Dell Zino HD 410 HTPC Review

Dell is one of the leading vendors in the PC market to have a play in the SFF HTPC (small form factor home theater PC) space. In 2009, they introduced the first Zino HD HTPC, the Zino 400. It used the AMD's Athlon 64 2650e/2850e / Athlon 64 X2 3250e/6850e on the AMDRS780G chipset with the option of the integrated 3200 GPU or a discrete 4330 mGPU. It received a decent enough response to warrant a refresh of the lineup after a year.

In Q4 2010, the Zino 410 HD HTPC was launched. It made use of the same formula from the previous generation product (usage of CPUs meant for the laptop market, and pairing it with either the integrated GPU or a discrete mGPU). However, Dell learnt some important lessons from the first generation launch, which they have put to good use in the design of the Zino 410 HD HTPC.

We have had the highest end Zino 410 HD HTPC configuration in our labs since October 2010.   Read on for our take on the second generation Zino HD HTPC, and also why it took us so long to publish the review.

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