Dell Zino HD 410 HTPC Review

The appearance of nettops around 2008 kick started the small form factor HTPC craze. Until that point of time, SFF HTPCs were restricted to the DIY crowd. However, the anemic nature of the Atom platform on which most nettops were based was a downer for many. The ION platform led to the appearance of a slew of SFF HTPCs which garnered widespread market acceptance. However, the core Atom processor left many people still disappointed.

A couple of years back, mobile CPUs from both AMD and Intel began to achieve the required performance within approximately the same power envelop as the processors being used in the nettops. Acer took the plunge first, introducing the Acer X1200 mini-PC in 2008, but it wasn't in the mini-ITX form factor.

Dell was, in fact, the first to introduce a mini-ITX SFF HTPC build with their first generation Zino 400 HD HTPC. The mobile CPUs, combined with the AMD chipset having an integrate GPU (3200) / option of a discrete 4330 mGPU created a lot of interest amongst the HTPC enthusiasts. Despite being well received, the units did have problem with poor thermal design.

Between the appearance of the Zino 400 and the Zino 410 that we are currently reviewing, companies like ASRock caught on to the trend and started offering mini-ITX SFF HTPCs with varying degrees of capability. Dell seems to be committed to AMD for their SFF HTPC solution, and the approach they have taken for the Zino 410 is the same as the one for the Zino 400. The Zino 410 is offered in various configurations, and users can pick and choose components as they see fit.

Let us take a look at the configuration of the review unit sent to us by Dell:

Dell Zino 410 HD HTPC Specifications
Processor	AMD Phenom II X4 P940 (4x1.70GHz, 45nm, 2MB L2, 25W)
Chipset	AMD M880G + SB820
Memory	1x4GB + 1x2GB DDR3-1333 (Max 8GB)
Graphics	ATI Mobility 5450 1GB DDR3 80 SPs, 675/675/800 MHz Core/Shader/RAM clocks
Hard Drive(s)	750GB 7200RPM 3.5" HDD (Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AAES)
Optical Drive	Blu-ray/DVDRW Combo
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet 802.11n (Dell WLAN 1520)
Audio	Microphone and headphone/speaker jacks Capable of 5.1/7.1 digital output with HD audio bitstreaming(SPDIF/HDMI)
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Extras	THX TruStudio Pro Audio Certification Interchangeable colour lid IR receiver and MCE remote Wireless Keyboard / Mouse
Pricing	Starting Price: $300 Price as configured: $775

Dell maxed out their Zino 410 HD specifications in the review unit. It comes in at $775, and lies in between the ASRock Core 100 and the ASRock Vision 3D that we had reviewed earlier.

Do the capabilities of the system fall in between the two? Is the Dell system worth the cost? Before we get into the details, let us take a look at the unboxing impressions.

Unlike the ASRock Core 100 / Vision 3D, the Zino 410 HD ships with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The packaging is, therefore, appropriately bigger. Apart from the main Zino 410 unit, the package also contains:

1. 90W AC / DC Adapter
2. Wireless keyboard and mouse with batteries
3. USB RF receiver for the wireless keyboard / mouse
4. Media Center remote
5. Black lid (to replace the silver lid present on top of the unit by default)
6. Support CD and warranty information booklet

Of all the SFF HTPCs I have seen, the Dell Zino 410 HD HTPC has the best industrial design. The contours are quite pleasing and the unit blends in quite nicely with the rest of the AV equipment.

The front panel is taken up by a tray loading Blu-Ray drive on top and a headphone jack, couple of USB 2.0 ports, SD card reader and the IR receiver at the bottom. The power switch is on the top panel.

The left half of the rear panel is taken up by the cooling fan. A press switch to displace the lid is provided at the top and a hard drive activity light is at the bottom. Other ports on the rear panel include 2 eSATA, 1 HDMI 1.3a, 1 VGA, 1 Gigabit Ethernet jack, 2 USB 2.0, a mic/headphone jack, optical SPDIF and the power adaptor connector.

