Final thoughts and rating
The Packard Bell Imax Mini N3600 is a straight rebrand of the Acer Revo N3600 nettop computer. In its highest specification, priced at £299, the Imax Mini houses an Intel Atom 230 chip; 2GB RAM; 160GB hard drive; 802.11n WiFi, and GeForce 9400M graphics in box that's not much bigger than a hardback book - and lighter. The extremely quiet system can be mounted behind a VESA-compatible monitor or placed on a stand. In effect, it's a netbook without a screen. Packard Bell should provide a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 in due course, too.Connectivity is good, from HDMI to eSATA, although DVI should have been provided instead of D-sub. The addition of NVIDIA's ION platform brings better-than-Intel GMA950 graphics for both multimedia usage and basic gaming. GeForce 9400M has greater gaming credentials than Intel's GMA950, yet don't expect to play any modern first-person shooter at 1,024x768 - the chip simply can't cut it.
Delve a bit deeper and a few other flaws become apparent. The Atom 230 chip struggles with any real kind of multi-tasking and quivers when decoding non-GPU-accelerated multimedia content. That's telling when playing Flash HD clips and, out of the box, the majority of HD content. Third-party programs get around some of the limitations, sure, but Joe Average would want to play a Camcorder-recorded H.264 clip on his shiny, new 1080P TV, we reckon. No optical drive means that Blu-ray or DVD playback isn't possible without some form of hard-drive streaming, either.
Bringing it all together, the Packard Bell Imax Mini N3600 is, for all intents and purposes, an ION-powered netbook without a screen. Many of the compromises made on netbooks are magnified on a larger screen and, given the £249 price for this model, sans gamepad, we can see that it make sense if you simply want a small, quiet PC for light usage. Just don't expect it to replace the power of even a two-year-old desktop machine.
HEXUS Rating
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
The rating is given in relation to the category the component
competes in, therefore the Packard Bell Imax Mini is evaluated with respect to
our 'mid-range' criteria.
Packard Bell Imax Mini N3600
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
