Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review

Dell may be introduced late to the 10-inch netbook party, but its Inspiron Mini 10 gives a look in very key ways. Dell introduced one of the thinest and lightest of its class, with lots of color styles which brings out a person’s style in its own way, and they have the attention of all users by its mini keyboard which might is a little small but still handy when you are using it. Plus, Dell will be upgrading it with the wireless and TV tuner card which will surely bring it out in the market. However, the touchpad and touchpad button design are awkward which won’t be easy to use in the beginning but you will get use to it. The three cell battery of Dell is a bit adequate but we will wait for the cell battery to come up.

The Mini 10 carries on the same design as Mini 9 and 12; the rounded lid sport with same glossy look and they are available in 6 different colors which will only cost you $30 extra so you might go for it if you want to bring out your style. When you open the hood it give you a glitzy look of its keyboard and you might find the mouse sensors a little small kind of compact when you use the two buttons together.
The Mini 10 came to market and its one of the compact of all brands. The areas are 10.3 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches, it’s both give a thinner and shorter look then Samsung NC10 and the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE. 1-inch, 2.4-pound HP Mini 1000 is much thinner and lighter, but the 2.6-pound Mini 10 fits in to your bags easily and still it gives you enough space. The cord is single, AC adapter which is 0.4-pound is more compact than most of its ilk.

5 things we like about the Dell Inspiron Mini 10

• Light and Slim in competition of other netbooks
• Its flat keyboard which is specious
• Glossy and bright display
• Nice Colour options for those who look for style
• Its battery runs for four hours with power save option

5 things we don’t like about the Dell Inspiron Mini 10

• Buttons and touchpad are not easy to use you might find them a little uncomfortable
• There is no VGA port in Dell Inspiron Mini 10
• There are no dedicated graphics with HMDI which is a bad choice
• The motion blurs in its 1.3 MP webcam and when the picture take it gives a grey tint
• Mini 10 speakers were tiny in noise as expected

Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is equipped with an Intel Atom Z530 processor, with the GPS receiver, 3G connectivity, TV tuner and Wi-Fi compatible with 802.11n, all are installed into the netbook.

Dell Mini 10 has a much larger keyboard then Mini 12 while both of them are 10 inches wide, the keyboard of Mini 10’s, at 4 inches, is round about 0.3 inches deeper than the Mini 12; this result is mainly due to the bottom row of keys being larger. The keyboard panel of Dell is enlarged all the way to the outer peripheries of the deck. Gone are the spacing issues and there is missing row of function keys from the Mini 9; the right Shift key is full size and directly below the Enter key which doesn’t seems mini at all. Typing on the Mini 10’s flat keyboard was relatively comfortable, and the when the keyboard is used it gives you a smooth ride and a springy touch. Still, we prefer that the layouts which are on the Eee PC 1000HE (a nicely spaced island-style keyboard), and Samsung NC10 (whose raised keys feel more comfortable and well-spaced), HP Mini 2140 (which has a finish to prevent wear and tear).

Just like the other netbooks its not a speed demon at all. It has a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z530 Silverthorne Processor which is specifically designed for small sized laptops. A standard RAM of 1GB is installed which is used to run Windows XP. All over it runs quite good you can play games on it and also you can listen to some good music while you are using the MS Word to write something.

The glossy display of Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is similar to the HP Mini 2140, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has a flush 10.1-inch, 1024 x 576-pixel resolution, and the glass screen is with a bit lower resolution than what you’ll find on most 10-inches netbooks, which sports 1024 x 600-pixel resolution displays. The 16:9 aspect ratio you can watch a DVD using an external optical drive without the black bars along the top and bottom of the screen. On the other hand, this subtraction of 24 vertical pixels limits the amount of space you have on the screen vertically. In comparison of a side-by-side with 1024 x 600-pixel resolution netbooks, the Mini 10 showed consistently one to two less lines of text on Web pages, resulting in more scrolling. In the future Dell will surely offer a higher-definition 1366 x 768 display option. Despite its bright look, the Mini 10’s screen didn’t exhibit too much brightness; both vertical and horizontal viewing angles were good.

The built-in stereo speakers of Dell Inspiron Mini 10, hidden below the front edge, were not as loud or full as we expected but still they are good enough to hear some light music just like we were able to hear Kings of Leon’s "Sex on Fire" from across a small room.

The Mini 10’s have a spacious 160GB hard drive, booted Windows XP in a standard 50 seconds with 5,400-rpm, which is 5 seconds quicker than the average netbook. The LAPTOP Transfer Test (copying a 5.97GB folder of mixed media) took 7 minutes and 50 seconds, or a rate of 13.4 MBps, which is 2.4 MBps slower than the average netbook. The application opening time was much quicker using Mozilla and other applications.

During the test the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 stayed quite cool which was unexpected. The touchpad and keyboard were noticeably not warm, measuring about 87 degrees. Similarly, the underside of Mini 10 stayed at about 89 degrees.

While having the updates from Dell we came to know that the six-cell battery will be available in the coming months which will surely increase the battery timings. On the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi), the battery lasted for 2 hours and 43 minutes. Figuring out the runtime is better than the three-cell battery on the Lenovo Idea Pad S10, which lasted for 2 hours and 38 minutes, but not as long as the HP Mini 1000 (2 hours and 56 minutes) or the three-cell netbook average of 2:52 which is undoubtedly remarkable.

If battery life is important as you don’t stay in home most of the time, hold out for a Mini 10 with a six-cell battery, which should provide around 5 hours of endurance sounds unbelievable, considering that the MSI Wind U120 and Samsung NC10, both of which feature six-cell batteries, lasted 4:28 and 6:34, respectively. We will update this review once we've had a chance to test the six-cell battery as it’s not in the market yet.

The 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card provided a solid connection without any lag in clouds. While testing it delivered a strong 20.4 Mbps and 16.1 Mbps from 15 and 50 feet, respectively both are slightly above average we were able to maintain a strong signal far from our access point which stranded out good surfing the web. Streaming video clips on YouTube, chatting with friends on Face book and music over Slacker.com were void of any pauses. Dell plans to offer the Mini 10 with a built-in mobile broadband in the coming months.

Final Words and Conclusion

The crowd of 10 inch netbook is seriously competitive. There are strong competitors like Acer Aspire AOD 150 which is really cheap in the market, there is Lenovo Idea Pad S10 which has nothing wrong with it at all, there is Asus Eee PC 10058 HA from the house of Asus which is making its market and all in all Asus is the creator of the netbook market. Some netbooks in this crowd will provide a greater bang for your buck but with its nearly full sized keyboard and other upgrade options like integrated GPS, mobile broadband and TV Tuner can make it a good choice as a netbook after all money talks. Keep in mind the colours of Dell Mini 10 will show your style.