The Zino 410 HD is raised with rubber bushes, and also has ventilation slots on all four sides, as can be seen in the picture above.

Just like a notebook, this unit also supports simultaneous display on two monitors. Testing was done mostly with the HDMI output connected to a Toshiba REGZA 37" 1080p TV through an Onkyo TX-SR 606. For non-media playing related testing, the VGA port was connected to an Acer H243H 1080p monitor.

Our review unit shipped with Windows 7 x64 Home Premium and a OEM version of Cyberlink PowerDVD for Blu-Ray playback.

We will conclude this section with a table to summarize the data and A/V connectivity options for the Zino 410 HD HTPC.

A/V Connectivity Options for the Zino 410

Option	Status
HDMI	Yes [v1.3]
Component	No
Composite	No
VGA	Yes
SPDIF	Yes [Optical]
Stereo	Yes

 

Data Connectivity Options for the Vision 3D

Option	Status
Optical Disk Drive	Yes [Blu-Ray / DVD-RW]
USB	Yes [4 x v2.0]
eSATA	Yes [2x]
LAN	Yes [ 1000 Mbps GbE ]
Internal HDD	Yes [ 750 GB ]
WiFi	Yes [ 300 Mbps 802.11n ]
Card Reader	Yes

  

The Zino 410 HD HTPC is primarily built out of notebook components, and it is not possible for the average enthusiast to build such a system with off-the-shelf components. The only non-notebook component in the whole system was the hard disk, which we will note further down in this section.

Motherboard & Chipset : mini-ITX AMD M880G + SB820 Southbridge

The motherboard used in the Zino 410 HD HTPC is based on AMD's mainstream Danube notebook platform. The M880G chipset has the option of an integrated 4250 GPU, which is not used in our system. It provides support for upto 6 SATA ports, two of which are used internally by the Blu-Ray drive and the hard disk, while two make an appearance in the form of eSATA. The SPDIF and analog audio output are driven by the Realtek ALC662 audio codec chip.

The mini PCI-E slot is taken up by the Dell WLAN 1520 802.11n card which is capable of 300 Mbps. The two antennae from the card are wired in such a way as to come in between the top lid and the intermediate panel separating it from the rest of the computer.

The underside of the motherboard has a MXM graphics slot and another DIMM slot in addition to the one available on the top side.

CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 P940 @ 1.70 GHz

Compared to the ASRock Core 100 and Vision 3D which went in with 35W TDP processors, the Zino 410 HD HTPC comes with a 25W TDP AMD Phenom II X4 P940. This TDP is a result of the low clock rate (1.7 GHz) at which the processor runs. Manufactured in a 45nm process, the processor has 4 cores running a total of 4 threads. Though the processor has 512 KB of L1 cache and 2M of L2 cache, there is no L3 cache unlike the Phenom desktop processors.

GPU : ATI Mobility 5450 MXM

The only discrete GPU option in the Zino 410 series is the Mobility 5450. The MXM module is mounted on the underside of the motherboard. It is the 40 nm Park Pro GPU clocked at 675 MHz, and has 1 GB of DDR3 memory.

With a rated power consumption of 11 W, it doesn't require a complicated cooling solution like what the GT425M warranted in the ASRock Vision 3D.

DRAM : Samsung's 1 x 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM @ 1333 MHz + Hynix's 1 x 2GB DDR3 SO-DIMM @ 1333 MHz

The Zino 410 ships with more RAM than necessary for HTPC purposes right now. We have two RAM sticking slots. The one on the top side of the motherboard was populated with Samsung's K4B2G0846C DRAM chips. On the underside, we have 2GB of Hynix's HMT325S6BFR8C DRAM chips running with the same specifications as the Samsung chips.

Hard Disk : Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 7200 rpm 3.5"

We were quite surprised to find a 3.5" hard drive inside the unit. Considering that the rest of the components are from notebook platforms, a 2.5" hard drive would have made much more sense.

