Dubai
Zotac has cramped loads of functionalities into the pocketable micro-PC – ZBox Pico P1320, which has the size of a portable hard disk drive or triple the thickness of a smartphone.
It has the full power of a desktop and is powered by Intel Atom quad-core 1.33 GHz and can go up to 1.83GHz coupled with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage capacity. The inbuilt operating system is special version of 32-bit Windows 8.1 that has Bing as the search engine and without Windows Media Centre. Normally, Zotac launches bare-bone PC sans the operating system.
The best thing is that it can be carried with you in your pocket and it does not have a fan to dissipate the heat.
Even with the low-power processor, the device handles multi-tasking with ease and even Photoshop but with a lag. Microsoft’s Office ran smoothly expect graphic intensive games. It has its own limitations and you cannot expect much from a micro-computer. But it plays casual games with ease.
The top and bottom of the device is made of black shiny plastic and the plastic mounting bracket in the box can be fixed to the back of the monitor with a VESA-compatible mount. The box contains a Windows 8.1 recovery disc and a compact power adapter. If you don’t have an optical drive, you need to transfer the software to a USB drive with another computer. It also does not come with a keyboard, mouse or monitor, these are all add-ons.
Hats off to Zotac for including three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet port, headphone jack, microSD card slot and a HDMI port. Zotac should have opted for USB 3.0 instead of USB 2.0 ports. It supports WiFi and BlueTooth 4.0.
It accepts microSD, microSDHC and microSDXC cards up to 64GB. The LAN is 10/100Mbps only and not a heavy-duty without the support for Gigabit. There is no audio input on the device.
When gaming, it runs for first four to 8 minutes on Full HD and then the frames drops drastically and produces heat and sometimes it is uncomfortable to touch as there are no vents or openings on its body. There’s no fan and no other moving parts, making it completely silent. It plays YouTube videos without any issues.
You need to install a third-party media centre such as XBMC Entertainment Centre or Plex Media Server if you need to use it as a home-theatre PC.
I ran some HD films and played some music without any trouble.
Even though it is not meant to play heavy games, the device can play games in lower resolutions without any lag. But demanding games or high-end productivity software like video editing or heavy photo retouching will not run on this device.
Pico may not be a PC for many as it has limitations but it is a perfect device for a media PC at home. It is priced at Dh949.
