Still reeling from the astonishing 1080p video playback of the NVIDIA Ion platform we tested inside that Echo 1 home theater PC, we snapped to attention when we saw the HP Mini 311. It’s also packing Ion inside, and our friend Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo says the 3.22-pound netbook “plays back 1080p awesomely.”

Even though it’s running a measly Atom N270 processor with a mere 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk, you could hook this baby up in your home theater and play back some crispy HD movies in between your road-warrior jaunts.

Oh yeah, it looks perfectly adequate for web browsing, document creating and other tasks you might do on the go, too. We’re especially impressed with its 11.6-inch 1366×768 display, bigger and higher-rez than most of its netbookish competitors.

Best of all, it’s available September 23 for a dirt-cheap $400, or if you can wait until October, it’ll be $475 with Windows 7 on board. This could be the zippy Ionesque netbook we’ve been waiting for. Continue reading for the tech specs.