Zotax Zbox Nano AQ01 Plus

CONCLUSION

No doubt the segment of the market the Zbox Nano AQ01 Plus occupies is a niche market. It does what it should well though and offers nice performance and features for such a small foot print.  The features are impressive and we cannot really say we miss anything as we get great wireless support, lots of usb-ports (both usb 2 and 3) and support for VESA-mount. We agree with Zotac that this would be a nice media PC or possibly a kitchen PC attached to a small monitor. It would have been nice with a remote though.

On the negative side we find a slower hard drive that somewhat impacts performance. In that sense getting the non-plus-version might be a better choice as you can select what storage option you want to use. We have not found a price for the Plus-version is the US yet but the non-Plus version (no HDD or memory included) retails around $260 and in Sweden the difference between the two is around 200$ so if you are happy with the drive then the Plus-version is perfect, otherwise get the Zbox Nano AQ01.

The biggest issue for the Zbox Nano AQ01 Plus though is that it is being attacked from other types of devices, namely tablets. If all you need is a kitchen PC you might as well get a nice 10″+ tablet. Even as a media PC there are now nice alternatives like AirPlay on IOS, Google ChromeCast together with a Android device or one of the new Windows 8 tablets with HDMI-out. A PC like the Zbox Nano AQ01 Plus does a lot more though (well, maybe not compared to a Windows 8 tablet) so if you need the flexibility then it still is a good choice, especially since it will cost a lot less than most of the tablet options.