Customer Reviews

ASUS Eee Box EB1501-B0167 Nettop PC - Black

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Now that I've had the EB1501 integrated into my home theater for a few weeks, I thought I would update my review of it.

I have this connected via HDMI to receiver, surround sound and a 52" HDTV. Due to the limitations of my setup (not the EB1501), I do not use HDMI for sound, so I will not say anything about the box's ability to carry both signals properly. If you use S/PDIF for audio, you are going to appreciate the included adapter (works great). I was going to use Boxee or XBMC, but I don't like the hassle of setting up and integrating Tv tuners into those, so I am using Windows 7's Media Center.

The EB1501 is EVERYTHING I have been looking for in a HTPC. It runs (very) cool and (very) quiet. It's barely noticeable yet attractive enough to not have to hide - which makes it easier to get to the DVD drive, power, ports, etc... The computer is stable and a workhorse for this task.

With the Atom processor, I wouldn't recommend trying to do too much gaming or heavy multitasking. As a component in a home theater, this thing runs circles around the almost useless Media Center Extender I was using before.

The EB1501 is quiet, though a bit louder than I expected. If it is sitting right next to me on the desk in a quiet room, the fan sound is a little bit annoying. With it mounted under the desk, even at night in a very quiet room I can hardly hear it.

I hooked it up to a Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor to measure its power consumption. When it's not busy, it only uses 19 watts of power. I didn't try too hard to tax it, but doing things like launching applications and watching videos brought the power consumption up to 25 watts. I'm very impressed. If I left it on 24 hours a day, at 19 watts that translates to about $20 in electricity for an entire year. (For comparison, my regular PC uses about 5 times as much electricity.)

Some things I've done on the EB1501 with no problem:
* Watched YouTube and Netflix videos
* Had sound going through the HDMI cable and through a USB audio interface (a Griffin iMic)
* Had a VGA monitor at 1280x1024 and an HDTV at 1080p hooked up separately and also simultaneously with an "extended desktop"
* Burned a DVD

I'm very happy with the EB1501.

Update:

For some reason the network refuses to connect at 1,000 Mbps even though it is hooked up to a 1,000 Mbps router by a short Cat 5e cable. I tried different routers and cables with no luck. I thought it was a hardware problem, but when I boot it into Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it connects fine at 1,000 Mbps. My guess now is that it is a Windows 7 network driver problem.

This caused a problem where the unit would come out of sleep and I wouldn't get a network connection for maybe 30 seconds while it was trying (and failing) to connect at 1,000 Mbps. It would eventually drop down to 100 Mbps and I'd get my network connection. Once I figured out what was going on, I went into the device setup for the network and told it to always connect at 100 Mbps and I get a network connection immediately after it wakes up.

Bought this machine, upgraded RAM to 4GB. So far so good. Had a few hicups w/WPA2 security & my router, but for the most part, the machine does a good job. I can watch HD content w/no sputters. And the box fits nicely tucked behind a wall mounted TV.

If it had a Blue Ray Drive, the price would be more solidly justified.

Easy to use.

After some tweaking and in the installation of flash 10.1 with hardware acceleration for H.264 I finally got this little guy running pretty good. The price could have been a bit cheaper for this with all things considered, or atleast give us 4gigs of memory or a bluray player. Enough with the nitpicking! This system is quiet, small, energy efficient, and among other things FUN. I can watch all my movies, tv shows, YouTube videos, Hulu, or just browse the web from the comfort of my own couch. Apples new mac mini is a better all around media center. HOWEVER, the Mac Mini is like $799 with 4gigs of memory and then you need to get the wireless keyboard and mouse which are both $80. So you'll easily end up paying $1000 for a simple media computer. Surely though you can use the apple for some more complex things as games. I would put windows on it for that exact fact (even though the apple guys might really frown at this haha). Hope this helps!

This little computer is all it is advertised to be and it works great and uses a very small space. In fact I mounted it to the back of my monitor and I is still accessible. The only issue is they should offer two models the standard with 2 GB RAm and a second model with 4GB Ra, I upgraded my memory to 4 GB and it enhanced the performance of this little mighty might machine.

