely wide viewing angles; you won't have trouble sharing a YouTube video with friends using this display.

The built-in speaker performance on the Mini 5102 is good for a 10-inch netbook but it's obviously weaker than a typical 14-inch or 15-inch notebook PC. I'm not a fan of the location of the built-in speakers since they're located on the bottom front edge of the netbook, but the audio quality doesn't suffer from any distortion issues until you get to maximum volume levels. The speakers lack much bass, but the range of highs and midtones are perfectly enjoyable. Again, the only major problem I had with the speakers is that they sound muffled if you use the netbook on your lap.

Granted, most audiophiles will want to use external speakers or headphones for a better listening experience ... but the built-in speakers work well in a pinch. The audio output from the headphone jack produced some high frequency background noise/distortion with one of the headphones we used during testing, but other headphones worked fine with no distortion.

Keyboard and Touchpad
As previously mentioned, the HP Mini 5102 features a large, spill-resistant keyboard that is 95% of full size. Most of the primary keys are the same size as the keys you'll find on a typical notebook and the spacing is likewise normal, but the space bar and some of the keys that are used less frequently are smaller than normal. If you prefer the shape and feel of traditional keys then you may not like this keyboard. That said, I personally prefer the "Chiclet" style keyboard used on this netbook since there is more space between the keys to prevent me from accidentally hitting the wrong key when working in tight quarters. The keys offer just the right amount of feedback and modest amount of "click and clack" noise while typing. I didn't notice any flex in the keyboard even when I applied significant typing pressure. In short, I found the Mini 5102 was a joy to use when typing.

The Synaptics touchpad used on the Mini 5102 is a traditional single-input touchpad. This seems a bit odd since most netbooks now offer multi-touch touchpads with gesture-enabled models that allow you to use multi-figure gestures such as "pinching" your fingers together or "pulling" your fingers apart to zoom in or out. Granted, the touchpad is probably a little too small to make gesture-based controls useful, but it just seems strange to find a single-touch touchpad on a netbook in this price range. Sensitivity and tracking seemed accurate even when you move your finger quickly over the touchpad surface. Speaking of which, the touchpad is covered in a glossy smooth surface that sometimes makes it easy to slide your finger across the surface and other times causes your finger to "skip" across the surface because of the lack of texture/traction. The left and right touchpad buttons are located beneath the touchpad and each button has shallow feedback with cushioned clicks when pressed.

Input and Output Ports
In terms of port selection the HP Mini 5102 offers the average bells and whistles we've come to expect on netbooks. You get three USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 media card reader, dedicated headphone and microphone jacks, Ethernet port, a VGA output and a dedicated wireless on/off switch.

Here is a quick tour around the HP Mini 5102:

Front view: No ports here, just the dedicated wireless on/off switch and speakers.

Rear view: No ports here either, just the hinges and battery.

Left side view: Power jack, VGA out, vent, and two USB 2.0 ports.

Right side view: 4-in-1 card reader, headphone jack, microphone jack, USB 2.0 port, Ethernet, and security lock slot.

Performance and Benchmarks
The new Mini 5102 with the Intel Atom N450 processor didn’t show any obvious performance benefits compared to older netbooks using the Atom N280. Both processors offer the same specifications including a 1.66GHz clock speed, 667MHz FSB, and 512KB L2 cache. The main feature the N450 offers is the newer Intel GMA 3150 graphics whereas the N280 gets stuck with the GMA 950. In our synthetic performance tests the Mini 5102 produced almost identical performance numbers as the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE ... a netbook with identical specs and a much lower price tag.

The newer GMA 3150 integrated graphics gives the system a small boost in 3Dmark06 compared to previous generation netbooks and seems to handle HD video better. In our HD video tests the Mini 5102 had no problem playing our 720P trailer of Up!, but 1080P playback delivered dropped frames and audio sync issues. Flash video had some problems out of the box, but after installing the newest Flash 10 beta we didn't have problems with low-resolution video clips. YouTube clips running at 720P still suffer from some stuttering in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not as bad as it was before the updated Flash plugin. Although the Mini 5102 feels a little "snappier" than older netbooks, this has more to do with the system running Windows 7 instead of Windows XP.

wPrime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 comparison results against netbooks @ 1024 x 768 resolution (higher scores mean better performance):

HDTune hard drive performance test:

Heat and Noise
External temperatures on the new HP Mini 5102 are quite comfortable and typical of most current-generation netbooks. Temperature readings taken from the outside of the plastic chassis remained "lap friendly" during normal use. The only time that temperature readings spiked was when I stressed the GPU and CPU when playing games.

The cooling fan runs constantly, but the noise isn't particularly loud unless you are in a perfectly quiet room. Chances are good that you'll never notice the fan in a typical office environment or classroom.

Below are images indicating the external temperature readings (listed in degrees Fahrenheit) taken inside our office where the ambient temperature was 74 degrees Fahrenheit:

Battery
Battery life with the extended-life lithium-ion battery is quite good. In our test with the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active and refreshing websites at a regular interval, the Mini 5102 stayed on for 8 hours and 43 minutes of constant use. This means you should be able to spend all day surfing the web at a coffee shop without needing to bring your AC adapter if you purchase the Mini 5102 with the 6-cell battery. If you lower the screen brightness and allow the netbook to enter sleep or hibernate modes then you should easily be able to squeeze more than 10 hours of life out of the battery.

Conclusion (UPDATED)
When we first reviewed the HP Mini 5102 someone at HP had the bright idea to try and sell this netbook for twice the price of similar netbooks. Thankfully, HP has updated the pricing for this excellent business-class netbook and we can update our review. The current starting price of the HP Mini 5102 with 4-cell battery is just $399.00 ... making this one of the best values among current-generation, Atom-based netbooks.

The Mini 5102 offers fantastic build quality, delivers solid battery life numbers, and comes with some nice pre-loaded software. Unfortunately, the screen is only average, the touchpad is "blah" and the overall performance is no better than netbooks costing the same amount of money. We would have liked to see a higher resolution display, a better processor and better graphics, but the excellent build quality and reasonable price should be be enough to justify the purchase for most consumers and small business owners.

As long as you don't buy a configuration priced above $700 the the HP Mini 5102 is indeed a good value for a business-class netbook.

Pros:

• Great build quality
• Nice keyboard
• Good pre-loaded software

Cons:

• Too expensive
• Weak Atom processor
• Average touchpad (no multi-touch)