It seems like a tech marriage made in heaven: a low-cost, highly portable netbook capable of picking up over-the-air digital TV. So Dell took the initiative to arrange the wedding: The company recently began offering a TV-tuner chip with its popular Inspiron Mini 10 netbook. The standard Mini 10 (without the built-in TV tuner) starts at $349, while the Mini 10 with TV Tuner starts at $399. If you’re thinking about getting a Mini 10, the TV-tuner configuration is well worth the extra money—the $50 uptick adds enough to this netbook to boost it from good to very good.
We have to applaud Dell for its bold design choices. Our Mini 10 test unit's looks are impossible to ignore, though sober professionals might want to steer clear of it for exactly this reason. Above the screen is a small, discreet Webcam that records pictures and video at decent quality. The keyboard, 92 percent of full size, is not too cramped. The keys are slightly spaced for comfort, but the keyboard doesn't quite measure up to the one on the Samsung Go. (The Go has a superior Chiclet-style keyboard that we’d like to see on more netbooks.) The six-cell battery that our review unit came with props up the system a bit, so our Mini 10 sat at a pleasant angle that made typing easier. (It also made us more inclined to forgive the added weight.) As with many netbooks, the touch pad seems to have been added as an afterthought; it's squeezed into the tiny space at the bottom of the keyboard. We recommend attaching a wireless mouse to the Mini 10, since the touch pad is quite sensitive.
The native screen resolution on a standard Mini 10 is 1,024x600, but our TV-tuner model sported 1,366x768. The picture is excellent, even if the 10.1-inch glossy screen is prone to glare in bright environments. When we watched streaming video from Hulu.com and YouTube, we definitely appreciated the upgrade. The video playback itself was another story, however, as the video stream consistently stuttered (though the sound did not). Sound quality was good, and the volume went surprisingly high for such a small portable.
The Mini 10 with TV Tuner comes with a standard mix of ports. The left side sports a lock slot, an AC power port, a USB port, a TV tuner/coaxial jack (more about this below), and a five-format memory-card reader. The right side has jacks for a microphone and headphones, as well as an HDMI-out port, a powered USB port, a regular USB port, and an Ethernet port. There is no VGA port.
The TV-tuner chip is designed to pick up your local area’s digital television stations. It can handle high-definition broadcasts that an older television set cannot. In the event the ATSC signal is weak, Dell includes a rabbit-ears-style antenna that attaches to the coaxial port. It comes with suction-cup and clip attachments that let it rest on the Mini 10, a table, the wall, or a window. It’s certainly not the prettiest part of the Mini 10, but it’s an attention-grabber that will turn some heads (for better or worse) in the coffee shop.
Setting up the TV-tuner application is simple, and playback, in our tests, was generally problem-free. Pausing, rewinding, and fast-forwarding caused temporary hiccups that sorted themselves out after a few seconds. The tuner application doesn’t restrict you to full-screen viewing, allowing you to work in other applications at the same time. Web surfing didn’t cause stuttering, so we were free to wander the Internet without playback interference. You will have to sit still, though, since the Mini 10 must be stable to receive a signal. Don’t expect to use the TV tuner on a bus or train.
The low point of our TV-tuner experience was the inconvenience of scrolling through the channel list. We like that the list is constantly refreshed and updated, but we found ourselves missing Hulu.com’s easy organization and know-before-you-click information. The channel list gives you scanty, sometimes confusing channel information. For example, when we ran a channel scan around noon on a Thursday, Channel “5.1 WWOR-DT” was running the same program as “9.1 WWOR DT” but not the same as “9.2 WWOR DT.” Some channel titles were straightforward, like “7.3 WEATHER,” which we came to learn was our local ABC7’s all-weather channel. Thankfully, you have the option of renaming the stations yourself, but you must first browse all the channels to figure out what exactly they are and what they are playing.
Despite its good looks and exciting features, the Mini 10 with TV Tuner performed like a run-of-the-mill netbook during our rigorous benchmark tests. It could not run our PCMark or 3DMark06 tests at all, which is a common occurrence among the netbooks we have tested in the past. It scored 816, slightly above average for a netbook, on our Cinebench 10 test, which stresses CPU performance. This is nearly a 100-point improvement from Dell's Mini 12. Converting 11 iTunes tracks to AAC (in our iTunes encoding test) took 21 minutes and 29 seconds for the Mini 10, which is exactly what we’d expect from a netbook. And in our battery-rundown test, which consists of streaming video online (via Wi-Fi) until the battery conks out, the Mini 10 lasted for 5 hours and 3 minutes, a satisfying result—until you consider that we were working with the upgraded six-cell battery. A standard Mini 10 with TV Tuner comes with a three-cell battery, which will last half as long.
Compared with the netbook competition, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with TV Tuner is a winner. The base price is below average, the performance is about average, the design is exceptional, and the TV tuner is downright cool. Even if you purchase the battery upgrade (which you should) and spring for the slick case design, you’re still paying less than the base price of most netbooks. And to boost the value quotient, Dell also includes Microsoft Works and a generous two-year warranty on the hardware. If you're in the hunt for a new netbook, this model deserves a long look.
Price (at time of review): $474 (direct, as tested)
Key Specs
Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530
Memory: 1GB RAM
Storage: 160GB hard drive
Optical Drive: None
Screen: 10.1 inches (1,024x600 native resolution)
Graphics: Integrated Intel GMA 500
Weight: 2.9 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.3x10.3x7.2 inches
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (32-bit)
