Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus: Redefining the Small Form Factor PC
by Ganesh T S on April 11, 2012 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ZOTAC
- Fusion
- HTPC
Before proceeding to the business end of the review, let us take a look at some power consumption numbers. We measured power drawn at the wall when the unit was idle, one hour after subjecting the unit to Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously and when playing back a 1080p24 Blu-ray movie backed up as a MKV with HD audio bistreaming. In all cases, an external powered USB 3.0 hard drive was connected to the unit, and Wi-Fi was active (no wired Ethernet). A wireless keyboard and mouse was also connected to the unit.
In the Prime95 + Furmark test, the CPU temperature reached around 85C after 1 hour of loading. The chassis temperature was around 50C. The fan inside the unit was quite noisy under these circumstances, and was audible from 6 ft. away. However, for a mass market product, if is understandable that Zotac didn't want to go in for a fanless solution. That said, it is quite unlikely that consumers are going to end up stressing the PC that much.
| ZOTAC ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus Power Consumption | |
| Idle | 14.1 W |
| Prime95 + Furmark (Full loading) | 31.4 W |
| 1080p24 MKV Playback using DXVA | 24.4 W |
The Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus definitely receives recommendations from us for the size and progressive HD video decode performance. The mSATA SSD is a definite step up from the hard drive based HTPCs we have seen so far. It is slightly let down by the weak CPU in the system, but makes up for it in some disk-heavy workloads. There are plenty of bundled peripherals, and the standard MCE remote is a nice add on for HTPC users. The IR receiver extender is a nice touch by Zotac, making sure that the unit's MCE remote is usable at all times, irrespective of the way the PC is mounted. The mini-optical SPDIF connector ensures compatibility with older receivers, and the HDMI output is also able to carry audio (bitstreamed and decoded PCM).
On the other hand, the lackluster online streaming performance and complete lack of pulldown / deinterlacing capabilities is disappointing. The weak CPU is the price one needs to pay for the form factor and the low cost. The noisy fan may be a problem depending on the workload.
There are a number of specific scenarios in which the Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus comes good. One is unlikely to regret purchasing a unit as long as the drawbacks outlined in this review are well understood.
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apexjr - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Can I attach a disk shelf to this thing via eSata port multiplier?TerdFerguson - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The sweet spot, IMHO, was the ATOM/ION net-top, which at least one vendor managed to bring in under the $200 mark. Sadly, they were only available for an awfully brief time and haven't seen fitting replacements. Everything since has offered half the performance for twice the price.Kakumei - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I believe you are mistaken. While there are/were completed dual-core ATOM/ION nettops, by the vendor hitting under the $200 mark I believe you mean the single-core Atom 230-contained Acer Revo 1600's that were priced at $199.99. The Atom 330 models were priced $100 more ($299.99). The ION2 came with a very slightly more powerful D510, but it wasn't worth writing home about. Either way, the CPU performance certainly wasn't twice as good, let alone as good, as the AMD E-350/E-450. The Graphic performance is superior to ION and ION2 systems as well... (Read an anandtech review).That said, ION nettops were really the only game in town for the form factor at the time. I have a Revo 1600 in my house, though now I end up using my C-60 netbook at friend's quite often. Seeing the further reduction in form factor from this Nano XS AD11 box is exciting. Crossing my fingers that the next gen is as great a leap.
Matias - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
ATOM+ION was slower than Brazos, I had it before.MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Should have waited for Trinityredisnidma - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I guess what the results would have been if an Atom processor was used instead, because according to Ganesh, if the Zacate APU performed bad, then Atom would have been total crap... :/TerdFerguson - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The better Atom machines had NVidia ION chipsets w/ video support.ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Yes, it would have been real bad! I have never been a big fan of Atom-based PCs.. but, given the available feature set, I am sure there is a market somewhere for the capabilities.. Whether the target market is happy with the purchase of the PC after extended use is a different story altogether.jabber - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I rolled out about a dozen Asrock Ion Atom boxes for business/office use a couple of years ago.They are all still trucking along fine and the users still love them.
We had just one user who is a bit of a social media guru who really pushes his hard (well 20+ browser tabs open etc.) so we recently upped to a (slightly better) 7200rpm HDD and 4GB of ram. We also OC'd his box to 1.8GHz (every little helps) and he is still happy too.
457R4LDR34DKN07 - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
does the remote have mouse cursor control?