Sapphire Edge HD
The world’s smallest mini PC? Maybe
Review Looking more like a router than a PC, Sapphire’s Edge-HD makes the recently-reviewed Zino HD 410 from Dell look positively huge. Sapphire rather hesitantly states that it “believes” the Edge-HD to be the smallest PC in the world. Whether or not it’s a world-beater is therefore up for debate, but with dimensions of 193 x 148 x 22mm it most certainly is small.
Sapphire’s EDGE-HD: not an AMD component in sight
The Edge-HD has obvious appeal as a home theatre PC, but Sapphire appears also to be aiming it at the corporate market, citing its space-saving design and green credentials. When I hooked it up to a power meter, I recorded a nice low power draw of 21W – for reference, Dell’s Zino HD 410 mini PC consumed around 40W.
With the aid of a detachable stand, the device sits upright, leaning back at a slight angle. The stand is also impressively sturdy, and you’ll have to give the PC a fair old whack for it to topple over. A vent at the top belches out hot air, with the fan constantly whirring quietly away – you’ll only hear it in a near-silent environment. As far as controls go, the EDGE-HD has just one: a power button. Next to this sits what looks like another button, but it is in fact just a HDD activity LED indicator.
The rear is home to analogue audio I/O and LAN ports, along with VGA and HDMI outputs – an HDMI cable along with an HDMI-to-DVI adapter are included in the package. Two USB ports are also found at the rear, but they’re crammed in so close together that a bulky USB device (such as a TV tuner) may well block off the neighbouring port.
Aside from two USB ports at the front, all the action’s at the back
A small flap at the front of the PC reveals another pair of USB ports. Personally, I’m not a fan of rubberised flaps such as this – they’re fiddly to use and look wholly unattractive when opened up. Perhaps more concerning, however, is the lack of a card reader, meaning an external one will be required if you want the ability to quickly show off a card full of snaps.
Next page: Performance charts
COMMENTS
leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
"The fact Sapphire hasn’t bothered to preinstal a fully-functional OS also leaves a bad taste in the mouth."
Will Stapley here is your coat! now gedoudda here!
Not screwing the customer with windows tax is exactly what some of us want! I already have more copies of windows than PC's (due to dead boxes).
I for one welcome this refreshing change.
No cut for Redmond
This alone is enough to make me interested in buying this. You're right about the price though.
NIce unit ..but oh dear....
...they put the VGA socket for the heaviest cable at the top.
MIght cause a problem for some. Rather have that at the bottom.
re: *any* OS
"and FreeDos is a what? Go on say it with me: Free Disk Operating System"
Feel free to try and patronise all you like. But FreeDos is hardly what you could call a "fully functional" OS. If you think it is, I've got a C64 sitting in the loft that you might be interested in.
@AC
"Not screwing the customer with windows tax is exactly what some of us want"
The suggestion wasn't for Windows to be pre-installed, rather *any* OS was installed. In fact I think the hint was to have a Linux install - especially as this way they might have caught the no-audio-over-HDMI-with-Linux problem and gone some way to help address it.
