Dell Inspiron Zino HD

The Dell Inspiron Zino HD is more or less the direct descendent of its 2008 Studio Hybrid.  It's been redesigned and is now much closer in look to the Mac Mini, and now offers an interesting alternative to Apple's version of the desktop computer with a small footprint.

Hardware: small but full of connectivity

Dell is hoping to win customers over with a plastic case that, although bigger than the Mac Mini, comes in a range of different colours.  The look you go for varies in price from £20 to £30 depending on the design you choose, but it's up to you to decide whether that's a deal breaker or a useless extra.


When you're doing office work, the noise produced by the fan is minimal, and you can't hear anything at all if you're more than a metre away.  Noise levels pick up when the computer is tackling more challenging apps, but the fan never becomes a nuisance.

The Blu-ray drive spins very quickly and makes a lot of noise when you're installing software or loading a game, but it soon calms down.  You can hear it when you're watching a movie too--the PC comes with PowerDVD DX--so you should keep your distance if you don't want to be too disturbed by it.

Even the most basic version comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse and a USB adaptor, which is a shame as that means one of the four USB ports is taken up straight away.  We could done without that, of course, and it also spoils the stripped-down look a bit.  A built-in chip would have been a much better choice.  As for the peripherals themselves, we were as impressed by the keyboard as were disappointed by the mouse.  It's very lightweight and the plastic finish doesn't suit anybody with clammy palms.

There are no major gaps in the connectivity, with four USB 2.0 ports, two eSATAs (though we would happily have traded one off for another USB), three mini jacks, a memory card reader, an Ethernet port and VGA and HDMI video outputs.  It's a shame that there's no optical audio output, so the only way to get digital sound is via the HDMI cable.

After taking the coloured shell off, we opened the Zino HD up.  It's very quick, and after you've undone a few screws you can see what's inside.  Everything seems easily accessible, we didn't really fancy messing around with it, although you probably could.  Probably best left to the experts!

Wireless adaptor for keyboard and mouse	Blu-ray drive, 2 USB ports, headphone jack and memory card reader
HDMI, VGA, USB ports, eSATA ports mini-jacks and RJ45	Case open

Processor Power: disappointing AMD processor
Windows 7 index: 4.1. Details: CPU 4.1 - Memory 5.8 - Graphics 4.5 - Gaming graphics 5.3 - Main hard drive 5.4.

It's worth pointing out that we were very happy to test a computer with an AMD CPU.  It's been a long time since we've seen one of their chips and we were glad to have them back.  Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was soon tempered by the results that it actually produced.  Nobody thought this computer was going to be a speed demon, but even so, coming in with results that are half way between an Intel Atom and an entry-level Core 2 Duo is pretty disappointing.  When we tried it, it was almost twice as slow as a Mac Mini.  If you want to use it for office work or playing audio and video files, that's fine, but if you're expecting to be able to edit your next home movie in HD, then you're going to need a lot of patience.

The energy consumption increases from 1.1 W while the Zino HD is switched off to 38 W showing the Windows desktop.  This figure doubles again when you actually use it, reaching almost 60 W.  Playing a Blu-ray disc requires 54 W, and hibernating Windows 7 leaves it at 1.8 W.

After you switch it on, the Zino takes 49 seconds to reach the Windows 7 desktop and ten seconds or so more to load the majority of the software, not including antivirus.  It switches off in 13 seconds.

3D Gaming: older games without many details, or else 2D 

Mini PCs aren't well known for their ability to run the latest, most demanding games, for the simple reason that they borrow most of their components from laptops.  And in this case, not only did Dell use laptop-standard components, they used ones from an entry-level laptop.  That's why performance is so weak: Crysis was slowed with details set to minimum at 1280 x 1024 pixels, while World in Conflict did a little better, playing well with details set to medium.

Audio: good headphone jack, 5.1 HDMI but no optical output

ATI's graphics cards can be used to send an audio signal over HDMI.  That's your best bet on this computer if you want to use it in a Home Cinema system.  Alternatively, you can plug some headphones into the mini jack.  It's not bad and produces a good signal, as does the line out available at the back.

We do have one complaint though: there's no optical audio out or coaxial.  If you've invested in a set of speakers that has one of those inputs, this computer might not be ideal for you.  Even if you use a digital output to your TV over the HDMI cable before sending it to your speakers, this often lowers the quality and reduces the signal to 2.0 along the way.

Optional extras

For us, the first thing worth adding is a Blu-ray drive.  For £140, it's a sensible way of widening your multimedia options.  The next step is a little bit less obvious, and is only relevant for some users.  The ATI HD 3200 graphics cards can only handle 5.1 sound over HDMI.  If you upgrade to the ATI HD 4330, you can get 7.1 sound, but it very much depends on whether you think that's worth adding £61.30.  Personally, we would have preferred to have been able to move up to the ATI HD5xxx to use HD audio formats, rather than adding two extra speakers.