Zotac Zbox HD-ID40-U review

The Zbox comes with a modestly-powered integrated Atom processor. It’s one of Intel’s faster chips in fact – the dual-core D525 running at 1.8GHz. We ran our benchmarks in Windows, which resulted in a score of 28 – it may not sound like much, but it’s a big step up on most netbooks which only score around 17.

Disappointingly, it’s not passively cooled, instead there’s a small fan inside to keep everything from overheating. Fortunately it’s not very loud, and you’ll barely notice it in a living room while watching movies.

At £190 the barebones Zbox offers decent value for money, and prices should drop after release. Adding 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard disk will bring that price up to around £255 – which is well below the £305 that a roughly equivalent Asus Eee Box EB1012P will cost you. However, once you factor in around £80 for Windows 7 Home Premium, you end up paying around £30 more for the Zbox.

If you want to specify your own hard disk and RAM, or you’re happy to install a free operating system (such as Ubuntu) then the Zbox makes a great deal of sense. It’s a well-designed little PC with a relatively quick Atom processor and plenty of ports. It’s ideal for web-use and media playback – as long as you don’t need Blu-ray HD audio or 3D support. We like it, but if you want typical components and Windows 7 then a ready-to-go box is more cost-effective.