Zotac ZBox EN760 Plus review

We’ve long been fans of Zotac’s mini-PCs, and the ZBox EN760 Plus does nothing to ruin that affection. This compact PC has a low-profile design, and can be mounted on the back of a monitor using standard VESA mounts. The system also comes with a vertical stand should you want it to take up even less space on your desk. Apart from a large illuminated circle, the ZBox EN760’s chassis is understated and inconspicuous. It’s made from a glossy black plastic that, while attractive, is likely to pick up fingerprints and dust.

Like the ZBox Sphere, the EN760 Plus also uses a dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U, which has a base clock speed of 1.6GHz and a Turbo Boost speed of 2.6GHz. The 4200U processor is a good choice for a compact system thanks to its low voltage requirements and heat management. The Core i5-4200U is paired with 8GB of SODIMM DDR3L memory and a 1TB hard disk. Like most ZBox systems, the EN760 is available as a cheaper barebones model (around £410) that doesn’t include memory or storage.

Neither ZBox EN760 system comes with an operating system preinstalled. The EN760 supports Windows 7 and 8/8.1, and we chose to install Windows 8.1 on our system. All of the necessary drivers for the EN760 Plus are conveniently supplied on a USB flash drive, and it didn’t take very long to install the drivers so that the Wi-Fi adaptor and Bluetooth were up and running.

The ZBox EN760 Plus performed as expected in our PC benchmarks, scoring 47 overall. However, that’s still a little lower than the Sphere’s score of 51 overall in the same tests. This result means the ZBox EN760 will be sufficient for most general desktop tasks, such as browsing the web and watching movies.

Most importantly, the EN760 Plus proved to be a capable compact gaming machine thanks to its Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics processor. This graphics card is more commonly used in laptops, but is a good choice for the EN760 due to EN760’s size.

In our laptop Dirt Showdown benchmark, which runs the game at a resolution of 1,280×720 with 4x anti-aliasing and graphics quality set to High, the system produced a smooth average frame rate of 63.6fps. Even at a resolution of 1,920×1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra-quality graphics, the EN760 still produced the comfortably playable average frame rate of 37.5fps. Playing Crysis 3 proved a tougher prospect, and the EN760 produced an average frame rate of 25fps when set to 1,920×1,080, 4x anti-aliasing and High quality. However, the frame rate did increase to a respectable 34fps when we reduced graphics quality to Medium, and both scores really aren’t bad for a system such as this at this price.

The EN760 can also output graphics at Ultra HD resolutions, and we had no problems playing our Ultra HD test videos. The system has both DVI and HDMI outputs for connecting an external display and Zotac provides a DVI-VGA adaptor with the system. There are also a total of four USB3 ports on the front and rear, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, as well as Bluetooth 4.0. Bluetooth will be particularly useful for connecting wireless peripherals, such as a keyboard and mouse. The EN760 also has a useful 4-in-1 card reader for MMC, SD, SDHC and SDXC cards and a headphone and microphone jack.

Predictably, there isn’t much scope for expansion, but there’s a spare memory slot that you can use to expand the EN760 Plus’s memory capacity to 16GB, and there’s a vacant mSATA port should you wish to install an SSD.

The Zotac ZBox EN760 Plus is a very capable all-round performer. It provided application performance that’s just behind the Best Buy-winning Scan 3XS NUC N16, but the EN760 Plus’s gaming performance is significantly better due to its dedicated graphics processor.

While it might lack the visual novelty of the Zotac ZBox Sphere O1520 Plus, the ZBox EN760 Plus is a great mini-PC that runs very quietly and is ideal for a living room or bedroom games machine.