I have only used this unit for about 3 weeks now.
What I would have to say seems to be a major con for me, as another reviewer had stated, the "added" software that is installed, such as Total Media Center and Total Media Player 3 is total junk software and I say remove it before you ever get started. Windows downloads an update patch for the Total Media Player but on this system I purchased, when the update patch was applied and the system restarted, everything was hay wire and I was now getting file loading errors, I found out, that had to do with trying to load any gadgets in the Windows side bar. I was very disappointed in this as I like a few of those gadgets. So, to state that this is not an issue with the unit itself, just with the, I would say, untested Arcsoft software. After finding out how to restore the computer back to it's original state completely for round one, and then just doing a system restore back to before the update was applied, for round two, everything worked perfectly again.
I initially purchased this unit so I can stream media over my home network and found it bothersome that I could not get another media unit I had bought to be able to log into the home network on any machine I have with Windows 7 home premium 64 bit installed. I figured the only way this will work is if I either go back to Windows XP Home or update to a machine also with Windows 7. Anyone have any answers for this?
When the machine was new before the Windows update process began, and after I got all my network connections in place, I could, at that time, stream media over my home network and Windows Media Player and Media Center would find the media files and upload them and play them back just fine...no issues. But, after letting the unit upload windows updates for a while, and it seems shortly after that Arcsoft Media Player 3 patch was updated again, video media files would no longer play over the network with either using the Windows Media Player or the Arcsoft Total Media Player 3. The files seem to upload and start playing for about 1 second and then stop. I can press the play button again and get another second of playback and then nothing. I again performed a complete system restore and again, got the same results. Media files will play at first and then something changes and they will no longer play. My only solution to this point was to install an older version of other DVD playback software that allows me to stream media over my network without a hitch or a glitch.
I am seriously thinking of a complete system restore one more and final time and immediately removing the Arcsoft software from the start so no other updates will be applied to it and see if Windows Media Player and/or Media Center responds correclty even after some Windows updates. If so, I will remain a very happy customer. Otherwise I will just install the older software and hope it works out for the best.
Other than that above, I have found no issues with video streaming playback when it works that was mentioned in other reviews. No jittery screens or stop and go. As long as I could get the movies to stream correclty, they played back flawlessly. I have yet to figure out how to get the 5.1 sound to stream through the SPDIF output jack but that is still going to be a project for another day.
As far as another reviewer stating that he couldh't get the HDMI screen to fit on his TV, I found that all you have to do is go to the NVIDIA ION control panel and there is an option to click on there to adjust screen size. When you click on that, a screen pops up with slider controls for horizontal and verticle. All you have to do is move those sliders and watch your screen until the white borders and green corner arrows fit inside the screen the way you want it to and then click on ok and that becomes your new screen resolution. It works fine on my 42" LCD monitor. I have no issues with the screen fitting after trying this.
All in all I feel the unit is not the fastest in the world but for what I want to use it for, I think it will perform just fine. The HDMI sound through my tv speakers and sub-woofer is totally awesome. Lots of bass, and that can be adjusted too. The tunes sound wonderful...some have too much bass.
As far as people complaining about the fan noise...I wonder what kind of lives you people must have if that noise truly is bothersome to you. I have a fish tank going all the time of course and that creates a low hum of the air pump going to keep the fish alive. With that and noise when the fridge is running and any other electical appliances I may have, they make far more noise than the little fan of this unit to be bothersome to me. I don't really hear it.
Another person complained about the noise of the DVD drive when spinning up. Are you kidding me? Either I have a different brand installed in my unit than other people, I don't know, but any disc I have put into that drive to this point, upon spinning up, I was wondering if it was even spinning up or not because it doesn't make near the noise the normal 52x drives do on my much larger systems that sound like fans going off. So, in conclusion, either I have a noisy house or this unit is truly much more quiet than other people want to believe.
As far as heat, well, I feel at times it gets a little warm to the touch but nothing I feel is of any concern. Maybe I haven't done enough to it yet to really work the processor and memory and such but as of yet, I haven't felt it get all that hot and my house right now is between 80-85 degrees most of the time and the unit still seems to operate flawlessly. I have also upgraded the memory to 4gb but not thrilled with the fact that the dedicated video memory is set up so it takes at least one gig out of the four. Another reason for the four star rating. A person can reclaim some of that memory by going into the bios and dropping down the page frame size but it really doesn't reclaim all that much memory especially if you still want the performance out of your video. I don't know of any other way to have the unit use less ram for dedicated video.
I also gave it four stars because of the crappy extra software installed. Upon my next system restore, I am removing all the extra software. I will remove Works also because I never use it on any computer it has ever been installed on. I have an updated copy of Office and I perfer that to anything else.
So, other than all that, if you have continued to read this far, it's a nice peice of equipment that I think I will enjoy hopefully for more years to come.

My planned use of the ASUS EeeBox EB1501 was strickly as a media device. First to handle the Logitech Squeezeserver for my two Squeezebox units and also to stream movies and TV from the internet. For these purposes it has been excellent. When sitting idle, but turned on, it draws 21 watts and is suitably quiet. The processor is adequate for the above uses but not much more; nor is it planned to be.

My one criticism is the Trendmicro Internet Security software which caused me some difficulties with this unit. The data for my Squeezeserver is located on a NAS drive. While the Trendmicro was loading the Squeezeserver would lose contact with the NAS. I would have to manually reconnect the mapped NAS drive and then manually start the Squeezeserver. By removing the Trendmicro and replacing it with AVG Antivirus/Antispyware the problem was solved and I can now easily run my networked media through the device. The problem was caused by the relatively slow processoer and the CPU needs of Trendmicro while it's loading.

I would recommend the EeeBox EB 1501 to anyone for the above purposes. Don't try to use it as a major PC, it would need more horsepower for office processes.

It does well as HTPC, plays DVDs, mkv, avi, flash videos, videos from Hulu, Netflix etc. But definitely Atom CPU is not enough to play smoothly 1080p videos. It is far from being acceptable.

Ultra compact Home Entertainment computer. It's right. Watching your picture and HD-video records on the big screen 40" HDTV. YouTube and more... . And additional computer for internet browsing in case problem with own laptop computer.

I love this Eee box! I am using it in a house without cable and this little guy does everything. From streaming Internet to DVDs to home videos - for me it works as a computer and full cable TV, phone (with MagicJack) and DVD player replacement. Setup was a breeze, HDMI works great with my 36" TV, and I've had no hardware faults or problems.