The HP Mini 5103 is an evolution of the current line of HP Mini 5100 netbooks. Physically, the machine is identical to previous offerings in the family. It sports a strong, yet lightweight, magnesium frame with an aluminum shell that protects the netbook’s screen. The model we tested had an attractive espresso finish that sets off the machine nicely. It isn’t quite as flashy as a model like the look-at-me Sony VAIO W Series Imperial Lime Edition, but the Mini 5103’s subtle beauty is a sight nonetheless. Overall, the footprint is a very portable 10.3x7.1 inches and only an inch thick. Those dimensions are par for the course for a netbook.
- CPU: Intel Atom N550 dual-core 1.5 GHz
- Storage: 160 GB, 7,200 rpm
- Memory: 2 GB
- Display: 10.1-inch, 1366×768, multitouch
- Ports: 3 USB, VGA, Audio in, out, SD/MMC
- Communications: 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1
- Webcam: 2 MP
- OS: Windows 7 Pro (32-bit)
- Battery: 6-cell
- Dimensions: 10.30 x 7.09 x 0.98 in
- Weight: 2.86 lbs.
Like the Mini 5101 and 5102 before it, the 5103 very much looks and feels like a shrunken HP ProBook, which is a compliment. HP hasn't changed the outer design much for this generation, which is mostly a good thing (with the exception of the touchpad). You get a case with anodized aluminum on top and magnesium alloy on the bottom. Add in a soft-touch treatment on the deck and a clear HP DuraKeys coating for the keyboard, and you have a netbook that can stand up to a fair amount of abuse. Not that the 5103 doesn't have style; the lid on our unit was a brown espresso color instead of the standard black, a treatment that carries over to the deck.
Weighing 2.8 pounds (with the six-cell battery) and measuring 0.9 inches thin, the Mini 5103 can easily slip into a backpack or briefcase. The six-cell HP Mini 5103 battery protrudes a bit from the bottom of the system, but it's hardly noticeable. To make the 5103 more attractive to students, a carrying handle is available; it screws on and replaces the rear feet.
The HP 5103 has been design as a business netbook and should appeal to all users who want a processional looking netbook. As well as having a stylish and strong exterior and many configurable options, the hard drive features a sensor to protect the drive from a fall.
The trackpad on the 5103 could use improvement; there are three things I don’t like about the implementation. It’s very small, which isn’t surprising given the small size of the netbook. It lacks multitouch, which has become the norm for notebooks, and the lack of two-finger scrolling is inconvenient. There’s a scroll area on the right of the trackpad, but it’s no substitute for multitouch. The surface of the trackpad is a glossy material that actually provides mild resistance to finger sliding on the surface, making it harder to use as a result.
You might expect the extra power from the Atom N550 to come at the expense of 5103 battery life. Indeed, HP suggests that the laptop takes a bit of a hit in their tests, while offering a 20 percent performance boost in CPU only tests. But you know what? I got about 6 hours of run time from the HP Mini 5103. That’s just about exactly the same amount of run time I got from the HP Mini 5102 with a single core Atom N450 processor.
On the one hand, that’s much lower than the 10 hours of battery life HP promises from the 6 cell, 5700mAh, 66Whr Mini 5103 battery, but it’s really not that bad for a dual core mini-laptop. More importantly, it looks like the Atom 550 processor doesn’t drain power all that much faster than a single core Atom chip.
As with its predecessor, the 5103 sports a speedy 7,200rpm hard drive. The 160GB capacity, however, falls short of the 250GB ones found in the Toshiba NB305-N410 and Acer AO521-3782. Attached to the motherboard is a Broadcom HD decoder card, which allows you to playback high definition video, since the dual-core processor isn't powerful enough by itself. All my 720p and 1080p video files played back beautifully, even though its viewing capacity is limited to a 10-inch widescreen. There isn't an HDMI port that connects to an HDTV, like the one found in the AO521-2782 and Asus EeePC 1215N ($500 street, ). You also have to make sure all your HD videos are played through Windows Media Player, as Quicktime, a popular player for H.264 videos, doesn't support hardware acceleration, and choked on all of these tests. There are 3 USB ports, a media card reader (SD and MMC), Ethernet, and VGA support. A Webcam and built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi are also present.
Viewing angles were above-average with colors starting to invert with the screen tilted forward or back 25-30 degrees. Horizontal viewing angles were better, staying visible to about 80 degrees before glare off the screen prevented you from viewing what was being displayed.
The multitouch display was responsive in our testing, but the small screen size combined with the higher resolution display did present some problems with the user interface. Aiming for small buttons, especially when located near the corners resulted in many tries before you could close a window or hit the back button in a web browser. With scaling increased some of this could be elevated, but then you take away any benefits of even having the higher resolution panel to increase screen real-estate.
From top to bottom, the Mini 5103 feels like a premium product: it's solid and sleek, but a bit on the thick side. A brushed aluminum back lid and solid, smooth-opening hinge feel like fine furniture compared with the rest of the netbook landscape. Inside, textured plastic that feels like soft rubber coats the keyboard deck and makes for a comfortable but slightly narrow palm rest. The colour of the finish inside and out is called Espresso, and looks like a rich metallic brown. Overall, the Mini 5103 looks exactly like a mini version of the small-business-targeted HP ProBook.
A central power button above the keyboard glows light blue, and is graced to the left with two small lit buttons launching the default web browser and whatever email/scheduling software is installed.
The HP Mini 5103 is a dual-core netbook that features an Intel CPU clocked at 1.5GHz and a sleek, sturdy metal body that is lightweight and is extremely portable at around 3 pounds. There's also a 10-inch widescreen display with an option to get it with a capacitive touch screen and 2GB of memory.
There is a power button above the keyboard at the center which glows light blue. To the left of it are two small lit buttons for installing software and launching web browser. To the left of Mini 5103 there is a plug for power adapter next to VGA port. Before the bending at about an inch and a half is the plug which is quite large though. It has a keyboard which is edge to edge raised and is below the rest of the deck. Typing on the keyboard is very comfortable with square keys which compress quickly and they are reactive
The HP Mini 5103 had a rather standard port layout, including three USB 2.0 ports, VGA-out, headphone and microphone jacks, LAN, and a SDHC-card slot. With a 4 cell HP 5103 battery and standard display, the HP Mini 5103 measures 10.3″ x 7.1″ x 0.9″ and weighs about 2.6 pounds.
It is available with a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display which is virtually indistinguishable from those on any number of other netbooks. The video also looked quite nice on the 1366x768 screen, although for other applications that resolution is a bit high for a 10.1in display.
The anecdotal performance and multitasking prowess is slightly better, as are the benchmark results. Just as we heard, there's about a 20 percent improvement -- most other single-core Atom N450 netbooks score around 1,200 on PCMark05, while the Mini 5103 notched a 1,866. That's a nice increase, but it's not quite as fast as AMD's single- and dual-core Nile "netbook" or ultra-thin platform. The Dell Inspiron M101z hits double the Mini 5103's score on PCMark Vantage as does the Neo K125-powered Acer Aspire One 521. In addition, the desktop grade, dual-core 1.8GHz Atom D525 processor inside the Eee PC 1215N also provides about double the speed and, as we said before, the 12.1-inch Eee PC certainly feels faster in everyday use to us.
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