The Caviar Black 7200rpm is a well reviewed hard drive and provides more than acceptable performance for a HTPC. However, its power consumption profile only makes the thermal design (about which we will talk in the next section) more challenging.

Optical Disk Drive : Htachi-LG Blu-Ray / DVD RW Tray Loading Drive

The Zino 410 ships with the Hitachi-LG CT10N Blu-Ray / DVD RW tray loading drive.

A slot loading drive would have made the unit appear better, but that is a minor quibble which doesn't affect the functionality of the system.

Keyboard / Mouse / Remote

The Zino 410 also comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse (other options are also available) and a MCE remote. Batteries are also included.

The remote is exactly the same as the one which ships with the ASRock Vision 3D, only a different colour. The wireless keyboard / mouse combo adds $75 to the cost right now. Compared to some of the deals which keep going on for these wireless accessories, I would strongly recommend purchasing them separately. Quality of the wireless keyboard / mouse is no great shakes, and it just gets the job done. On a HTPC where you might not spend much time typing, it is good enough.

The cost of the review unit, when configured with the same components on Feb 17, 2011 was $775 + taxes. At this price, it is smack in the middle between the ASRock Core 100 and ASRock Vision 3D, the other SFF HTPCs in this segment. In the next few sections, we will check out how the Zino 410 fares in our tests.

One of the main complaints about the Zino 400 HTPC was the overheating of the system. After putting the Zino 410 under extreme stress (Prime 95 + Furmark simultaneously), I found that the thermal characteristics were much better this time around.

Compared to the first generation unit, Dell made extensive changes to the thermal design

1. The fan at the back of unit was made bigger (60mm in Zino 410 compared to the 50mm in the Zino 400)
2. The inlet and outlet designs were optimized to allow improvement in inlet at the front and bottom and outlet at the back and the top
3. The BIOS fan curve tables were updated
4. The placement of the memory modules was changed to distribute the hot-spots in the system.
5. The opening between the motherboard and the chassis side wall was enlarged to allow more airflow
6. The Zino 410 also has a 2 layer distribution airflow design, with the GPU and one of the memory slots getting cooled in the lower layer.

Credit must be given where it is due, and we really applaud Dell for putting the lessons learnt in the previous generation product to good use. Of all the SFF HTPCs we have evaluated, Zino 410's thermal design is by far the best, and it shows in how cool the system is under load. It is a pity that things could have been even better had Dell gone in with the choice of a 2.5" hard drive compared to the currently existing 3.5" one.

The Zino 410 is basically a notebook solution at its core. It wouldn't make sense to compare it with full blown Clarkdale HTPCs (or for that matter, any system with a power consumption of more than 100W).

In the comparative benchmarks provided in the rest of this review, we will provide the scores obtained by the Zino 410 and other notebook / similar SFF HTPC solutions.

Windows Experience Index

This metric is often considered meaningless, but we feel it serves as an indicator of what could be the bottleneck in a system for pre-built HTPCs. Unsurprisingly, the weak 5450 emerges as the culprit for the 4.9 index scored by the Zino 410.

The other components, including the processor, memory and the hard disk check out well.

Miscellaneous Performance Metrics

The graphs below give an idea of where the Zino 410 HD HTPC stands with respect to performance when compared with other SFF HTPCs in the same range. PCMark Vantage's PCMark score gives a general idea of the system's capability.

In addition to that, a couple of common HTPC workloads are also benchmarked. We have some data on the x264 encoding performance using the Phenom CPU.

An estimate of how well WinRAR performs, particularly with respect to processing split archives, wraps up this section. To evaluate this, we take a 4.36 GB MKV file, compress it in the 'Best' compression mode into a split archive (97.1 MB each), which results in 44 files on the hard disk. The time taken to decompress this split archive is then recorded. The performance in this benchmark is heavily influenced by the hard disk in the system.

