Dell Zino HD 410 HTPC Review
by Ganesh T S on February 19, 2011 7:08 AM EST- Posted in
- HTPC
- Dell
- AMD
- Media Streamer
- ATI
The Zino 410 HD HTPC is not meant to be a gaming powerhouse. However, it does turn out to be pretty decent for gaming at 720p resolution with low graphics settings, as we shall see in this section. With respect to this capability, the performance can be said to be comparable with various notebook gaming solutions.
Given the fact that the Core 100 scored poorly in the synthetic benchmarks, we will not be considering it in this section. The graphs show a comparison the Vision 3D, the other SFF HTPC in its range. Also included is an AMD laptop with the Phenom P920 and a Mobility 5650 solution. The latter shows the gaming potential which could have been realized had Dell gone in with a slightly more powerful discrete GPU instead of the Mobility 5450.
In all the above graphs, low and medium settings correspond to games run at 1366x768 with the appropriate graphics settings in the game options. With 30 fps providing barely playable performance, we find that the Zino 410 is certainly not capable of 720p gaming at medium settings. However, 720p gaming at low graphics settings should be a decent experience for most of the current games.
The above figures correlate with the difference we saw in the 3D benchmarks in the previous section. If gaming at good graphics settings is important to you in a pre-built SFF package, look at solutions other than the Zino 410. However, solutions satisfying those criteria are probably going to cost a bit more.
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myangeldust - Saturday, September 10, 2011 - link
The hardware is nice. It's got a cleaner design and a motorized slot drive. But Apple's version of a media center app is just an extension of the pay-to-play iTunes store.piroroadkill - Monday, February 21, 2011 - link
A Mac Mini? Are you kidding? You'd be paying a lot more for a lot less. Less of everything.speculatrix - Monday, February 21, 2011 - link
but, apple fans, His Lordship said that bluray was a bag of hurt, so I can't believe you'd even consider such blasphemyhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/steve-jobs-call...
:-)
myangeldust - Saturday, September 10, 2011 - link
Blu-day is DOA tech. Once solid state and flash drives come down, movies could be sold on tiny chips you pop into a read-only reader slot. You'll be able to fit your movie collection in your pocket. Maybe Case Logic can make a leather wallet for 500 movie chips. Dibs on the term "Movie Chip"©. DB will become a replacement to DAT in the data archive market.Taft12 - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
I can't comprehend the need to use a 3.5" hard drive in this unit! Why such a noisy beast in a machine intended to be an HTPC???IIRC, the 2.5" 7200RPM WD Black 500GB performs as well (or better) than any 3.5" 7200RPM rotational HDs on the market today (I'll be dipped if I can find the review that showed that result at the moment unfortunately... anyone?)
Ratman6161 - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
On Newegg:3.5" 750GB Caviar Black: $69.99
2.5" 750GB Scorpio Black $119.99
2.5" 500GB Scorpio Black $69.99
So, if you stick with 750GB and drop from 3.5 to 2.5 you add $50 to the price. Or if you want to keep the price the same you lose $250 GB. You make your choice and live with whichever compromise seems better to you.
Ratman6161 - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
The review unit used in the article seems to be behind the times. If you go to the Dell web site, now instead of 750GB it's 1TB. If you want 1TB in a 2.5 new egg has one for $119 but it is a 5400 RPM not 7200.So its a trade off between capacity, physical size, and price. Pick any two. Actually more complicated than that since performance is involved too. But you get the idea. Trade offs have to be made and the choice Dell made is a valid one - though no choice could please everyone.
DanNeely - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
This review was delayed for a while as Ganesh and Dell tried to troubleshoot video decode problems.DanNeely - Sunday, February 20, 2011 - link
The Zino scales down to a $300 unit, a which point the capacity/price penalty for a 2.5" drive becomes significant. After that it's just a case of simplifying the design by only using 3.5" drives. What I don't get is why Dell didn't follow through on the high end and take advantage of the form factor by offering a 2GB model for the people who don't want to access their giant collection over the lan.taltamir - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
I can't comprehend the complaint about 3.5" drives. They are much bigger, significantly faster, much cheaper, and only take slightly more power (5 watts total power consumption on load, 2watts idle).