Mobile devices Toolkit

HP Mini 2140 review

8.2

Editors' Rating

Service & support		6.0
Design		9.0
Features		9.0
Battery life		8.0
Performance		7.0

Dan Ackerman CNET

Published: 03 Feb 2009

Hewlett-Packard was an early player in the netbook field: the business-orientated Mini-Note 2133, which appeared in spring 2008, had a solid, brushed-metal chassis and a nearly full-size keyboard. Unfortunately, this system predated Intel's Atom CPU, and rather than using the Celeron processor that came with the first netbooks, HP went with an underpowered VIA C7-M, which pretty much killed any chance it had of becoming a mainstream product.

Now that the plastic-clad, Atom-powered, consumer-orientated Mini 1000 has become a hit, HP's business side is taking another crack at the netbook market with the radically updated HP Mini 2140, which costs from £359 (ex. VAT). It retains the aluminium construction and big keyboard, but updates the components to an Intel Atom CPU, adding an accelerometer for the hard drive and a full ExpressCard/54 slot — a netbook first (Lenovo's S10 has a smaller Express Card/34 slot).

Thanks to those added features — and some concerns about the added weight aside — the Mini 2140 is currently our favourite sub-£500 netbook.

The HP Mini 2140 shares the same basic silhouette as the earlier Mini-Note 2133 and Mini 1000. Because it has an aluminium case, like the 2133, it's slightly heavier than the plastic Mini 1000 (1.19kg versus 1.02kg); this trade-off may be worth it, however, as the metallic Mini 2140 feels as if it'll stand up to the rigours of the road better than a plastic-clad netbook.

The biggest selling point for HP's netbooks has always been the fantastic keyboard, which HP claims is 92-percent of the size of a full-size notebook keyboard. Other netbooks have been plagued by tiny chiclet-like keys, which make typing a pain and typos plentiful. By expanding the keyboard right to the edges of the system, HP has managed to fit bigger keys into the tray than other netbooks (and even ultraportable notebooks). The result is a comfortable typing experience that takes a tiny bit of adjustment (as the keys are very close together) — but one that is, thus far, our favourite on a sub-12in. notebook.

The touchpad has an unusual shape, stretched into a letterbox-like wide rectangle, with the mouse buttons moved to the left and right sides of the touchpad. This means the system has a minimal amount of wasted wrist-rest space, but it's a somewhat awkward compromise — especially if you do a lot of vertical scrolling or right-clicking.

The 10.1in. wide-screen LED display has an unusual 1,024 by 576 native resolution, which is a few pixels shy of the 1,024 by 600 we typically see in netbooks. The end result is largely unnoticeable, but a Windows XP pop-up window expressed concern that we weren't running at a standard resolution.

Besides its big keyboard, the Mini 2140 has one major selling point that no other netbook currently offers: a full ExpressCard/54 slot. Lenovo's S10 has a half-size ExpressCard/34 slot, but there are fewer options for add-on peripherals in that size. We rarely find that we actually need an ExpressCard slot for anything, but some users rely on them for mobile broadband modems, memory-card readers or even TV tuners.

HP offers a handful of fixed-configuration versions of the 2140, but we're perfectly happy with the basic £359 (ex. VAT) model, which has an Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. For £45 more, you can get an identical version with 2GB of RAM, although that comes with Windows Vista Basic. The top of the range model comes with 2GB of RAM and Vista Business, and costs £458 (ex. VAT).

Intel's single-core 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU offers enough computing power for the basic tasks for which netbooks are designed — namely web surfing, working on documents and some basic multimedia playback. A dual-core ultraportable, such as Lenovo's U110 was clearly faster, especially when multitasking, but the Mini 2140 offered better performance than Sony's new Atom-powered VAIO P, thanks to the latter's Windows Vista operating system.

The Mini 2140 ran for 3 hours and 11 minutes on our video-playback battery-drain test, using a six-cell battery. That battery sticks out from the back of the system somewhat, and the basic three-cell battery was only about 35 minutes shy, so you'll have to decide between longer life and easier portability.

HP includes an industry-standard, one-year parts-and-labour warranty with the system. Support is accessible via telephone, an online knowledge base and driver downloads.