NVIDIA Ion Small Form Factor PC - Roundup

NVDIA Ion is potentially a very promising platform. It will break away from a lot of restrictions currently found in Intel's chipset solutions for Atom based netbooks and mini-PCs. But granted, based on the Atom platform, there will always remain to be one big restriction aka bottleneck, overall Atom CPU performance. Let's say you want to purchase a mini-pc based on ION and use it as a small Home Theater PC, certainly it has much potential. You'll love the full HD capability, and coupled with a dual core atom, this really could be the HTPC dream machine in terms of value for money.

- Guru3d

In fact, for the HTPC crowd, there's little question NVIDIA's Ion PC represents a breakout product, one where discrete graphics and their associated power consumption, heat and noise, can be dismissed for a fully integrated platform capable of all the tasks at hand. Wrap up Ion in some prettier skins, add a wireless keyboard and mouse, maybe a multi-function remote, and we think there may be more than a few NVIDIA sales engineers that will be looking at design wins over the next few quarters.

- Hot Hardware

To say that I am excited to have a system with this kind of power in the palm of my hand, quite literally, is an understatement. This is not a product that will win over everyone's heart - gaming is okay, but not great, power consumption is still questionable and costs will go up - but I think more people will give the netbook market a look once they start to see ION-based products hitting the shelves. And of course NVIDIA is not only aiming for the netbook market; I would love to see ION-based platforms show up in larger, lower-cost laptops in the 12-15" screen size range as well as in basic HTPC designs. Even if Apple does not use the ION platform for its upcoming Apple TV and/or Mac Mini updates, another PC vendor like ASUS or Dell could easily offer a product with these features and capture the momentum in the market.

- PC Perspective