Dell Inspiron Zino HD 410 Review

1. Introduction2. The Bundle3. The Dell Inspiron Zino HD 4104. System Setup Methodology & Bios5. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra6. Synthetic: PCMark Vantage7. Synthetic: Cinebench 11.5 64 bit8. Bluray Playback With PowerDVD 10 Ultra9. Media Encoding with MediaEspresso10. HQV Benchmark 2.011. Flash Content12. Gaming: Left 4 Dead 213. Power Consumption14. Acoustics Performance15. Thermal Dynamics16. Closing Thoughts17. View All Pages

Last week we reviewed the Atom powered ASRock ION3D which we felt offered a cost effective solution for media computing demands. Today we are looking at a similarly compact, higher specification system from Dell, featuring an AMD Phenom processor with HD5450 mobility graphics.

Although Dell sometimes get a bad name for bland presentation, in recent years they have been trying to push the envelope a little with some weird and wacky designs to attract the eye of people who value a little of the ‘personal' touch. The Zino HD 410 is available with a variety of skins to appeal to the widest cross section of end user.

As with most Dell products, a plain brown box is the chosen shipping method, with the Dell logo clearly marked on the sides.

The Zino HD 410 is carefully wrapped in a protective covering with flexible foam pads on either side. These are extremely tough and we can't imagine any damage occuring during shipping.

The bundle includes a Dell branded keyboard and mouse. Another box contains all the extras which include a manual, driver and software DVD and power supply.

The keyboard and mouse are very nice additions and while they certainly wouldn't replace my Steelseries mouse or DAS Keyboard, I liked the feel of both. Duracell batteries are supplied for both devices. I would have liked a wireless remote included, but sadly this was not to be.

The Zino HD is an attractively (glossy finished) designed product which will look great in a living room or bedroom environment. It isn't very big so it won't dominate space beside the television, a frequent cause of arguments with a partner. The Zino is 197x197x89mm and weighs 1.6kg – around the same as a modest laptop.

As we detailed earlier in the review, the tops are interchangeable and there are a variety of options on offer. At the front there is a 3.5 mm audio out, 2 x USB 2.0 as well as a 4 in 1 card reader and infra red receiver.

The rear is home to a very comprehensive portfolio of connectivity. there are dual e-SATA ports, HDMI 1.3, gigabit Lan, 2x USB 2.0, VGA and a 3.5mm audio connectors with optical out.  A cooling fan resides on the side to help exhaust warm air. Lastly there is a button next to the VGA port which acts as a ‘quick release' for the top fascia panel.

The Zino HD has been designed for easy access and inside we are immediately presented with a metal protective cover. There is a dual antenna system here for the wireless connectivity.

Removing this section reveals the Blu Ray or DVD rewriter which is inside a caddy based system – we received the DVD rewriter configuration. Underneath this is a 3.5 inch hard drive, in this case a 750GB model which operates at 7,200 rpm.

The processor in the Dell Inspiron Zino HD is the P840 Triple Core processor running at a clock speed of 1.9ghz.

The chipset is a 785GX design and our system is populated with 4GB of DDR3-1333 running at 1066mhz. The machines ship with two options, a 4250 integrated chipset or the more substantial 5450 MXM card, which is installed in this particular unit. The 5450 is clocked at 675mhz and is supplied with 8 ROPs and 80 shaders, a perfect partner for a low powered all in one unit of this size. The 1GB of memory is partnered to a 64 bit memory bus.

Dell can deliver the system in various configurations and if the 5.0 score from Windows 7 isn't enough horsepower for you then you can opt for the Phenom 2 X4 P940 processor. Our system shipped with a P840 clocked at 1.9ghz.

We wouldn't call the system installation particularly minimal, but as this is a Dell product we expect to have a reasonable amount of software preinstalled. We don't mind their docking software system which displays an Apple ‘like' Dock on screen, but we take exception to McAfee and Roxio being installed. We immediately removed these and installed a free low overhead anti virus client.

The Bios is a rather basic setup with very little options available for tweaking, there are no overclocking settings available either. We have included some screenshots below.

As this is the first time we have analysed the AMD P840 Tri Core processor on this platform we thought it would be worthwhile to run a few tests to get an overall view of performance against other hardware. Synthetic testing is not a major selling point for a system like this, so if this holds no interest, skip ahead to the media pages.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The AMD Phenom P840 is clearly a much more powerful processor than the Intel Atom D525 inside the ASRock ION3D system, outperforming it considerably in all of the Sandra tests. We also included the hard drive test, showing the internal 750GB drive is capable of sustaining around 100mb/s.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

The Zino HD 410 gives a good showing in PCMARK Vantage, clearly indicating at this early stage that there is a decent amount of horsepower under the hood to handle general tasks and media duties.

