If we had to choose either the Zino or the Mac Mini for the living room, we'd pick the Dell.
Mac mini review 2.6 ghz upgrade#
Dell offers a graphics chip upgrade for an extra $75, which would likely help its video performance, but even then its application performance would remain at a serious deficit to the Mac Mini.
Mac mini review 2.6 ghz 1080p#
The problem with our Dell review config is that it couldn't handle 1080p video, or even standard-definition content from Hulu. Dell is making a more directed run at a living room PC, however, and the Zino's wireless networking, HDMI port, and 320GB hard drive suggest that it might be better suited for such a task than the Mac Mini. The Dell system is larger than the Mac Mini, and with a slower AMD CPU it can't compare on performance. We also give credit to the Mac Mini for its multitasking performance, the one test on which it outpaces its competition.īecause of the similarities in design, we should also compare the Mac Mini with Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD. Yes, the Mac Mini falls behind the utterly lame $480 HP Pavilion Slimline s5220y on three of our four benchmarks, but Apple's system is still within reasonable striking distance, and it's not so slow that it would seriously hinder anyone trying to get through an average day of office work.
We're more forgiving of the Mac Mini in this regard since it costs $200 less. We dinged the higher-end Mac Mini for not distancing itself far enough from its less expensive Windows-based competition. With so many Windows PCs in the same price range offering HDMI, its absence in the Mac Mini is a missed opportunity to expand this tiny system's appeal.
DisplayPort very well could surpass HDMI in popularity someday, but with HDMI reigning comfortably as king of the HDTV input, that day is not now. In other words, despite the fact that the small, attractive Mac Mini practically begs you to bring it into the living room, and even though it has the horsepower to play video content up to 1080p quality from every major online video source, actually connecting the Mac Mini to an HDTV is made far more difficult by Apple opting for DisplayPort over HDMI. Still worse, even if you buy one of the third-party adapters to jury rig an HDMI output, you'll need to pay $50 or more for an HDMI adapter that supports audio output over the HDMI signal, and only then by way of a second cable that eats up one of the Mac Mini's USB or audio ports. Worse, the only adapter included in the box is a mini-DVI-to-full-DVI port, to accommodate standard desktop monitors. Unlike recent small, low-cost offerings from Dell and Gateway, the Mac Mini has no traditional HDMI port. You may find the absence of a media card reader on the Mac Mini annoying, but we find Apple's reliance on adapters to interface with the two miniaturized video outputs more problematic. As with the $799 baseline model, the $599 Mac Mini gets you five USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 jack, mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort outputs, an Ethernet port, and headphone and audio jacks.
The only thing that has changed on the Mac Mini's exterior between iterations is the array of ports on the back.
Mac mini review 2.6 ghz Pc#
We have no qualms with Apple retaining a design that works, but we continue to find it surprising that in the ensuing five years, no Windows PC vendor has come close to matching the Mac Mini's compact industrial class. Apple has stuck with the same exterior design for the Mac Mini since the system first debuted in 2005.