In the next section, we will take a look at the discrete Mobility 5450 GPU in more detail.

The whole purpose of adding the discrete GPU to the Zino 410 was to make sure that the shortcomings of the integrated 4200 series GPU wouldn't be noticed. The Zino 410 provides only one option, namely, the Mobility 5450. How good is it?

We ran the 3D Mark Vantage and 3D Mark 06 benchmarks and the graphs below show how the Mobility 5450 fares when compared to the iGPU of the Core 100 and the GT 425M of the Vision 3D.

The Zino 410 comes in between the Core 100 and the Vision 3D in terms of 3D benchmarks. It is, in fact, closer to the Core 100. This further stresses the fact that the 5450 is only a very marginal improvement over the Intel integrated GPUs with respect to graphics performance.

However, the run-of-the-mill graphics performance is not of much concern to many HTPC users. HD video decoding offload is more important. The Mobility 5450 has the UVD2 decoder engine. UVD2 supports complete hardware decoding of all codecs except for MPEG2, Real Media, On2 codecs.

Here is where the downer comes in. While going through our media streamer test suite, we found that many 1080p60 H264 clips wouldn't play properly. We had protracted communication with both Dell and AMD, and it was one of the main sources of delay with respect to the publishing of this review. We waited quite a bit to see whether driver updates would fix the issue, but release after release went by without any improvement in the situation. After Catalyst 11.1, we gave up.

The short story is that the HD 5400 series (Cedar based) is qualified for content up to 1080p 24fps only. At that format all the video quality features are available with the exception of mosquito noise reduction and deblocking. Anything beyond that format is not qualified for the Mobility 5450. Even though some instances of that format (1080p30 or 1080p60 H264) may play back, it's not guaranteed that it will be smooth.

All in all, the Mobility 5450 falls short in its support for certain encodes when compared with its midrange and high end cousins, as well as the nVidia 4xx GPUs and Intel HD Graphics. Some of the benchmarks show that the graphics performance ought to be better than Intel HD Graphics. In the next section, we will see whether it is true in real world gaming.

The Zino 410 HD HTPC is not meant to be a gaming powerhouse. However, it does turn out to be pretty decent for gaming at 720p resolution with low graphics settings, as we shall see in this section. With respect to this capability, the performance can be said to be comparable with various notebook gaming solutions.

Given the fact that the Core 100 scored poorly in the synthetic benchmarks, we will not be considering it in this section. The graphs show a comparison the Vision 3D, the other SFF HTPC in its range. Also included is an AMD laptop with the Phenom P920 and a Mobility 5650 solution. The latter shows the gaming potential which could have been realized had Dell gone in with a slightly more powerful discrete GPU instead of the Mobility 5450.

In all the above graphs, low and medium settings correspond to games run at 1366x768 with the appropriate graphics settings in the game options. With 30 fps providing barely playable performance, we find that the Zino 410 is certainly not capable of 720p gaming at medium settings. However, 720p gaming at low graphics settings should be a decent experience for most of the current games.

The above figures correlate with the difference we saw in the 3D benchmarks in the previous section. If gaming at good graphics settings is important to you in a pre-built SFF package, look at solutions other than the Zino 410. However, solutions satisfying those criteria are probably going to cost a bit more.

We have been using our media streamer test suite for the last few reviews in the HTPC / media streamer space. In v1.0.1 of the test suite used in the WDTV Live Plus review, we added DVD and Blu-Ray folder structures to the mix. In v1.0.2, we have added two Xvid clips (one with Q-Pel and another with GMC (Global Motion Compensation) with 3 warp points) and a MKV with forced subtitles. Recently, we added Blu-Ray and DVD folder structures to the mix in v1.0.3.

For the Zino 410, we used v1.0.3 of the media streamer test suite. Weights have been assigned to each stream based on how frequently one might encounter each type of file in a home theater setting.

