At first I would like to thank Foxconn for offering their Nano PC nT-i1500 for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About Foxconn:

“Guided by a belief that the electronics products would be an integral part of everyday life in every office and in every home, Terry Gou founded Hon Hai Precision Industry Company Ltd, the anchor company of Foxconn Technology Group in 1974 with US$7,500, a devotion in integrating expertise for mechanical and electrical parts and an uncommon concept to provide the lowest "total cost" solution to increase the affordability of electronics products for all mankind.

Today, Foxconn Technology Group is the most dependable partner for joint-design, joint-development, manufacturing, assembly and after-sales services to global Computer, Communication and Consumer-electronics ("3C") leaders. Aided by its legendary green manufacturing execution, uncompromising customer devotion and its award-winning proprietary business model, eCMMS, Foxconn has been the most trusted name in contract manufacturing services (including CEM, EMS, ODM and CMMS) in the world.

Focusing on fields of nanotechnology, heat transfer, wireless connectivity, material sciences, and green manufacturing process, besides from cooperating with the establishment of the research institution for nanotech, new material, and optical electric, Foxconn also sets up several research centers and testing laboratories for mechanism, material, electronics to conduct the services of science research and technology development worldwide.

Furthermore, Foxconn’s devotion to develop nanotech, thermal treatment, nano measure, wireless network, environmental protection, CAD/CAE, optical plating technique, precision/nano processing, SMT, and network CMOS chips, in terms, allows Foxconn to accumulate over 25,000 patents granted worldwide by 2010. This made Foxconn a recognized leader of innovation and technical know-how in rankings such as MIT's or IPIQ’s patent scorecard.

Aside from hardware related technology research and development investment, Foxconn also relentlessly seeks to provide customers ever fuller menu of end-to-end services to choose from. Logistic planning and e-supplying system adopted for the global supply chain management, computer software development and computer programming, sales channel solutions are just some of the latest investment and involvement that have continued to gain appreciation from the worldwide customers.

Foxconn's commitment to continual education, investing in its people long term and localization globally not only leads to the deep collaborating relationships with leading institutions of higher learning, but also helps to make this Fortune Global 500 group's global operations including the largest exporter in Greater China and the second largest exporter in Czech Republic.”

Product Features:

 

Tiny Size Big Resolution

 

2.5 cm thin, 0.6 liters by volume, at the size of a book and the beautiful appearance of NetTop brings unlimited possibilities to your life and business activities. Attached wall-hanging shelves or foot stand makes it possible for you to put this machine anywhere you want to further reduce space requirements, rendering you a wonderful taste of life whether it is within or beyond your sight

 

Wireless Possibilities

 

By eliminating the LAN cable, Nano PCs offer a level of flexibility and simplicity for the users. The F-one card reader allows you to easily store photos and share your colorful life with your friends through 802.11 n wireless networks at any time, surprising you in a way you can never imagine

 

70% Energy Saving

 

Thanks to the energy-efficient processors, Foxconn Nano PCs require 70% less energy than traditional PCs, boosting system performance when handling demanding tasks and lowering consumption when less power is needed.

 

Home Entertainment with Full HD and HDMI

 

Juggle the work and entertainment when you have got only one screen? No, this will never happen because while working, you can also use HDMI to watch TV through the HDMI and S/PDIF output ports, which ensure a Full HD 1080p home entertainment experience, while the built-in 802.11n WLAN and Ethernet LAN port keeps you connected to your home network.

