Dell Inspiron Mini 10

Our review machine was fitted with the 1.6GHz processor and the optional six-cell 5040mAh battery. Despite its more efficient CPU, when it came to the battery test, the 10 only just managed to beat the 10v. Lasting for 315 minutes while looping a standard def H.264 video at full screen with the volume turned up and with Wi-Fi radio on via VLC.

Video Playback Battery Life Results

Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better

That's an improvement of seven whole minutes over the 10v though five and a quarter hours of continuous full screen video playback is still not be sniffed at. With the screen brightness turned down low and the Wi-Fi off the majority of the time the 10 managed a not unimpressive 9 hours before the lights went out – half an hour more the 10v achieved.

The performance of the Mini 10 sits towards the lower end of the netbook scale – not surprisingly for a Silverthorne powered machine. Yet, despite the PCMark05 numbers being toward the bottom of the heap, the 10 never felt noticeably slower in day-to-day use than our N270 powered Mini 10v or even the Samsung N120 and N110 machines we had on test, recently.

PCMark05 Results
CPU

Longer bars are better

Memory

Longer bars are better

HDD

Longer bars are better

The Mini 10 managed to chomp its way through the Gimp Gaussian Blur test in an average of 5.7 seconds. This again is nothing to write home about being slower than the Dell Mini 9, 10v and 12, the last of which uses the same processor as the 10. When it comes to video playback, if your files are around 1280x720 or below you won't have a problem. 720p WMV, AVI and H.264 files all played back at full screen with no drama. However, 1080p AVI and also 720p MKV files were prone to frame drop and stalling, even when playing in-window. Needless to say 1080p H.264 files were a complete non-starter.