The Acer Revo is a funky looking nettop that will look great in any living room.
By ZAM KARIM
THERE is a cool looking nettop in town and it goes by the name of Acer Revo.
With its slightly angular and glossy black and white design, a small footprint — it’s about the size of a phonebook — you won’t be hard pressed to find the perfect spot to place it anywhere in the house.
It can be next to the HDTV, a TV cabinet or you can even mount the nettop behind an LCD monitor. A plastic stand and a VESA-based mount are included in the box.
But it would be a shame if you choose the latter option as the device is meant to be shown off and not hidden away from view.
The review unit came with a matching wireless keyboard and optical mouse, a pair of cute mini USB speakers and an external webcam — all in white glossy casing.
The nettop was also bundled with an Acer 23in widescreen LCD monitor.
TOGETHER:The R3600-A23XA model comes with matching mouse, keyboard, USB speakers and webcam. Also included is a 23in widescreen LCD. Ports ahoy
There is no optical drive but what it does have is plenty of data connectivity options, including six USB ports, one eSata port and an Ethernet jack as well as a SD card reader. Also, everything is well laid out to make hooking up external devices more convenient.
It also comes with both VGA and HDMI ports so it’s possible to hook up two displays to the nettop.
Also, with the HDMI port users can pipe the built-in 7.1 channel audio to an external display without the need for extra cables.
Powerful specs
Interestingly, the Revo series of nettops come with the new nVidia ION chipset, which offers a number of advantages over the common Intel D945G chipset.
The platform is supposed to be able to run Windows Vista and 3D games, decode videos and, most importantly, handle high-definition videos with ease... at least in theory.
However during our tests, we were both surprised and disappointed with the system performance. For instance, the system took quite a long time to boot up.
At least, once it started up, the Aero Glass and Flip3D interfaces worked smoothly, and we had no problem performing basic computing stuff like wordprocessing and web surfing.
There are times, though — even with nVidia’s GeForce 9400M graphics and 4GB of memory onboard — the system felt sluggish.
It was more prevalent when we ran too many applications simultaneously and also when browsed Flash-heavy websites such as YouTube.
We suspect it is due to either the relatively pedestrian Atom 230 processor or the Windows Vista operating system which is a big resource hog.
Also, most Flash web videos don’t support hardware graphics acceleration offered by the nVidia chip so the processor needs to handle all the workload all by itself. HD experience
To handle all types of video files, the machine comes preinstalled with Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 9.
Overall, it handled standard movie files, such as the Apple MOV format, effortlessly,
Also, the machine is supposed to be able handle Blu-ray movies but we couldn’t get hold of an external Blu-ray drive so we couldn’t test this.
PowerDVD 9 doesn’t support the popular HD format, MKV. To play HD files we downloaded the free KMplayer.
Unfortunately, the video playback wasn’t as smooth as we expected, and we got inconsistent results.
Some MKV videos played smoothly, while others went out of sync with the audio, and a few simply failed to load.
Again we believe the culprit might be the processor which isn’t a perfect companion for the ION chipset.
The good news is that even when the CPU and GPU are heavily taxed, the Revo remained quiet all the time.
The verdict
The Acer Revo has its share of hits and misses. There is a lot of potential for the Revo as it is based on the ION platform.
However, the inclusion of the low-power Atom processor and Windows Vista isn’t the perfect combo for the machine.
Also, the RM2,199 price tag doesn’t quite justify the performance that you get from the machine.
The Revo will be a much more attractive machine with a few more updates and a lower price tag.
Pros: Cool design; small footprint; handles many video formats; quiet.
Cons: Issues playing HD files; sluggish performance, pricey.
ASPIRE REVO (R3600-A23XA)
(Acer)
Nettop with a 23in LCD monitor
Processors: Intel Atom Processor N230 (1.6GHz /512K L2 Cache/533MHz FSB)
Chipset: nVidia ION
Graphics: nVidia GeForce 9400
Memory: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
Connectivity: WiFi, Ethernet, 56K V.92 modem
Keyboard and mouse: Wireless keyboard, optical mouse
I/O ports: six USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port, VGA, HDMI audio out and microphone
Other features: Card reader, VESA mounting kit, 1.3-megapixel USB webcam, USB mini speaker, Kensington lock slot
Measurement (D x H X W): 180 x 180 x 30mm
Price: RM2,199
Website: www.acer.com.my
Review unit courtesy of Acer Sales And Services Sdn Bhd, 1-800-88-1288
Link: http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2009/11/12/prodit/20091112160734&sec=prodit
2 comments:
Its other popular features include HDMI delivering the highest video and audio quality from one digital connector between LCDs and PC video graphic cards or other digital sources.
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