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

The Nano PC from Foxconn comes shipped inside a small cardboard box, with a nice artwork on it, showing us that we can use the device as a media center; a photo of the product is also located here:

 

 

 

On the lateral of the enclosure, we can also find a small sticker, for sorting purposes inside the warehouse:

 

 

 

If we get rid of the outside packaging, we can find that the product is further protected inside a plain white cardboard box:

 

 

 

The Nano PC is held inside a bubble bag, on the top compartment of the box:

 

 

 

As bundle, we are also offered a power lead, different accessories, the power brick and a circular dock:

 

 

 

The product is shipped with a very useful plastic knife-like tool, which we can use to open up the barebone, for installing the rest of the components (HDD or SSD and SODIMM DDR3 memory); extra screws are supplied for mounting the VESA mount and the internal components, 4 adhesive feet and 4 rubber feet with magnetic core; another item that we haven’t seen at the previously reviewed Nano PC is the small Foxconn sticker:

 

 

 

The circular stand does not occupy a lot of space and allows us to install the Nano PC vertically:

 

 

 

The supplied power brick is relatively small and has a power LED located in one of the corners:

 

 

 

The PSU is manufactured by HuntKey and is rated on the output 19V, 3.42A:

 

 

 

A small User’s Manual is also included, along with a CD with drivers:

 

 

 

For saving up space inside the box, the Nano PC is preinstalled into the VESA mount:

 

 

 

After its removal, we can see that the mount has pre-drilled holes for different types of monitors:

 

 

 

The small computer has an all-black shiny plastic appearance, which is a dust and fingerprint magnet; however, with proper care, we can get past these problems really easy. For transport, Foxconn has covered both sides with a transparent plastic film, to avoid scratches:

 

 

 

 

On the frontal side, we can find the headphone and microphone jacks, one MS/SD/MMC card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, a small speaker and the Sleep, Power buttons:

 

 

 

The back holds 4 USB 2.0 ports, a D-SUB video out, one HDMI connector, one RJ45 LAN connector, a Line Out jack and one DC-in:

 

 

 

On one of the laterals, we can find a large plastic grill, from which cold air gets sucked in:

 

 

 

The opposite side represents the exhaust, where the small fan is located:

 

 

 

 

The top side of the case also features a Kensington lock; before removing the top side of the case, make sure that all 4 small screws are removed, each one located in a corner:

 

 

 

After carefully removing the top cover, we can expose the internals of the Nano PC:

 

 

 

An add-on card can be installed in the supplied mini PCI-E slot, located near the card reader unit:

 

 

 

Near the card reader, we will find the microphone and headphone jacks:

 

 

 

The tiny speaker is an independent module, with the 1.2W, 8 Ohm ratings:

 

 

 

Near it there are the Power and Sleep buttons, soldered onto the PCB:

 

 

 

Only one SODIMM slot is offered and we can install DDR3 1066 up to 4GB, but on the market we can also see available 8GB modules of the same size:

 

 

 

The small fan is not noisy at all; when the computer is powered up for the first time, we will see that the fan does not start up right away and usually it takes a while, depending on the load levels of the system:

 

 

 

The Nano PC does feature internal WiFi antennas, a total number of two:

 

 

 

 

The rest of the ports and connectors are to be found in the back side:

 

 

 

The HDD/SSD can be installed in a metallic frame, which features protective material on the bottom, for avoiding short-circuits:

 

 

 

After the removal of the frame, we can see that the bottom of the PCB is further protected by a black material:

 

 

 

Near the air grill we can also find the SATA Data/Power connector:

 

 

 

After the HDD is installed, we can secure it with the provided 4 screws:

 

 

 

The memory will be installed like on a regular laptop, by inserting it inside the slot at a certain angle and pressing it down for securing on the lateral clips:

 

 

 

 

The Nano PC BIOS does not offer a lot of options that we can configure like memory timings, voltages and so on; the interface is split into multiple tabs, the first one being the Main one, where we can find information about the BIOS version, CPU type, installed RAM, LAN MAC and here we can adjust the current date/time for the system:

 

 

 

The Advanced tab has three sub-menus:

 

-Miscellaneous

-Integrated Peripherals

-SATA Configuration

 

 

 

The Miscellaneous tab lets us configure options regarding the IGD and HPET:

 

 

 

Within the Integrated Peripherals menu, we can enable or disable the LAN, audio or USB interfaces:

