Dell's aims Inspiron Zino HD at the living room
When we first saw Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD this summer, our thought was that when Dell brought this thing to market it would be introducing the affordable living room PC of our dreams. It's small, it's cheap, it has HDMI, and it supports Blu-ray and 802.11n Wi-Fi. What else could you want in a self-contained little Windows box to serve up media to your TV? We're not without questions (how well will the default ATI graphics and low-power AMD CPU handle Blu-ray playback, for example?), but on paper, the Inspiron Zino HD the Dell announced this morning seems to retain most of that promise we saw a few months back.
Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD offers multiple color choices.
(Credit: Dell)The Inspiron Zino HD starts at $229, which nets you a single-core 1.6GHz AMD Athlon 2650e CPU, a DVD burner, 2GB of RAM, wired networking, a DVD burner, and a 250GB hard drive. It's not much, but that's a better deal than the $199 Acer Revo we reviewed a few weeks ago because of the Dell's larger hard drive and a DVD burner.
And while these low-cost PCs are all the rage these days, we're more excited by the Zino's possibilities after a few key upgrades. Bump the CPU up to the dual-core Athlon X2 3250e, upgrade the RAM to 4GB, add 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a Blu-ray drive and the price climbs to a still-reasonable $498. A TV tuner option is coming at some unspecified time in the future.
You get two USB 2.0 jacks, an optical drive, and an SD Card reader on the front of the Zino.
(Credit: Dell)You wouldn't want to use such a spec for editing movies or playing games, for that we'd recommend starting with Gateway's SX2800-01 and adding a low-profile 3D card. You'd probably also run out of storage space with the Zino's 250GB default hard drive sooner than you'd like. But on a home network with another PC hosting the bulk of your media, a $500 or so Inspiron Zino HD would likely meet all of your prerecorded media consumption needs.
Among other ports, the back of the Inspiron Zino HD has both HDMI and VGA video outs, as well as a pair of eSATA ports.
(Credit: Dell)Dell offers a few color and design options for the Inspiron Zino HD, and all but Piano Black cost an extra $10. According to Dell's Web site, order's placed today will ship by November 26.
Rich Brown reviews desktops and various other components and peripherals for CNET. E-mail Rich. 
The thing about these devices is that they tend to offer more features than they really need. The Revo kind of nails it in that way, as for around $300 you get a smaller box with a dual-core Atom and the ability to stream HD content from your network - in that case the small hard drive doesn't matter and the lack of a disc drive isn't a huge deal anyway, as most people already have DVD players, or Blu-ray players, or consoles that work as such. It also draws less power.
On the other hand, this one when upgraded boasts a bit more power...though as mentioned, if it cannot handle HD playback like the Ion-based Revo, it makes it kind of useless as a streaming-based HTPC. I guess we'll see, and I'll have to hold off on buying a Revo for that purpose if the Dell does a better job.
Right now I have a DIGISTOR external Blu-Ray player (this one -> http://www.amazon.com/External-Blu-ray-Burner-Tray-DIGISTOR/dp/B002SY5GRS ) hooked up to it, and I have to go the long way around booting up to a Windows-based OS.
The Dell Zino might just be worth it to rid myself of all the hassle.
I actually have that CPU in my 14" Acer laptop with older ATI x1250 video and it does a decent job with DVD's played using VLC. I cannot speak to Blue Ray as I do not use them. It does run Windows 7 quite well, and even did a passable job with Vista Home Basic.
Withe the newer ATI video, I think that it should be more than adequate as a media player box. I would be hesitant to say the same about a machine with an Intel GPU. I do not thin wither ATI or Nvidia offers an option for Intel processors other than Mac and Atom based machines.
It's a great precedent too, because Atom makes basically no sense in a desktop, where battery life isn't a factor. I'm hoping Dell adopting these low power AMD chips will spur the Nettop market away from Atom.
Dell have been using AMD for year now (at least in the UK).
I have a Dell Dimension E521 at home, bought a couple of years ago. That came with an AMD processor.
Gary
Be interested in seeing some real world reviews. How quiet is it, does it run hot etc.
Gary
http://links.amd.com/ZinoHD
- by KRIMME December 7, 2009 4:48 PM PST
- How would this rate against a Lenovo Q700? Haven't been able to find much in the way of reviews on either, but I am looking at one to be an easy HTPC solution.
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