ZOTAC ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus Review

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅11-04-12
A Closer Look

The AD11 is a very attractive mini-PC, taking advantage of the now classic brushed metal and gloss black finish seen on consumer-level electronics. Though the VESA mount allows it to be hidden away, there will be no shame associated with leaving it front and centre for all to see.



The overall footprint of the AD11's housing is a tiny 106mm x 106mm x 35mm (LxWxH). To put it in context: that is narrower than the diameter of a DVD and not quite as tall as a Nintendo Wii.

The left and right sides of the AD11's enclosure are unremarkable save for ventilation holes and a Kensington lock. The left side is the ventilation exhaust, the right an intake; the relatively narrow ventilation holes speak to the fact that it's designed for low-TDP operation.



Front connectivity is fairly standard. The left-most vertical black bar makes up the power-on button and built-in IR sensor for the supplied remote control, and then from left to right there are the 6-in-one SD card slot, USB2.0/eSATA combo port, headphone/mini-Optical SPDIF combo port and finally the microphone port.

The front is clearly designed for easy access to the sensor, headphone port and removable storage; plenty of thought has obviously gone into this arrangement.



The rear sees ports which you would expect to be permanently or semi-permanently plugged in, namely DC power in, HDMI, 2* USB 3.0, Wired LAN and 2* USB 2.0. Labelling clearly recommends that one of the two USB 2.0 ports are used for the included Wireless LAN adapter.

Both the yellow USB ports double as high-amperage 'Super-Charge' ports, allowing fast charging of compatible devices such as tablets, smartphones or similar. Fast-charging is implemented by a third-party chip from Fintek and is a Windows-only feature, requiring drivers that are on the included driver CD.



Lastly, we come to the chassis floor, where product model/serial numbers and certification stamps can be found. In the four corners rubber feet serve to dampen vibration (and hence noise), which is a nice feature whether mounted on the rear of a TV or just sitting on the shelf of a TV stand. The four chevrons allow the mounting of AD11 to the VESA mounting plate as detailed below.

The overall impression of the ZBOX nano XS AD11 is that it exudes quality and has no hint of fragility. It's also surprisingly light, no doubt chiefly down to the lack of weighty HDD seen in most other mini-PC's with larger form factors.



Unscrewing the feet allows access to the AD11's internals. Getting at the APU would be a difficult task, but installing or swapping out mSATA SSD's and memory is trivial. The AD11 PLUS has a 2GB SODIMM of DDR3-1333 RAM installed, but the M1 Chipset can accept up to 4GB of the same type in its single slot. AD11's internal storage capabilities by contrast are only limited to the capacity of SSD possible in the mSATA size standard. The 64GB SATA II Kingston drive included is an ideal compromise of capacity vs cost, and unlike mechanical HDDs is totally silent.


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