Kaser Net'sPC2 YF810-8G Review: $100 For An Android Nettop?

Features
By Andrew Ku, Adam Overa
published

What’s the cheapest computer you can buy today? And we're not talking Raspberry Pi. We still need enough horsepower to email, browse the Web, or play a movie. Kaser claims to have the answer with its $100 Android-based nettop. But is it up to the task?

System Testing: Geekbench

As the only truly cross-platform system benchmark available today, GeekBench provides our CPU and platform performance data.

Given that we're dealing with a $100 nettop, we didn't really expect much. But these Geekbench results really put performance into perspective. With only a single 1.0 GHz Cortex-A8 core, the Kaser’s Allwinner A10 SoC predictably delivers less than half the performance of the equally-clocked dual-core Cortex-A9 inside Apple's A5 SoC. Compared to first-generation netbooks based on the Atom N270, the Allwinner A10 provides roughly one-third of the performance. With nearly seven times the performance of the Kaser, Google’s Nexus 7 is well worth twice the price of the Net'sPC2. The equally-priced Vista-based office rig delivers a whopping ten times the system performance as the $100 Kaser. Meanwhile, the $50 Gingerbread-based LG Optimus S holds its own, delivering slightly more than half the performance of the $100 Android-based nettop.

The five year-old PC dominates in CPU performance, with the Nexus 7 placing a respectable second. The iPad 2 and Dell Mini 10v trade blows in third place, with the Atom providing higher integer scores and the Apple tablet having the upper hand in floating-point math. For the first time, Kaser's Net'sPC2 dominates the Optimus S, achieving over twice the burner’s integer score, and almost four times as much in floating-point throughput.

While the Kaser is horribly beaten by most of our test systems in CPU performance, the memory spread isn’t as brutal. Here, we can see that the Optimus doesn’t have a significant disadvantage versus the Kaser in memory performance, even though the paltry amount of system memory is a constant issue with prepaid smartphones, and we’ll get to see a perfect example of this next in our graphics testing.

Andrew Ku
26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Matsushima
    Seriously? Another slow ARM processor with a bloated phone OS on a desktop. Tragic.
    Reply
  • Matsushima
    I have something like that, a bloated Android HTPC that looks a bit like Raspberry Pi.
    Reply
  • dingo07
    How about adding it to the NAV system in a 2006 Acura TL that has a 7" touchscreen?
    Reply
  • Firion87
    Now AMD's APU is incredibly cheap, add 1g of ram a hdd lying around your home and your way better off with a x86 than this underpowered NO FLASH compatible no nothing system. Why are they even talking about such systems? I'm an Intel fanboy but got a AMD e350 system for my parents. I am amazed how well that little thing works for pretty much anything you encounter in daily use for little money (hdd 120g second hand, case and psu can be purchased for as little as 35$, mb+ram 65$ brand new)
    Reply
  • ET3D
    Wow, this is really overpriced or underspecced or both. The Allwinner A10 is simply a crappy chip. Single core Cortex A8, 16-bit RAM interface, 512MB limitation, that's pretty crap. I bought a Chinese tablet (Onda V712) for $125 with a quad core A7, 2GB of RAM and an 1280x800 IPS screen, so if you drop the screen I imagine this could all be put into $100, and provide much better performance. (It's about as powerful as the Nexus 7, a little slower on the CPU side and faster on the GPU side.)
    As for Android, it should also be possible to make it more usable. A better specced device would have 1080p native, and allowing to change DPI settings on the fly is likely to do wonders to usability on a bit screen (i.e., scale the UI instead of blowing it up).
    Android also has some limited windows. It's a hack, but there are apps which support it, such as Tiny Apps, which provides a notes app, calculator, paint, music player and music recorder all running in their own small windows. There are also floating video players ("floating" is the Android app way of saying "windowed") and floating web browsers.
    I think that an Android PC could be made usable (though not great). This one isn't it, and I feel that testing was too limited, but I won't fault you for it because any A10 device is not really worth a second look.
    Reply
  • ET3D
    I checked out some Chinese stores, and indeed it's possible to buy something specced link my tablet (Allwinner A31, 2GB RAM, ...) for $90, and some dual core A9 1GB devices in the $80-$100 range. These should be much better than this particular piece of crap.
    Reply
  • Aljhon Pobar
    "armed with a single Cortex-A8 core running at 1.0 GHz. For a little perspective, that's about half of the processing power wielded by the original iPad. "
    How come? 1st Gen iPad is powered by Apple A4 SoC which uses a 1GHz Cortex A8. And this Allwiner A10 is powered by the same Cortex A8.
    This is very disappointing for a well known techsite.
    Reply
  • obarthelemy
    how did you manage to select such a crappy representative of Android PCs, when for example the similarly priced Minix Neo X5 is several times more powerful and has an excellent, frequently updated OS ?
    Reply
  • ET3D
    G-Box Midnight MX2 is another good choice you might want to review. Serves as a good XBMC player out of the box, but can be used as an Android mini PC.
    Reply
  • joebob2000
    About 6 months ago I picked up a dual CPU/quad GPU android PC stick, for $50 shipped. It lacks hardware ethernet or the plethora of USB ports, but it is pretty darn fast for how cheap it is. I suspect Kaser was the first of the "android pc" vendors to submit something to Tom's but is it too hard to hit up Aliexpress for comparable priced units?
    Reply