We now have 50 streams in our test suite and a maximum possible score of 358. Presenting a table listing every stream would make this section messy. Instead, moving forward, we will only indicate streams which have playback issues. In addition to that, for HTPCs, we will also indicate all the different softwares / codecs used to enable playback of all the test streams.

The Zino 410 HD HTPC scored 328 out of a maximum of 358 in our test suite. Not all files were played back from the same software. It was quite difficult to find the correct splitter / filter / renderer combinations for some of the test streams. The following softwares were used to process our media streamer test suite:

1. Cyberlink PowerDVD 10.0.2025.52
2. Total Media Theater 5
3. MPC-HC with ffdshow Audio Decoder
4. VLC 1.1.4
5. Monogram GraphStudio with MPC-HC Matroska Splitter (for 024-1080p24.x264.DTS-MA.7Ch.mkv, which had minor stutters with the default MPC-HC combination used to playback other streams)
6. Monogram GraphStudio with Sage Mpeg Demux Splitter (for 042-1080p24.VC1.TrueHD.AC3, which the latest MPC-HC M2TS splitter couldn't split properly. VLC could play this back without bitstreaming, but GraphStudio, with the Sage splitter was able to properly deliver the TrueHD soundtrack to ffdshow for bitstreaming).

Let us take a brief look at the test streams which had issues:

1. 1080p60 8 reference frame H264 encode stuttered badly, and played back at a fraction of the expected frame rate. Full software decoding wasn't of much help either.
2. 1080p24 VP8 in WebM couldn't be decoded at full frame rate  in VLC using the CPU. (Appearance of multi-threaded VP8 decoders in VLC might help in the future)
3. 1080p24 RMVB couldn't be decoded at full frame rate in VLC using the CPU.
4. Quality of 1080i deinterlacing (H264 and VC1) in our deinterlacing test streams was not as good as the result from some of our other testbeds. MPEG2 software deinterlacing in VLC (Yadif2) was excellent without too much CPU usage.

The graph below shows how the Zino 410 stacks up against other SFF HTPCs with respect to media / codec compatibility. While it is obviously much better than the low cost Atom / Fusion solutions, it sadly falls behind the Core 100 by a little bit.

However, some video enthusiasts might still prefer the Mobility 5450 based Zino 410 to the Core 100.

Refresh Rate Handling

Many HTPC purists are concerned about the lack of support for proper display refresh rates. Intel's hardware bug in the Arrandales and Clarkdales (as well as Sandy Bridge) makes this one area in which ATI's efforts stand out. nVidia drifts the refresh rate back and forth to achieve 23.976 Hz when averaged over time, ATI maintains and locks the refresh rate perfectly. MPC-HC's statistics OSD indicates that the display correctly refreshes at 23.976 Hz with the 23 Hz setting for the Zino 410.

Reference screenshots for the Core 100 and Vision 3D are provided below:

The Zino 410 is covered quite nicely with respect to networking hardware. With support for both Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n, it really doesn't matter if you keep the unit beyond cable reach from the router. All our network streaming tests were carried out with a 300 Mbps 802.11n network (currently provided in my lab location by a RT-N16 802.11n gigabit router from Asus). We were easily able to stream HD clips of more than 50 Mbps. HD YouTube videos and HD Netflix streaming had no issues.

While on the topic of network streaming, let us take a brief look at how the system performs while accessing online video services. We used Flash 10.1 in Firefox 3.6 with ATI Catalyst 11.1 for testing.
The first set of screenshots below show the CPU usage while playing back a 1080p YouTube video with and without hardware acceleration enabled. This is the same clip as the one used in the Core 100 and Vision 3D reviews. As can be seen, the GPU indeed supports Flash acceleration. However, the difference between the hardware accelerated and non-hardware accelerated CPU usage is around 11% only (39% for no hardware acceleration and 28% for hardware acceleration). We expect similar results for videos on Hulu.

