We’ve come to realize that there is no single ideal build for a home-theater PC. Some folks want an HD tuner, while others want Blu-ray. Some even expect their HTPC to function as a full-tilt boogie gaming rig. Then there are the users who want nothing more than the ability to browse the web on their glorious 60-inch TV set and dive into the vast sea of streaming content.
For these latter folks, Dell’s Inspiron Zino HD seems like a perfect fit. Like a chubby Mac Mini, the Zino HD is quiet, small, and easy to tuck away in the AV rack. It’s outfitted with a dual-core 1.5GHz Athlon X2 3250e, 2GB of DDR2/667, and AMD’s 780G chipset with integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics. Instead of relying on a diminutive (and performance-sapping) 2.5-inch drive, the Inspiron Zino HD can fit a full-size 3.5-inch desktop drive. Our review model featured a 250GB drive, but options up to 1TB are offered, and we see no reason why a 2TB drive could not be used.
The unit has Gigabit Ethernet, two eSATA ports, VGA, HDMI, analog audio–out, and mic in on its behind. In front, the Zino has two USB ports, a headphone jack, and a multiformat card reader. Unfortunately, there’s no Wi-Fi as standard but 802.11g can be added for $25, and 802.11n for $45.
Although the Zino HD can be used as a mini desktop PC anywhere, the inclusion of HDMI instead of DVI makes it pretty clear that the unit is meant to be connected to an HDTV. But why use a PC when so many excellent streamers like the Roku and WD Live! are already available for a lot less? The HTPC’s strength is that it has 100 percent fidelity with everything on the net. Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, and, umm, those unmentionable websites can all be viewed from an HTPC. You can’t do that with any streaming box today.
That’s how it should work—in theory, anyway. One problem we ran into with the sexy Polywell Giada Ion-100 (reviewed March 2010) involved its lackluster dual-core Atom 330. The Giada could barely play Blu-ray, and streaming of any high-def content was terribly choppy. We had high hopes that the dual-core Athlon X2 would do better, but it didn’t. While the Zino HD could play Blu-ray flawlessly, the unit annoyingly dropped frames when playing HD streamed from websites—even when fully buffered.
What’s the deal? Blame bad, unoptimized code in Adobe’s Flash. Even Adobe’s GPU-accelerated Flash beta didn’t help out the Zino HD (it didn’t help the Polywell Giada, either.) As part of our evaluation, we set up the Giada, the Zino HD, and a Gateway Core i3-based SX2840 PC with integrated graphics side by side. With all three playing the same content on the same network segment, only the Gateway’s Core i3 ran without a hitch. The Zino HD and Giada both choked on 1080p. Even playing a local QuickTime movie trailer in 1080p tripped up both the Zino HD and Giada. Here, the blame lies with the craptastic QuickTime player, which has no GPU acceleration and pegged both cores at 70 percent during playback. With the GPU-accelerated Windows Media Player 11, we were able to play the file just fine.
You could blame Adobe and Apple, but the harsh reality is that the Zino HD doesn’t have the CPU horsepower to get the job done with today’s apps. That may change in the next 12 months, but it’s a pretty big negative against what would otherwise be a pretty sweet HTPC.
For folks with 720p, the Zino HD would be fine, but how many people are sticking with that tired-old standard?
Small and quiet enough for easy living-room deployment; low price.
Low-clocked Athlon X2 doesn't have the juice to run unoptimized code well.
| Dell Inspiron Zino HD 400 | |
|---|---|
| Processor | AMD 1.5GHz Athlon X2 |
| Ports | Four USB 2.0, two eSATA, Gigabit, VGA, HDMI, mic in, stereo out, headphone out, card reader |
| RAM | 2GB DDR2/667 in two SO-DIMM slots |
| Graphics | Integrated Radeon HD 3200 |
| Storage | 250GB Western Digital 7,200rpm 3.5-inch hard drive |
| Optical | HL-DT-ST GTION |
| Case/PSU | Proprietary / external power brick |
| Dell Inspiron Zino | Polywell Giada Ion-100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Photoshop CS3 (sec) | 449 | 552 |
| Main Concept (sec) | 7,080 | 8,858 |
| 3DMark 2003 | 2,540 | 3,371 |
| Quake III (fps) | 192 | 118 |
| Quake 4 | 28.6 | 29 |
mooncake
June 16, 2010 at 8:25am
Hi,
May i know the temperature to the CPU, GPU, HD and etc...??
Is playing 1080P videos (MKV, AVI, MP4 or others format) smoothly?
Thank you
COMMANDER_COOK
June 08, 2010 at 10:57pm
Windows 7 comes with WMP12, not 11.
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bobla90042
June 07, 2010 at 10:04pm
I built my own system for $400:
INTEL DUAL-CORE E6300 @ 2.8GHz
4GB
400GB
BFG GeForce 8400GS w/ 512MB
Windows 7 Ultimate
500 GB harddrive
6 USB ports DVD burner; will add blueray player later.
Streams 1080 with no dropped frames; gorgeous playback! No limitations on what I can watch from the net. With my 46" LED HDTV, I'm in heaven!
Using a standard size case, it's a bit larger than the Dell, but it's performance justifies the size. And it's easily expandable. Very quiet.
DrGerm
June 07, 2010 at 7:58pm
I actually bought a Zino HD last night; I've been researching this and I find your review a bit unfair, and in fact not like Maximum PC.
The model that you are reviewing is the "Bare Bones" build. I suggest that a more fair review (for Maximum PC readership) would be a build with 4GB of RAM, the AMD 3250 or 6850 processors, and the dedicated ATI 4330 graphics card which has been reviewed at http://tiny.cc/4rsf5 and was found that such useage as Flash videos was substantially improved with these upgrades (and undated drivers/flash) compared to the authors prior review http://tiny.cc/69njm (which is essentially the build reviewed above).
The above upgrades do increase the price $240 however (as of today) which essentially doubles the price of the bare bones model; but likely worth it if the intent is to use this as an HTPC (which is the point of the review above).
Thanks!
gordonung
July 23, 2010 at 12:17pm
The machine has a 3250e in it. Also, the 6850 was not available as an option at the time in the Zino HD. The 3250e was the fastet chip available in it. Finally, Flash 10.1 was in beta at the time and not in general release. It did not offer any support for the GPU in the Zino HD. You also have to remember that the world is not all about Flash which is why I also looked at and slagged QuickTime too.
So, don't get me wrong, I liked the Zino HD as it is far more capable than the Atom-based units but it still needs more clock speed to deal with the very crappy code of Apple and Adobe.
MrMick
June 08, 2010 at 8:59am
Thanks for your feedback. We review systems as they're received; for products that can be custom ordered, we don't tell the vendor how to configure the device, only to take our audience into account.
Michael Brown, Reviews Editor
Twitter: brownieshq
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