Cinebench R10 has since been replaced by V11.5, but many people have a better indication of relative performance by the results from R10 – after all it has been around for years. We will however include R11.5 results on the following page. For those who don’t know Cinebench is not just a mere synthetic benchmarking application, it is based on the rendering engine from Cinema 4D.

The CPU test renders a 3D scene photo-realistically while applying performance intensive functions such as area light sources, procedural shaders, Ambient Occlusion and multi level reflections. Especially when used on faster, multi core CPU systems, MAXON CINEBENCH R10 delivers much more accurate results.

This is not a system to purchase if rendering is high on your list of priorities – that said, it is capable of handling the occasional task when needed. The Intel ATOM we last tested only scores 0.57 at reference speeds which is noticeably slower than this AMD processor.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our Bluray and conversion tests. This software fully supports GPU acceleration and while the system we received for review wasn't supplied with a BluRay player we have a USB 2.0 powered unit at hand to measure system performance.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.

Average load is around 10% throughout our tested section which is a great result for the Dell Zino HD 410 system.

Reading across a section of playback time we can see CPU demand varies between 3 percent and 20 percent.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 746MB 720p MKV file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

With hardware acceleration on, this system is 11 seconds faster than the ASRock ION3d Atom powered system we reviewed last week. With acceleration off however, the AMD processor powers through the encoding in 8 minutes and 39 seconds compared to 17 minutes and 45 seconds with the Atom, showing the huge gulf between processor power.

Cyberlink GPU hardware acceleration manages to shave 2 minutes and 21 seconds from the CPU generated time, a 35% saving.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

	Dell Zino HD 410
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	5
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	3
Bridge Traffic	3
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	3
Bridge Traffic	3
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	181

This is a good result for the AMD powered solution, scoring 181 points. This will make a great platform for HD media viewing.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

With acceleration on the Dell Zino HD 410 averages around 20 percent CPU usage. When disabling hardware acceleration it rises to around 32 percent. The Atom CPU with the same video hovers around 50 percent load.

While this system will not be a first choice for hardcore gamers there is a good possibility that many users may have casual demands – wanting to play some less intensive games on their 720p or 1080p HD television. Today we decided to use the Source engine powered Left 4 Dead 2 which is a relatively old engine now, but still looks great.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

We settled on the configurations below for two resolutions (720p and 1080p). These settings were ‘playable’ at each resolution, without dipping into the sub 25fps zone.

Performance is pretty decent considering the small form factor design. It won't be breaking any records for game performance, but it is perfectly acceptable if you don't mind dialing down some settings.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand.

While the system is clearly more powerful than the Atom based ASRock ION3d it does also consume considerably more power, idling at 33 watts (compared to 8 watts). Under full load we registered 78 watts which is quite good.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The system is not silent, however in a living room or bedroom it is not really noticeable. Under load the fans spin up to deal with the rising ambient temperatures, peaking at 41.8dBa.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together.

Considering the reasonably low levels of noise under load, these temperature results are excellent. Dell have clearly tuned the bios fan control settings to maintain loaded temps around 70c.

The Dell Inspiron Zino HD will prove to be a fantastic choice for an enthusiast user who needs more grunt than the Atom powered ASRock ION3d can deliver. Dell's choice of AMD graphics and central processing unit in this competitively priced chassis is inspired. The AMD P840 processor is significantly more powerful than the Atom, although it comes with one proviso – a significantly higher power requirement.

On a design level we feel that most bases are covered. There is strong wireless support, plenty of connectivity for both USB 2.0 and eSata with HDMI output to a television or monitor. We were slightly surprised that Dell omitted a DVI port, opting instead for VGA … but perhaps this was an intentional choice to allow a customer to use an older analog panel with the Zino HD. Additionally we would assume that a portion of the user base would prefer USB 3.0 connectivity instead of dual eSATA connectors.

Unfortunately, we are still not happy with the Dell default software installation. I never want to see McAfee or Roxio installed on any systems I receive and they need to start offering a bare bones ‘driver' install configuration to attract a more discerning audience. There is sadly no way to remove all the bloatware when you order the system online.

Pricing is competitive with systems ranging from the entry level £399 X2 P340 with 3GB of ram to the range topping X4 P940 with 8GB of DDR3 at just over £800.

In closing, we can recommend the Inspiron Zino HD 410 as a viable, more powerful alternative to the wealth of small form factor Atom powered systems currently saturating the market. It is quiet, well built and stylishly designed.

KitGuru says: A capable, all round system with a tiny physical footprint.

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