 

 

 

The SATA Configuration menu lets us set the SATA mode:

 

 

 

Inside the Power tab, we can configure the ACPI Suspend Mode, along with Deep Sleep:

 

 

 

The Security tab lets us specify a password for the Administrator account, but we can also enable the BIOS write protect feature:

 

 

 

Inside the Boot Options tab, the boot sequence can be configured:

 

 

 

Finally, in the Save & Exit tab we can choose to save/discard or load the default values of the BIOS:

 

 

For testing the performances of the Nano PC from Foxconn, one Avexir DDR3 1333 SO-DIMM 4GB module was installed inside the barebone, along with a Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 250GB HDD. Some additional information regarding the components inside can be picked by using CPU-Z, GPU-Z or AIDA64.

 

CPU-Z CPU Information Tab

 

 

 

CPU-Z Caches Information Tab

 

 

 

CPU-Z Mainboard Information Tab

 

 

 

CPU-Z Memory Information Tab

(not extra details are offered)

 

 

GPU-Z Information Tab

 

 

 

AIDA64 Motherboard Information Tab

 

 

 

AIDA64 CPU Information Tab

 

 

 

AIDA64 IMC Information Tab

 

 

 

AIDA64 Chipset Information Tab

 

 

 

 

Power Consumption Test

Temperature Measurements

(ambient temperature: 22.5 degrees Celsius)

Noise Measurements

(ambient noise: 26.5 dBA)

 

 

3DMark 2001

 

3DMark 2003

 

3DMark 2005

 

3DMark 2006

 

PCMark 2005

 

PCMark Vantage

 

PCMark 7

CrystalMark

 

SuperPI 1.5 XS 1M

 

wPrime 32M

 

CineBench R10

 

CineBench R11.5

 

x264 Encoding

 

Counterstrike Source

 

 

After the installation of the Windows 7 SP1 x64 version that was used for testing the other platforms in the past, we started the installation of the drivers, beginning with the Intel Chipset ones; all went well with the installation of the USB 3.0 interface, card reader, audio CODEC and so on; at last, the video driver came up next, and after the installer got launched, we’ve received a message that the drivers are not compatible with the current operating system. The next step was to continue searching on the web for a suitable x64 driver and we were shocked to see that Intel cancelled support for the GMA 3600 series VGA drivers on x64 systems.

 

Leaving this issue aside, we had to reinstall the whole OS, this time x86 version and the installation of the other drivers, including VGA went smoothly; however, after the VGA drivers were installed and Aero got enabled, the animations of the windows, as they appeared on screen and disappeared were not smooth at all; also, the 3D acceleration was not working too good either, as we have seen in the performed tests.

 

Intel really need to keep updating their drivers for the platform, to fix both 2D and 3D video issues, at least for the x86 OSes.

 

When you first see the barebone from Foxconn, you would be tempted to say that you cannot have acceptable temperatures in it, even if it is offered with active cooling; surprisingly, in IDLE, the product does not have CPU temperatures higher than 50 degrees Celsius on each core and after 30 minutes of stress testing with Prime95, the temperature did not go higher than 60 degrees Celsius. During the stress testing, the fan barely upped it’s speed, so it was not noticeable; when we started the Nano PC for the first time and fired up the Windows 7 installation, the fan started to rotate only after the first stage of installation was completed (and requested a restart), so you might enjoy a long time of total silence if the computer is not stressed a lot during normal usage (of course, if we also use a SSD instead of a 2.5’’ HDD).

 

The power consumption is one of the lowest we have seen on similar platforms, at both IDLE and Load, which makes it a perfect product for occasional browsing (with Aero disabled), mail check or for using it as a seedbox.

 

The bundle the device comes with is welcome, and this includes the VESA mount adapter (which is offered from other companies for extra money), the tool for the top cover removal, the rubber magnetic feet or the circular stand.

I would like to thank again to Foxconn for making this review possible!