We tested the nettops with the usual benchmarks known from our notebook test procedures and also spontaneously executed a few practical tests in the video and gaming field. Apart from that, the entire review, including image editing, has been performed equally on Acer's Revo (320GB) and Zotac's MAG (series), which led to our impressions in the word processing and image editing field.

The cases of both prototypes belong to the so-called 1-liter class and can accordingly provide very small dimensions. Every manufacturer tries to find its own style in terms of looks, also to be able to distinguish itself a bit from the competition.

Plastic is used as the case material and is applied to the big lateral surfaces in a high-gloss finish. Whilst Zotac's black finish is very prone to fingerprints, this effect is kept within limits on the slightly glittery dark blue of Acer's Revo. Acer can also reserve a few slight advantages in terms of material use and case stiffness and makes the more qualitative impression on the whole. Nettops can be placed, as you prefer, upright, laid down or on the rear of a display with Vesa drillings. A stand and a Vesa mounting are included for both models in the scope of delivery. If the latter fits on the already existent display should be checked beforehand (starts at 24"). Both candidates prove to have a stable stance and doesn't show any risk of tipping at usual use.

Both manufactures have almost an equal number and variety of interfaces. 6x USB, 1x eSATA, VGA, HDMI, cardreader, audio in/out, SPDIF and a gigabit LAN socket. The WLAN configuration differs, as the Zotac also includes the n-standard. Revo owners have to be satisfied with the g-standard. The connections are found on the narrow top ends and have a good accessibility for most requirements. Both models have two easily reachable USB ports and the cardreader is on the front. Acer has also placed the eSATA interface beside the audio sockets on the front; Zotac has placed this, like the S/PDIF, on the back.

The ports' velocimetry turned out very positive and is on a good level with 30 MB/s USB, 75 MB/s eSATA, and 18 – 19 MB/s cardreader. Contrarily, the Zotac's analog VGA connection wasn't as impressive as it already delivered a slightly unfocused image in a resolution of 1280x1024 and therefore should be only used in urgent situations. Both Acers' VGA ports supplied a very clean signal at the same resolution in opposition, so there's nothing standing in the way of using older displays without a digital interface.

Nvidia's Ion chip set doesn't only promise more performance but also has a significantly extended application range with the new interfaces. As you could only trust a nettop to cope with simple office tasks, browser and emails at most, you can now consider a use as a media center, video converter, HD player or PC replacement.

A 64 bit capable Intel Atom 330 CPU, which works with two computing cores, a L2 cache of 1 MB, 533 MHz FSB, and a clock rate of 1.6 GHz, is used in both models as the processor. As in most other Atom CPUs, the Atom 330 also has hyperthreading and can theoretically manage 4 threads at the same time. It's even rather modest with a TDP of 8 watts and saves money. In opposition to the mobile Atom colleagues, the desktop alternative runs with a constant 1.6 GHz and therefore can't reduce the clock rate in idle mode.

The Nvidia Ion chip set permits a RAM use of up to 4 GB. We found standardly 2x1GB DDR2 SO-DIMMs in each of the starter models of our prototypes.

We checked the systems for possible latencies that could turn up at the interfaces with the DPC Latency Checker tool. These could lead to synchronization problems when external devices are used. Whilst Acer's Revo passed the test with flying colors right away, the Zotac's WLAN module could be quickly revealed as the cause for two spikes. The test ran through in an absolutely green field after its deactivation.

A more leisurely hard disk from Hitachi, which can't be called up-to-date with a reading rate of 45 MB/s, is used as the mass memory in the "smaller" Acer. Zotac's Samsung hard disk works a bit faster with an average of 52.4 MB/s. A further increase, as expected, could be accomplished with the 320 GB hard disk from Hitachi in the second Acer Revo with almost 60 MB/s. The top position is occupied by the fast rotating Seagate in the upgraded Zotac with an average of 78 MB/s. SSDs could provide further velocity advantages, but in our opinion, they wouldn't be economically reasonable in this case, though.

The Atom-Ion duo has enough power to play FullHD movies smoothly in the video field. We tested several 1080p trailers and our up-converted to FullHD movie, Seven, on the Media Player Classic and couldn't establish any disruptions. The processor capacity was around 20%.

Purchase videos from the iTunes store, such as Shooter (853x354) that can't benefit from GPU acceleration for iTunes related reasons, also ran smoothly but demanded around 55% of the CPU's capacity.

We checked the GPU assisted video converting made possible by the CUDA engine once again with the program, Badaboom.  We again selected the iPhone format (426x320) as the output size for comparison reasons, the movie "Seven" also served again as movie basis. The Ion in the nettop could extract a few fps more of performance in comparison to the previously tested netbook Samsung N510 (23.9 fps) with 28.5 fps. However, we are still pretty far behind a MacMini with a Geforce 9400 and 2x1GB DDR3 and its achieved 39 fps.

The Atom 330 CPU has to do without the usual energy savings functions, like for instance Speedstep. The processor therefore has a constant rate of 1.6 GHz. The TDP of 8 watts is impressive anyway and contributes to the system's total power consumption. Although notebook technology is mainly used here, the power consumption isn't comparable to similarly equipped netbooks like the Asus 1201N, despite missing display.

Acer's Revo 3610 drains between 22-26 watts from the mains while booting and then it retracts to 18.8 watts in idle mode, without load, after finishing the desktop setup. Surfing, word processing and other simple office tasks demand around 22 watts. Movie presentations from the hard disk increase the whole thing to 24-25 watts. We could elicit a maximum of 31.1 watts (incl. an external hard disk) from the mite by running the Cinebench R10 Multi-Core Render Test, Pi calculations and Badaboom Video Converting simultaneously. Zotac consistently needed almost 1 watt more in the serial configuration and 1 watt additionally in the upgraded version.

Whilst the pure power consumption in desktop mode only considers absolute energy savings fans, the result of that might just interest a larger user group. Thus we established quite varying hard disk temperatures (HD Tune rates), which contribute to the total case temperature and therefore influence the fan's characteristics. Acer seems to have found a quite good solution because the fan rotates quite slowly, quietly and very unobtrusively with 2500 rpm. Zotac's answer rotates faster with 300 rpm, not quite as silently and also a bit more high frequent. The upgraded alternative with the Seagate hard disk basically turns up a notch and then is also very audible. Zotac has various setting options in the BIOS to reduce the fan velocity but you then have to reckon with a considerable surpassing of the 60°C margin. Damages due to the temperature could be a long-term result. Acer is under the Zodac's temperature by about 2-3 °C in this regard according to the BIOS temperature information.