But let's say you don't want to bother with the technicalities, I mean buying the motherboard is easy but then you have to hunt for the right case, which is hard. Acer recently launched their latest ION based AspireRevo mini PC which shares similar features and is already pre-packaged in a very attractive casing.
This is the first iteration of Acer's venture into the ION territory, the R3600 is built around the Intel Atom N230 CPU running at 1.6GHz. Instead of 1GB RAM we have 2GB of DDR2 RAM since we have to deal with Vista. The GPU belongs to Nvidia, a 9300 with 16 stream processors and a default 256MB of shared memory. All of this is enclosed in a slim and stylish package, so let's check it out.
- Cordless keyboard and mouse
- Webcam with stand
- Stand for the Revo
- 2.0 speakers
- Instruction manual
- Driver disk
- VESA mount bracket
Design and Construction
Instead of the standard square box design, Acer has done away with all sharp edges with an angular power button and there's actually a good reason for that, which we'll see later. Both sides of the Revo have a shiny navy blue finish which looks really funky.
What makes the Revo tick?
Performance
We compared the Revo to the Zotac Ion since that had a dual core Atom and it was interesting to see how much difference a single core would make in video decoding.
Note: 3DMarkVanatge kept crashing on us for some reason so we could not get that score in time for the review
PCMark Vantage
3DMark 06
Procssor Arithmetic
The CPU score is half that of Zotac, which was expected, since this is single core Atom. The same goes for the rest of the scores as well.
General and Multimedia Performance
The Aspire Revo comes with Windows home Premium installed which is a little heavy for the Atom. You'll notice this from the moment you start the system; it takes quite a while before you can actually use the desktop, since you have the Antivirus and other programs from Acer that start up at the same time.
We immediately closed all the unwanted programs and switched to Vista basic theme to relax the CPU. Even so, you can still fell a hint of sluggishness when navigating through Windows or opening any applications. It's best you don't try too many things at once. Paired with the single core N230, lets see how well the Nvidia 9300 handles 1080p video decoding.
The cordless keyboard and mouse works well but I did have an issue with the keyboard. The small blue shortcut numbers on the alphabets are activated by default. In short if you press P, you won't get the letter but the number noted on the key, which is really weird. I tried calling up Acer but they were not able to rectify this. I'm hoping it's only a fault with this piece.
The USB speakers are surprisingly loud for their size and are clear as well. Music and movies sound really good.
Video Decoding
One of the strong points of the Revo is that it is able to decode full HD content played back from BluRays, something a Netbook cannot do. We all saw the demo at the launch of the Revo; it was able to handle BluRay's perfectly well but for that you'll need an external BluRay drive and more importantly, you'll need to buy BluRays. Power DVD that comes bundled is capable of hardware acceleration but offers very limited support for original BluRay discs (MTS format). We didn't have an external BluRay drive for testing, so we turned to the next best thing - BluRay rips.
Chances are high that people already have a collection of BluRay rips on their home PCs but playing them means hogging a lot of the CPU since PowerDVD will not use the GPU for MKV and MOV files. This is where Media Player Classic: Home Cinema comes into the picture. This is a free player now bundled along with K-Lite codec pack and is capable of accelerating almost any HD video, provided you set it right. We've already covered that topic, which you can read here.
Once the player is setup you can offload almost any HD movie onto the GPU. For instance we tried 1080p movies of Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight, Horton hears a who, all of which were comfortably accelerated by the GPU. The Dark Knight was in WMV format while the rest of the movie was in MKV, which is widely used for HD movies.
To make things interesting, we opened two instances of Kung Fu Panda, which put the CPU usage a little higher to 30% but both videos played smoothly. On opening up another instance you can feel the movie slowing down a bit, while a fourth instance completely overwhelms it. Yet, for 16 stream processors it can handle two 1080p movies running simultaneously, which is impressive. So imagine if you have two monitors connected you can have two movies running simultaneously on two screens, so no more fights for which movie to watch!
Since it is the 9300, casual gaming is possible. We tried Street Fighter 4 and Resident Evil 5 to see how it handles these two very different engines. We first tried Street Fighter which gave me an average of 20fps with the default settings at 1280x1024 resolution.
Resident Evil 5 proved to be too much for the Atom to handle and chocked a lot. So I suggest you stick with something light like Counter Strike.
Power Consumption
For the power consumption we took the reading on idle and load. On idle, the Revo consumes just 20W and when stressed completely (during our 1080p burnout) it goes to 32W, but not a single watt more, which is impressive.
Pricing
The Acer AspireRevo R3600 is priced at Rs. 23,000, which is slightly on the pricier side but according to Acer the price should settle down in a month or two to 19K, which is a good price. If you go the DIY route and decide to build an ION system, you won't be saving a whole lot, not to mention the headache of finding a slim mini-ITX case.
The Acer AspireRevo belongs to a category of well thought of and well designed products. Right from the design of the casing to the bundled accessories, nothing seems unnecessary or out of place. The build is solid and the inclusion of VESA mount is a smart move. Even the bundled accessories are built well and more importantly work well.
It may be a little sluggish when it comes to Windows but it can certainly handle 1080p movies without a hitch. In fact it can play two of them at the same time without breaking into a sweat. You can also play that occasional game or two but with toned down settings.
The use for the Revo are plenty; in fact it can adapt to almost any need, be it multimedia, download rig, video encoding, home/office desktop, casual gaming and the list goes on. Of course this is not meant for heavy duty computing but for those who want a low powered alternative to their main PC or simply a first time computer user. Once the price drops to sub-20K this will no doubt make an excellent buy.
Specifications
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