Friday, May 27, 2011

Zotac ZBOX Intel Atom D525 1.8 GHz Dual Core with Blu-ray All-in-One Mini-PC ZBOXHD-ID34BR Review

Zotac ZBOX Intel Atom D525 1.8 GHz Dual Core with Blu-ray All-in-One Mini-PC ZBOXHD-ID34BR
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
Pros:
-Bluray. Woohoo!
-Very thin/light/quiet/small. And I mean quiet!!
-Attractive, has options in BIOS to turn off the blue light which is great!
-I created a bootable SD card using Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe ... if you want to create a bootable SD/USB flash card from a DVD ISO, this is the best way to do it!! Worked like a charm on this unit.
-Reasonable speeds... one of the best nettops out there, this is new hardware folks.
Cons:
-Only one legacy usb port, for some reason my legacy usb devices and thumb drives don't work in the newer high speed usb ports on this, needed to buy a usb hub to be safe.
-250GB HD? You do realize people are dishing out $500 for this thing, and using it almost entirely as a livingroom media solution, most likely to rip DVD's, etc... I would expect 500GB at the VERY LEAST.
-Would have been happier with more than 2GB RAM, especially at this price point, but that will suffice for most applications of this box. This is not as big of a deal to me.
-If you use NetFlix streaming to a TV like I do, be prepared that HD encoding will slow down majorly on this box at times. I turn off HD feature on NetFlix streaming entirely to avoid this. These units are hardware equipped for Flash acceleration, unfortunately NetFlix uses MS Silverlight. This is not Zodac's fault and does not count against them in this review, just pointing that out because I know other people will be trying the same stuff.
Overall, you can't get a much sexier nettop than this, but I have to give honest criticism where it is due. Don't cheat your customers on basic necessities. You should have had one less USB 3.0 port, and one more legacy port. This isn't 2015 yet. And you went cheap with the 250GB HD, IMO. I would have gladly spent a few extra bucks for 500GB.
But again, gosh this thing looks sexy in my living room next to my TV. Love showing it off.
Come to think of it, haven't tried overclocking yet... can't comment on the overclockability of this unit.
EDIT: my CPU overclocks stable at 206MHz (base speed) without any changes in fan speed/voltage
AND, buy this HD Decoder card that fits perfectly on this Motherboard in the extra mini-pcie slot, it makes a huge difference in your ability to watch streaming HD video without lag/choppiness: (search google for "logicsupply" which is where I got mine, and get the Broadcom Hardware Decoder BCM970015 - PCIe Mini Card (BCM970015))
It was on sale for $35 from this same website when I bought it a couple weeks ago... now it's at $50. Still well worth it.

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Experience stunning high-definition Blu-ray video playback in glorious 1080p with the ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray HD-ID34 powered by Next-Generation NVIDIA ION technology with 512MB of DDR3 video memory. NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology enables the ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray HD-ID34 to deliver perfect Blu-ray video playback using the integrated slot-load Blu-ray drive with native 1080p video output to let users experience the movie the way directors intended. An Intel Atom D525 joins the Next-Generation NVIDIA ION graphics processor to form an energy-efficient duo able to deliver a premium computing experience with rich audio, video and web capabilities with the ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray HD-ID34. Class-leading expansion capabilities equip the ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray HD-ID34 with room to accommodate one mini-PCI Express slot in addition to the standard two USB 3.0, USB 2.0 port, combo eSATA 3.0 Gb/s and USB 2.0 port, DVI, HDMI, S/PDIF optical outputs, 6-in-1 memory card reader and 802.11n WiFi – a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of DDR2 memory are included.

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