Roundup: Three Mini PCs
1. Product Survey: mini PCs
Energy consumption
The good news is that mini PCs don't consume much energy. Often based on laptop components, they benefit from the energy economy advances in this sector and consume a lot less than a standard desktop. The Mac mini is a very good example. It needs 10 watts on standby and only 35 watts when in heavy use. This is 10 times less than an your average desktop.
Watch out though, as you need to factor in screen consumption. Although screen consumption is taken into account on a laptop, here you need to add 35 watts for a 22-inch screen and more than 40 watts for a 24-inch.
This roundup includes products released within one year preceding the publication date of this article. The product selection consists solely of review units made available to Tom’s Guide by vendors. While the products listed here do not constitute a comprehensive listing of all products in the category, they do represent a broad range of what is available to consumers in this category. We will quickly update this roundup with new products as they become available to Tom’s Guide, and soon add data relating to product specifications and test dates. In other words, these roundups are a work in progress. Please check back frequently to see what’s new.
For those who don't want a laptop or a large desktop, heres the solution: mini PCs. Often based on laptop components, these machines dont take up much space and offer all the functionality of a standard PC.
Some common uses for a computer? Office work, using the net, touching up photos, editing video and gaming. In the case of mini PCs, you need to start out by thinking that your main use for them will be office work. They are perfectly adapted for office documents and Internet navigation. They can also be used for working on photos or editing video, but you'll have to make sure that the built-in processor is powerful enough. If it’s an Atom, you’ll need to be very patient. Gaming is a little delicate; if you’re only playing in 2D and games that aren’t particularly demanding of graphics resources, you should be able to get away with it. If you’re trying to play on a 1920x1200 display using advanced options such as anti-aliasing, you’ll have a lot less joy.
Multimedia server
Depending on the video and audio connections, you may be tempted to buy a mini PC for use as a multimedia server. This is a good plan. Make sure that the processor and graphics card are powerful enough to deal with Full HD video if you’re also going to use your server to view films on. Adding a remote (often an option) is a good idea, if your wireless mouse doesn’t work from the couch.
Why go for a mini PC rather than a laptop?
One of the recurring problems with laptops is the quality of screens. Panels are often shiny, give poor color quality and low contrast. With a mini PC you have the choice. Depending on the available connections at the back of the machine, you’ll be able to plug in the screen of your choice and get a larger, better display. Take a look at our 22-inch and 23 to 28-inch product surveys to help you make your choice.
No or little opportunity to update
You can open up a desktop (guarantees notwithstanding) and poke around inside to change any components that are outdated. This will give your machine an extra lease of life if it’s getting a bit tired. In the case of mini PCs, your options are more limited. You won’t, for example, be able to touch the processor or the graphics card. The RAM and sometimes the hard drive are often the only accessible components. This limits the life of mini PCs and you need to be aware of this before you buy.
It might have been worth mentioning the current limitations playing flash video (Hulu) on the atom system, even the ion. Flash is currently rendered by the CPU and does not play smoothly in full screen at HD resolutions on atom systems. This may not matter to some people, but it's one of the only things keeping me from using an ion system as a HTPC.
Adobe is supposedly working on offloading some flash processing to the GPU, but it is not clear when (or if) that will happen.
I think it's best if these mini's are used on the most basic usage. No games, no hi-resolution videos, no heavy processing.
Digital Versus seems to think anything MAC is the best thing since sliced bread. It seems to me that if you are comparing a MAC with its non-Atom processor (they don't happen to mention what it has, but at 2GHz, we know it's not an Atom), then why don't they compare it to the mini I helped a friend buy. She does email and word processing, and little more. But this little Dell machine from Best Buy had a Core 2 processor, and would run circles around either of these Atom machines. Also, it came with a wireless keyboard / mouse, and a 22" wide panel monitor.
I agree with "erichlund". Every Apple product seems to come out with a 5 star rating, yet the cons listed for the Apple product would seem to make it impossible to justify giving it a 5 star rating. At the very least the cons for the other products seem to be no worse than the cons for the Apple product. While I realize it is "chic" to lust after Apple products, part of the credibility of a review/comparison relies on objective ratings. Arbitrarily giving every Apple product a 5 star rating does nothing for the credibility of this article. When considering the price, lack of accessible ram upgrading, poor cpu performance, how is the Mac-Mini worthy of a 5 star rating?
Anyone know where you can find the Acer Aspire Revo from a reputable dealer? They were suppose to be out a while back.
It'll be good to have a few more Core 2 Duo machines added to the mix when the article gets updated. I'd also be interested in having a "value" section added. Such a section should consider what you get for your money and also the potential resale value.
P.S. CaptainRon, while I'm not saying a 5 star rating is right or not for the mini, the RAM, hard drive and optical drive are easily upgradable, the cpu performance is (at least in my opinion) fine for such a small form factor and the price isn't nearly as bad when you factor in the resale value. Since they update them so irregularly, their second hand prices stay a lot higher than other machines.
Well at 2x the price, that mac mini better be have a bit more.
Apple Mac mini, 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, SuperDrive NO KEYBOARD/MOUSE - $849.00
Acer Aspire Revo - $400
Acer EEEEEEE - $380
All prices in Canadian dollars.
At least get systems in the same price
hell even a Acer Veriton(business machine) is not too big for most users while packing more power then those Atom systems(core2 or a64 X2)
You could buy a decent laptop for the price of the apple machine, and get better performance. But i guess some are willing to pay more for looks than anything else.
I would very much like to see the AOpen MP-45 mini-PC family added to this review: http://usa.aopen.com/Products.aspx?id=74
Granted AOpen sells it as DIY mini-PC, though you can get a preconfigured system from http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/myaopen/MP45.html
Seems to me the Dell Studio Hybrid should have been covered. It's closest thing to a Mac Mini out there. Oh yea and it's at least avaliable to buy in the US.
Does anyone know where to buy that Acer Aspire Revo in the US?
For the EeeBOX the lack of "keyboard mouse screen" is a very stupid thing to B!@%& about since this is standard throughout all products
Spanky Deluxe, while you can upgrade the Mac Mini, my point was simply that for a 5 star product the ACCESSIBILITY to perform a simple ram upgrade was poor. While resale value is higher on any Apple product due to the "brand tax" associated with Apple products, the high price should invalidate the Mac Mini from a 5 star rating if one is using resale value as a factor. Simply put, you can almost buy two non-Apple mini's for the price of a single Apple mini, that really has nothing more going for it than appearance and size. Again if one is talking value, ie: bang for your buck, the Mac Mini isn't a 5 star product.
Also, I have no problem with the CPU performance of the product, my problem is with the rating it was given. It's touted as an a decent office computer and I'm sure it handles these functions fine, but the vast majority of office workstations are Windows based (for better or worse), which you can get for CHEAPER.
My argument is not with Apple, it's with the review. Apple products are generally above average quality items, but in this case the Mac Mini isn't discernibly better than the other minis which were rated at less than 5 stars. Again, no problem with Apple, but the objectivity of the ratings of this article should be brought in to question.
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