Power Consumption

The Zino HD draws just 36W at idle, just 78 per cent of the Core i3 530 and Phenom II X2 550 BE system without additional Radeon HD 5450 graphics, however it's uses 57 per cent more power than the Asrock Ion with Atom D330, that takes just 23W. Realistically both are not much by any measure.

Under load the difference is even more pronounced, with the Zino HD using just roughly half the power of what the desktop CPUs use, however the Asrock Ion system uses half the power again. This is directly represented by the performance efficiency factor, which is at the bottom of the table at just 6.9.

Conclusion

Despite its cute looks and appealing low power design, the Zino HD is not actually efficient in terms of cost or power to performance - certainly not if you factor in actual 2D applications such as photo editing and video encoding. In fact, it places last in both of our graphs above, and on page 4. It's disappointing that the Athlon 3250e can't drum up more gusto, and using it does feel notably laggy waiting for windows to pop up and programs to open. Technically speaking the CPU would fare better for using even less power if AMD made it a 45nm BGA part instead of standard ZIF socket. It's OEM only, after all. Dell does allow you to choose a faster CPU when buying the Zino HD - a 6850e that uses the same 22W power envelope - however it's an £80 upgrade for just 300MHz so we doubt it actually makes much difference.

As for the £60 Radeon HD 4330 - it does offer the benefit of DirectX 10.1 and a little extra performance compared to the 785G, especially when it comes to basic gaming, but it's really not that much more impressive than what alternative integrated graphics have to offer. It's a whole leap faster than the Ion PC, which given the very poor results, we would never consider is worth gaming on even at the most basic settings.

There's a slight upgrade to the UVD features in the Radeon HD 4330 over the integrated HD 3200 in the 780G chipset that Dell drops in the system, but again, if you're serious about the home theatre aspects the Ion platform is cheaper and just as capable for this particular task or you'll likely want the Intel Core i3-530 or Radeon HD 5450. The Zino HD is in an awkward middle ground with the only advantage being 10-20W lower power use compared to full size systems, but what does that really save you over the course of a 3 hour movie? Unless you spend everyday watching the Extended Edition Lord of the Rings box-set, it's insignificant.

Talking about costs though, it's worth noting that the same Zino HD can be spec'd at Dell from just £329 - half the price of the model we were given for review. We did request it, but Dell insisted on sending us a full-fat Zino HD instead of a lean machine. The bottom line is that this one is just not worth the money. The Blu-ray option alone costs £140 extra, which is only itself good for movies, and even then the Asrock Ion system (its faults aside) is just £365 including Blu-ray drive.

The Zino HD commands the best advantage the closer it is to its basic cost, and when you're thinking of using it as a media PC. Unless you really, really need the smallest form factor available, as soon as you start upgrading it in the Dell configuration pages, the worse value it becomes. For £630, Mac Mini's with their 2.26GHz Intel chips and Nvidia 9400M (Ion) start to look temping. Despite really wanting to review one of these, having been given one twice the cost of its target market, our value and overall score reflects our final feeling.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

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

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

Score Guide