Zalman HD160XT Plus

Conclusions and Value

This just rolls right back to the beginning – do you need a home theatre PC when you could just buy a separate stand alone HD/BD-DVD and DivX units? The space of two or three of these alone equates to roughly one Zalman HD160XT Plus. After you’ve spent upwards of six, seven or even eight hundred pounds on this home theatre PC – what are the advantages? It’s massive, it’s noisier than a CE device and it requires a lot of customisation to get working anywhere half as intuitively.

However, by its very nature it gives you the freedom to play any codec, store loads of files and have it do a half dozen things at once as the family media hub. You’re not going to want one just to play DVDs, or even upscale them – you might as well by a slim-line, low power VIA mini-ITX box for that, or spend some money on a dedicated up-scaling DVD player, hell, buy any pack of cereal and get a Toshiba HD DVD player in the box since they’re virtually giving them away now.

It’s a hardcore home theatre and PC enthusiast case not just because of its price, but because of the considerable time and effort required to maximise its benefits. Zalman is playing to a niche within a niche though as home theatre zealots will turn their noses up at anything less than “oxygen free-whatever” branded CE, even if £400 is a drop in the ocean compared to some of what these guys buy.

For the average PC enthusiast the HD160XT Plus is just too expensive – the £170 Zalman HD160+ with the simple VFD option looks like a real bargain in comparison, but several Silverstone cases, and even the OrigenAE HTPC Aluminium S16V, give the Zalman a run for its money here.

Final Thoughts

While its looks are clearly designed by the gods themselves, it’s not followed through into some of the core design aspects – obviously someone made a list of every feature they could think of and someone else drew a kick ass looking case – then the two were pressed together between someone's palms, hoping to get the ultimate PC case. It hasn't happened here with the Zalman HD160XT Plus – it needs to be seamless and work without issue but it just isn't as we continually had to find ways around problems.

It does a lot of good things and it will look a perfect complement to any home theatre setup – I know because I've used the original Zalman HD160 as an HTPC case for the past six months, but I wouldn't ever consider upgrading, it's just not worth over twice the price. And while I love the full colour display with the huge potential it brings over a standard VFD – it's just not as easy to use and customise as I'd like.

By now, several years down the line since its first HTPC cases, we’d expect Zalman would have worked on not only its design but the package as a whole and for £400 we’d expect nothing less than perfection. Unfortunately this isn’t the case.

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

What do these scores mean?