Hardware Dell Zino HD Review

Dell's Zino HD could only become cuter if it was adorned with Hello Kitty graphics... and given its interchangeable lids, that's still a possibility. With a very low power AMD CPU, Radeon HD 4330 graphics, Blu-Ray drive and a terabyte of storage: is this a killer media PC?



http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2010/02/16/dell-zino-hd-review/1

 

spotted on of those the other day, most tempting when you see them on a table.

 

Would have liked to see benchmarks vs the Mac Mini

 

Looks big for a system composed mostly of laptop parts, but at least dell is trying to compete with the mac mini and hopefully this will take some of apple's customers.

 

Looks like a full sized HD. Strange that they didn't use a laptop drive, would be quieter, run cooler, take up less space and draw less power. Maybe just the capacity issue, and cost, but even so...

If I was to redesign / respec this, would use a large capacity Notebook drive (7200rpm) sort out the 45nm cpu (as mentioned) with a slightly higher clock speed and offer better graphics, say the 4570 as used in many laptops. The power / heat reduction from swapping to the notebook drive and cpu would balance things out.

 

If you opt out of some of the more expensive parts and aim for the £450 mark it becomes a much better deal. Admitedly, the one I got for my Dad was for £80 off or something in an xmas deal so I spent a bit more and got a bigger HDD. And while there are cheaper machines out there, it's one of the few that does look cool and fits nicely under the TV, plus it has far more grunt than those net-tops which can be just as expensive, with teeny 16gb hard drives. Pointless when the main purpose of them is as little media machines for the house. Storing photos and videos etc.

I'd have given it a 7ish out of ten from a non technical consumers point of view.

 

Does thee £650 for the dell include OS? theres a wee little win 7 badge on the front? And do the other systems include it?

 

Why no CULV 'note'top love from manufacturers? Would like to see how a CULV C2D machine competes with this...

 

Yes it does.

 

Nice review. But I would have liked to see how it compared to the mac mini as well.

I like the look of it but I feel it would have been better with a slot loading disk drive to make the front look more seamless. So, I think when I do come to buying one of these smaller compact desktops i'll be going with the mac mini.

 

I recommend you should wait another 4-5 month. Then my company will offer a very small, low noise, gaming mini computer. Outerperforming the Mac Mini in 3DMark06 by a factor of 2. At nearly the same price as the apple! So stay tuned. I'm sure we will have a review here at bit-tech. Hopefully!

 

If this was going to be put to use as a media centre then a more slimline box would have made a greater impression, given how thin laptops can be once you take away the keyboard, trackpad and screen, with it's own slimline hard drive (or an SSD option for the media enthusiast) for the OS and then a couple of gigabit network ports to link to the local home network or home server and the other for accessing the internet.

A larger flat surface would help dissipate the heat better, especially if it was made out of aluminium instead of heat holding plastics, a horizontally mounted dedicated graphics card would have maintained a lower profile which would have sat better with other home media equipment than the current design.

 

Eugh! It's hideous! Dear Dell, if you must steal a design from Apple, at least do it right!

 

Amd should just release a actual low tdp version of its current x2 lineup, the 240e is still at 45w...

 

See, I love these small machines - they are cute, contained and power efficient. But £650! even the Mac Mini is monster money when you consider the netbook alternative... after all an Acer Ferrari One is only £400 and contains a screen and a battery. If it just had HDMI...

 

Perhaps that isn't the point of 'net-tops' then? Horses for courses and all that, I've seen a friend use a box with a 16Gb SSD for its quick boot times and to stream from the always-on wired NAS he's got under the stairs.

For me I'd want a box with a small SSD with the OS on it so I could start it up nice and quick, maybe a storage drive too if I don't convert my old desktop into a server. It should have 2 DVB-T2 decoders to watch/record Freeview HD and enough processing power to make a fist of decoding the transport stream into DVD/BD formats. Could also come with a BD-RW. HDMI outs (natch) and multi-channel audio. Who makes one of them?

 

Yeah - the form-factor dictates how the device is used - my Blackberry has a good keyboard - but I'm not going to write a play on it... But there are universals over all the different "computer" form factors - light, cheap, powerful and energy efficient... Oh and quiet - I could go on, but I CRAVE a quiet pc... (Fractal Design anyone?)

 

I think you'd love HardcorePC's Reactor model. ;D

 

is it just me or does the CPU on that thing look like there is an absolutely massive airpocket in the thermal paste, or was that area scraped off to prove its AMD or something?

 

This pc would be terrible for us enthusiast, but great for a family member that does basic surfing and the occasional youtube, but then again is a dell.