Acer Aspire Revo R3600 - NVIDIA ION Nettop Review

Written by Stuyo

Friday, 26 June 2009

 

Nettops are relatively new type of product that fills a niche up to now remaining rather unoccupied. Generally they are something like a barebone system only smaller and based on Intel Atom processors mostly. Up to now they all were quite similar to each other, but now there is a predisposition for that to change, along with their field of application – the NVIDIA ION had been born. Acer were the first to manufacture and market one such product. Bulgaria was the first amongst all other Balkan countries to import and sell Aspire Revo R3600. Today we're going to review it and determine how much better is it compared to similar systems.

Our friends from eMag kindly enough supplied us with one new Aspire Revo R3600 for testing. It's based on the new NVIDIA ION architecture and uses an Atom processor. Generally this is the first product from a line of little fighters with big multimedia capabilities, a thorn in Intel's backside to be sure. Many such systems were already announced, and indeed we expect many of them along with new ones arriving within few months from now. The particular model we tested is sold a complete system, with pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium. Very soon models with the free open source Linux based OS will too be available, we also expect choice between HDD and SSD drives, different configurations of its complement and so on. At this time this is the very first model on the market and its job is to provide toy with all the essentials while sparing you from any problematic experiences (everything is pre-configured, all the drivers are pre-installed too – all you have to do in order to use it is get it out of its box). The price of Acer Aspire Revo R3600 here is set at about £250.

Now on to the Acer Aspire Revo R3600 specifications:

Acer Aspire Revo R3600 specifications

Processor	Intel Atom N230 1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 512KB L2 Cache
Chipset	nVidia ION
Memory	2GB DDR2 667MHz
Hard drive	160GB 5400rpm
Video card	integrated nVidia GeForce 9400M
Optical drive	N/A
Expansion ports	6x USB, 1x HDMI, 1x VGA, headphone/speaker/line-out, Gigabit Ethernet, Мic, 4-ин-1 flash card reader, 1x eSATA port
LAN	10/100Mbps LAN
Wireles LAN	802.11b/g/n
Operating system	Windows Vista Home Premium
Dimentions	180 x 180 x 30 mm
Other	keyboard and mouse included
Warranty	2 year

Acer Aspire Revo R3600 features

• Optimal Performance – finally a decent 3D/multimedia performance added to the Атом platform
• Total Connectivity – you were already acquainted with the port list - there is everything found on a regular desktop PC
• Ultra Slim Design – diamond shape, small, thin – the space it occupies on your desk is minimal.
• Accessories – a lot: monitor stand, desk stand, keyboard, mouse – just add monitor for a fully functional system
• Eco-Friendly – very low power consumption, you are being gentle on nature while watching yet another HD movie