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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ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Nope, it is a standard MCE IR remote, similar to what was bundled with the Vision 3D and the CoreHT 252B.You will need a separate keyboard / mouse if you wish to do even basic browsing or navigation outside of a 10-ft UI (like XBMC)
ectoplasmosis - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The photography in this article is truly shocking.Matias - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I also noted the very poor pictures! What the hell??ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I apologize for the poor pictures. We were running late for the NDA lift [ in fact, we missed it by a good 9 hours :( ], and had to make do with whatever I could snap in a hurry yesterday evening.adityanag - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Ah I just posted a comment to this.. Well, nevermind what I said previously, these things happen :)einstein4pres - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
They appear to be taken with a Nikon P&S. I was curious, so I checked the exif info on the shot of the box that has an incredible amount of barrel distortion.I suggest taking the shot in the middle of your zoom range, which should help eliminate the barrel distortion, and increasing the F number (from f2.8 to ~ f8) to increase the depth of field (amount of stuff in focus). You probably need more ambient light, a flash, or a tripod to make this work.
freedom4556 - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Test HD Netflix performance in your HTPC reviews, hell, throw in Hulu Plus and HD Youtube and any other major streaming you can think of. Reason I say this is I have an E-350 based HTPC and Silverlight (Microsoft's technology that powers Netflix) doesn't properly provide hardware acceleration to HD streams coming from Netflix. This results in an unplayable single-digit FPS on my Windows 7 HTPC. Youtube works fine, Adobe's got it figured out, and on the latest drivers too. Don't have Hulu, but still FIX IT MICROSOFT. Grrrr...Musafir_86 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
-Did you check that you really have Silverlight 5 installed? Windows Update only pushes Silverlight 4 as far as I could see, so you need to download and upgrade manually. Also, AFAIK, only in version 5 it have proper hardware acceleration support.Regards,
-Musafir_86.
Kakumei - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
microsoft removed true gpu acceleration from their to-do list for silverlight 5.You cannot watch netflix hd on netbook cpus, sorry.
Matias - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I agree, cant see HD videos on Netflix using the AD10 because of lame Silverlight...