1080p YouTube HD Streaming without Hardware Acceleration
 

1080p YouTube HD Streaming with Hardware Acceleration

Netflix streaming, on the other hand, uses Microsoft's Silverlight technology. Unlike Flash, hardware acceleration for the video decode process is not controlled by the user. It is upto the server side code to attempt GPU acceleration. Thankfully, Netflix does try to take advantage of the GPU's capabilities. This is evident from the A/V stats recorded while streaming a Netflix HD video at the maximum possible bitrate of 3.8 Mbps. While the video is definitely not 1080p, we observe that the CPU utilization of around 40% is higher than the CPU usage for a 1080p YouTube video.

Netflix HD Streaming with Hardware Acceleration

We suspect that the handling of the DRM in the case of Netflix streaming is done by the CPU, resulting in the higher usage.

Users of media streamers streaming online videos often have to put up with messages of the sort 'This content is not available on TV connected devices' or need to queue up the videos on a PC before accessing them through their media streamer box. HTPC users don't need to worry about any such limitations. For online media consumption, the Zino 410 is as good as the Core 100, but not as efficient as the Vision 3D.

HTPC enthusiasts are often concerned about the quality of pictures output by the system. While this is a very subjective metric, we have decided to take as much of an objective approach as possible. Starting with the Core 100 review, we have been using the HQV 2.0 benchmark for this purpose.

The HQV 2.0 test suite consists of 39 different streams divided into 4 different classes. The playback device is assigned scores for each, depending on how well it plays the stream. Each test was repeated multiple times to ensure that the correct score was assigned. The scoring details are available in the testing guide on the HQV website. In the table below, we indicate the maximum score possible for each test, and how much the Zino 410 was able to get.

Zino HD 410 : HQV 2.0 Benchmark
Test Class	Chapter	Tests	Max. Score	Zino HD 410
Video Conversion	Video Resolution	Dial	5	0
		Dial with Static Pattern	5	0
		Gray Bars	5	1
		Violin	5	3
	Film Resolution	Stadium 2:2	5	5
		Stadium 3:2	5	5
	Overlay On Film	Horizontal Text Scroll	5	3
		Vertical Text Scroll	5	3
	Cadence Response Time	Transition to 3:2 Lock	5	5
		Transition to 2:2 Lock	5	0
	Multi-Cadence	2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCam Video	5	5
		2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5	5
		3:2:3:2:2 24 FPS Vari-Speed	5	5
		5:5 12 FPS Animation	5	5
		6:4 12 FPS Animation	5	5
		8:7 8 FPS Animation	5	5
	Color Upsampling Errors	Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5	5
		Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5	5
Noise and Artifact Reduction	Random Noise	SailBoat	5	5
		Flower	5	5
		Sunrise	5	5
		Harbour Night	5	5
	Compression Artifacts	Scrolling Text	5	3
		Roller Coaster	5	3
		Ferris Wheel	5	3
		Bridge Traffic	5	3
	Upscaled Compression Artifacts	Text Pattern	5	3
		Roller Coaster	5	3
		Ferris Wheel	5	3
		Bridge Traffic	5	3
Image Scaling and Enhancements	Scaling and Filtering	Luminance Frequency Bands	5	2
		Chrominance Frequency Bands	5	2
		Vanishing Text	5	5
	Resolution Enhancement	Brook, Mountain, Flower, Hair, Wood	15	15
Video Conversion	Contrast Enhancement	Theme Park	5	5
		Driftwood	5	5
		Beach at Dusk	5	5
		White and Black Cats	5	5
	Skin Tone Correction	Skin Tones	10	7
		Total Score	210	160

To put this score in context, let us look at the HQV 2.0 scores obtained in some of our earlier tests.

Amongst SFF HTPCs, the Zino 410 undoubtedly has the best HQV score. However, it is unable to approach the high scores obtained by the desktop 5570. Note that the Zino 410 is able to achieve this because none of the other GPUs have proper cadence detection (which forms a bulk of the score).

