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?
There’s no shortage of chatter in the blogosphere regarding this brave, new “post-PC era” that we’re entering. Now that low-cost Android-based devices are so clearly ready to take over for your PC, why on Earth would we possibly need the traditional desktop anymore, right?
Wrong. Sometimes you just need a large screen, full-sized keyboard, and precision pointing device to get the job done. That’s where the Kaser Net'sPC2 YF810-8G comes in. Packing Android 4.0 (also known as "Ice Cream Sandwich"), a low-power ARM SoC, keyboard, mouse, and a lot of the I/O you'd typically find on a workstation, the Net'sPC2 seeks to replace your desktop for the low, low price of just $100.

But what kind of performance can you expect from such an inexpensive device? And what is it like to use a touchscreen-oriented mobile operating system with a keyboard and mouse? And for that matter, what do we even compare this thing to?
After all, it would be unfair to pit a $100 nettop against the high-end hardware that we typically test. Comparing the Net'sPC2 to a $600 iPhone or $1,200 Ultrabook is just ridiculous. Even a simple Atom-based nettop costs two or three times the Kaser after adding a drive, memory, keyboard, and mouse. Price is clearly what makes this little thing unique, so we had to strike off in search of competition in the Android and PC worlds able to compete against the Net'sPC2 on cost.
What Does A Hundred Bucks Get You?
Let’s take a moment to think about what else a C-note buys these days. If you’re hungry, you can get about two dozen Big Macs. Or maybe ten buckets of the Colonel’s chicken. If you're shopping for consumer electronics, you could pick up a pair of iPod Shuffles or an HD-streaming Blu-ray box.
If you’re talking about the computer world, $100 doesn’t go very far. Of course, if you're being savvy, the used market isn't a bad place to look if you're on an extreme budget. A low-end home office PC from the (dreaded) Vista years goes for about $100, or even less if you hit up a thrift shop (Macklemore-style), an auction site, or the classifieds. And if you’re like any of us, you probably already have at least one older system lying around. That’s right, folks. We’re bringing out Grandma’s PC for this one.
Next, we need a representative from the Atom camp. Although new netbooks still sell for as little as $250, we pulled out a first-gen Dell Mini 10v to close that gap even more. Although a used Mini 10v can still probably fetch a higher price than the Kaser, unlike the Net'sPC2, Dell's Mini is a complete system since it includes a display.
Now let’s try to come up with a couple of Android-based products similar to Kaser's offering. Low-end, pre-paid Android smartphones with the same system specs go for around $100, or even less on sale. If a Benjamin is more than you want to spend on a burner, you could also get away with two really low-end Gingerbread-based devices for that much. Alternatively, you could double-up your investment and pick up the award-winning Nexus 7, which, like the Dell Mini 10v, is a complete system.
Finally, in order to provide a relevant frame of reference, we're also including the $400 Apple iPad 2. While this device is clearly out of Kaser’s league, Apple sold a ton of these things, and we already know that both the iPad 3 and iPad Mini test essentially the same as the iPad 2. Like the Vista box, we’re betting that many of you have at least one of these things at home. Hopefully, including the iPad 2 gives you a clearer picture of where the Net'sPC2 stands.
To compare Kaser's offering, we’re employing a handful of cross-platform benchmarks like Geekbench, 3DMark, GFXBench, and a scaled-down version of the Web Browser Grand Prix. But first, let’s take a closer look at the Net'sPC2 YF810-8G.
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.
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.
Seriously, what happened? Did you forget the "grandma's PC" also needed a monitor to be factored into the price? Did you forget to run power consumption benchmarks? Or that you can't really judge a sub-HD touchscreen (from the Android 2.3 phone) performance (including responsiveness) side-by-side? Or even that, quite frankly, the VGA output is the only real thing that pulls the Net'sPC2 apart from the rest of the Android micro PCs? Seriously, there's just too much stuff wrong in this review...
Finally, for your information, be advised that A10 SoCs are now, and have been for quite some time, considered "value" offerings, you can get hold of "HDMI sticks" (MK80x and derived) based on that SoC for well under $40 (which would still be under $100 if you were to add a keyboard and mouse). RK3066-based (1.6GHz Dual-core A9) sticks with 1GB of RAM are about $50 now, and Quad-core ones with 2GB of RAM start at around $75. Sure, there's no VGA output on any of those sticks, but was that the only reason to choose the Kaser?
I hope you can take another look at this, since this kind of system seems to be getting semi-popular. The newer quad-core sticks, both A31 and RK3188-based, have vastly superior CPU power and also much better GPUs (Mali 400MP4 and SGX544MP2), it would be nice to see just how much better they are overall.
That being said, it's still nice to see just how much powerful even generations-old x86 hardware can still be when compared to ARM, if you're throwing noise, size, and power consumption out of the window.
The problem I have with it is that using Android like a PC OS is very lackluster. This is particularly annoying with web pages that I would like to keep, more or less, up and running and go do something else when there's little activity or I want to go check something else out real quick... only to tab back in and find Android took it out of memory because hey, you can always refresh it!
So Android's pretty poor if you need to use real time web apps and a native app isn't available.
1- CPU : AMD A4-3300 (or trinity equal) : 40$
2- Motherboard : ASRock FM2A55M-DGS : 50$
3- Ram : 2x1 G DDR 3 1600 : 27$
4- Itx Case in win with 200watt psu : 40$
5- UsB 8G flash stick for system :10$
167$ small box system WAAAAAAY better .... and cheap.
Instead of this overpriced garbage pc... Seriously 100$ for an allwinner a10???