Gadgetory

no kidding here guys I legitimately laughed out loud when I first opened up the box for the Z box Pico from ZOTAC I mean not a throaty yeah ha ha ha that might have attracted some unwanted attention in the office but definitely a chuckle I just couldn't believe that they got a whole computer into this Coolermaster Neptune series CPU coolers are available in a variety of radiator sizes to perfectly suit your next build click now to learn more so this is the Z box Pico it features a quad-core 22 nanometer until atom Z 37 35 F that runs at a nominal frequency 1.3 3 gigahertz but can turbo boost up to 1.8 3 gigahertz it's got 2 gigs of soldered ddr3 low power memory running in a single channel config Intel HD graphics built in Wireless ended Bluetooth and a 32 gig emmc SSD that can be expanded with the built-in micro SDXC reader for storage moving along the outside of the unit aside from that card reader you'll find a power button that lights up the top with a very pleasing ZOTAC logo a ten hundred Ethernet port 2 USB to ports and a headphone jack and then finally an HDMI port another USB 2 port and power in overall I'm mostly pleased with the specs it's obviously not the most powerful PC in the world but you get a full x86 computer in an enclosure the size of a couple of stacked smartphones and i/o is ok you get a surprising number of ports considering the size of the unit but USB 3 and Gigabit LAN would have been nice to have and a microphone input is in my mind a must-have considering this baby's power efficiency and included vase a compatible mount just screams use me as a basic PC for mom to use for Skype and whatnot a USB headset is an option but it will add more cost to this basic setup that could have been better spent on a more powerful PC if we were going to spend more money on it anyway on the other hand that more powerful PC might be significantly more expensive than the zotac ZBOX Pico because this is by far the least costly computer I've ever touched that comes preloaded with a fully licensed copy of Windows 8.1 don't let the with bing bit scare you away either all it means is that Bing is the default search engine something you can easily change on your own in two seconds other than that it's the real deal full windows 8.1 experience unreal you'll have about 18 gigs of space free on the boot drive once you set up Windows install some alternative browsers and whatnot so the first thing I decided to do of course was use up some of that space by installing 3dmark I mean it's all well and good if ZOTAC crammed the hardware in there but especially given that this baby is passively cooled by a little strip of aluminum around the outside I wanted to see what kind of temperatures we'd see on that heat sink if we started pushing it not bad I mean the outer housing we measured it with our IR thermometer really didn't get that hot and even more impressively at the wall that's all the power draw we got I mean I guess I should have seen the efficiency coming when I noticed that the included power brick is a tiny and B only rated at 5 volts 3 amps or a total of 15 watts but I guess if you've made it this far out of the video and you're kind of suitably impressed by all of that you might be sitting there nodding along going oh yea Linus that's cool or whatever I suspect there's also a good chance but you're sitting there asking yourself well on a second who the heck is this product actually made for to which I would answer great question as oh tech has pictures of business people slipping them into their pockets but I think the idea of you know jain businesswoman abandoning her laptop to carry a pc in her purse that while tiny on its own also needs to be accompanied by a battery input devices and a display to make it even somewhat useful is sorry ZOTAC frankly ridiculous but that doesn't mean it's useless either though a couple much more likely uses for a silent compact and expensive PC that comes preloaded with what would normally be $100 OS on its own would be a basic PC for our family member who doesn't need a powerful computer or a media PC box now arguably a chromecast or Android stick of some sort would make more sense for most media streaming applications but one key feature that those are missing is steam in-home streaming support with the built-in h.264 decoder and a gaming PC somewhere else in the house you can stream games to yourself check out this video for a more in-depth look at steam in-home streaming it's a really cool technology and I think that even though this Pico dropped too many frames for me to really recommend buying it for this purpose today a hypothetical Pico - should be able to handle this kind of streaming really well and I'm excited for the future speaking of streaming by the way guys if you aren't satisfied with being tied to your computer or TV to watch your favorite Network TV shows then Hulu Plus is our sponsor for today and they could be the service for you Hulu Plus is the only streaming service that gives you access to new currencies and episodes of shows like American Dad and Bob's Burgers through your smartphone tablet Roku chromecast or pretty much any device you already own you also get access to every season of shows like community and Parks and Recreation as well as kid shows and hundreds of criterion movies their service is reasonably priced at only $7.99 a month but they have a special offer going on for Linus tech tips viewers or honestly really anyone else who does Hulu Plus sponsorship spots so you know you could use someone else's but we'd really appreciate a few hours it's crazy you get two weeks free instead of just the one week trial that they offer to people normally so guys when you go to sign up for Hulu Plus be sure to use our link that's Hulu Plus comm slash Linus to let them know that we sent you and get in on the special extended trial thanks for watching guys like the video if you liked it dislike it if you just liked it leave a comment letting us know if your feelings are more complicated than this also check the link in the video description if you want to help support us we have places where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution to help us keep things running around here and even you know if you were going to buy one of these say for example you can just change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code there's instructions for how to do that and we'll get a small kickback whenever you buy random stuff on Amazon that helps us out a lot thanks again for watching it as always don't forget to subscribe you