Unless the end usage scenario involves heavy viewing of streams needing cadence detection, it is hard to recommend the Zino 410's Mobility 5450 on the basis of the HQV scores.

HTPC enthusiasts are rightly concerned about the noise factor, heat and power consumption, ease of usage and many other criteria. We will tackle each of these concerns one by one in this section.

Noise

While the Zino 410 is much better than both the ASRock Core 100 and Vision 3D in terms of noise levels, it is not the perfect ultra-quiet HTPC that some enthusiasts crave for. With performance comes the necessity to dissipate generated heat, and the Zino 410's capabilities and form factor mean that it can't be a passively cooled system.

Unfortunately, we don't have the exact noise levels for the Zino 410. However, listening to the Vision 3D, Core 100 and the Zino 410 separately in the same surroundings led me to the conclusion that the Zino 410 was the quietest of the lot.

Power Consumption

In order to get an idea of the power consumption numbers, the Prime95 and Furmark benchmarks were let run overnight to keep both the CPU and GPU completely loaded for an extended duration. Under these extreme conditions, we found the average power consumption to be 62.3 W. At idle, the average power consumption was 29.4 W.

While load power conditions are better than the Vision 3D, it is not as efficient as the Core 100. As for idle power consumption, the system trails both the Core 100 and the Vision 3D.

Ease of Use

HTPC enthusiasts are concerned about how easy it is for their system to come out of standby. Existence of HDMI handshake issues upon return from standby is also a deal breaker for many. Fortunately, the Zino 410 has no issues in these two aspects.

Within Windows, the MCE remote can be made to work with a variety of applications such as XBMC, MediaPortal, MPC-HC and of course, Windows 7 Media Center. Blu Ray players such as PowerDVD and ArcSoft TMT can also be controlled with the help of the MCE remote. The wireless keyboard / mouse combo also supplants the remote for extended functionality.

One of the main drawbacks of pre-built PCs which come with Windows pre-installed is the bloatware. After the review unit finished booting up for the first time, I noticed that there were 67 processes active and 1.13 GB of RAM already utilized. On numerous occasions in course of the review, I was pestered to activate my McAfee subscription and also utilize Dell Backup and other such add-ons. It would have been nice to have some sort of switch to turn off the bloatware completely. Reinstalling the OS is also an option.

We reviewed the performance of the Zino 410 from the standpoint of a HTPC, and its capabilities lie in between that of the Core 100 and the Vision 3D from ASRock. Its advantage lies in the fact that it comes with the OS and keyboard/mouse while the Core 100 and Vision 3D do not.

Kudos to Dell for learning the lessons from the Zino 400 and putting it to good use in the Zino 410. That said, there are some areas where Dell can improve with respect to its future offerings in the SFF HTPC space:

1. 2.5" hard drives should be used instead of the 3.5" ones for the main storage option
2. It would be nice to have a 64 GB boot SSD option in the high end offerings
3. Steps must be taken to ensure that installation of the bloatware is minimal / optional (McAfee / Dell DataSafe etc.)
4. Most importantly, the discrete GPU in the high end offerings must be made more powerful. Even in the Zino 410 generation, we could have got better HTPC video performance with the Mobility 5650. The extra power consumption of the 5650 could have been easily offset by using a 2.5" drive instead of the 3.5" currently in the system. The thermal design would have needed re-engineering, though.

If money is not a concern with respect to your SFF HTPC purchase, the ASRock Vision 3D still continues to be our SFF HTPC of choice. If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, the highest end Zino 410 is pretty good for a decently powerful HTPC. The good thing is that the Zino 410 comes in a variety of configurations ranging from $300 to $800, a model to fit every budget.

In conclusion, we recommend the Zino 410's highest configuration at its price point, albeit, with some reservations. If the issues outlined aren't of much concern, we are sure you will enjoy your Zino 410.