Nexbox T11 Review: Is This Cherry Trail Windows 10 PC A Winner?

The Nexbox T11 is a new Windows PC powered by the quadcore Intel X5-Z8300 Cherry Trail SoC and features a VGA port and 2.5″ HDD bay. How good is it? Read my Nexbox T11 review to find out.

I want to say thanks to Nexbox for sending me a sample to review.

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Nexbox T11 Technical Specifications

[aps_product_specs id=”6171″]

What’s In The Box?

Nexbox-T11-Review-Inside-The-Box

Inside the box, you get:

  • Nexbox T11 Mini PC
  • 1x Power Adapter
  • 1x HDMI Cable
  • 1x Instruction Manual

Nexbox T11 Review: Design

The Nexbox T11 is fairly typical looking Windows PC, using a typical black square design.

The front of the unit is bare, with all the ports located on the sides and rear. The right side features a power button and two USB ports.

Nexbox-T11-Review-Right

The left side has another USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port and a micro SD card.Nexbox-T11-Review-Left

Most of the ports are located on the rear, as you’d expect. Going from left to right, we have a VGA port, 3.5mm audio output, ethernet, HDMI out, micro USB OTG and DC In.

Nexbox-T11-Review-Back

Underneath the unit are keyhole mounts for mounting the unit to the back of a monitor and the 2.5″ hard drive bay.

Nexbox T11 Impressions

Holding down the power button boots the unit. With a keyboard and mouse connected, it takes around 30 seconds to boot. Resuming from standby is essentially instant.

The Nexbox T11 ships with the latest version of Windows 10 and is activated out of the box. Windows is stock, without any tweaks or customisation.

Nexbox-T11-Review-Windows

Performance was on par with other devices powered by the Intel X5-Z8300. Everything felt great to use and basic multitasking was fine, with several browser Windows and video playback proving no issue for the Nexbox T11.

Installing an additional HDD via the 2.5″ HDD bay is as easy as opening up the bay and sliding in the new HDD into the SATA port. It was readily recognised as an additional drive once initialised via Windows’ Disk Management program.

Those wanting to use two monitors are covered as Nexbox states that you can use both the VGA and HDMI ports simultaneously for a dual monitor setup.

Nexbox T11 Review: Media Playback

Nexbox-T11-Review-Kodi

I installed the latest version of Kodi (Kodi 16.1 at the time of writing) to test out media playback.

Codec Video Performance (Kodi 16.1)
1080p 3D SBS H.264  OK
1080p 3D ABL H.264 OK
1080p24 H.264 OK
1080p High Bitrate H.264 OK
1080p60 H.264 OK
720p50 H.264 OK
1080i25 H.264 OK
4K 30FPS H.264 OK
4K 60FPS H.264 Audio Lags Behind Video
1080p24 HEVC OK
4K 30FPS 8-bit HEVC OK
1080p 10-bit HEVC Decoding Issues
1080p30 VP8 OK
720p Hi10p OK
1080p Hi10p OK (Software Decoding)
1080p MPEG2 OK
1080p VC1 OK
Unencrypted Bluray ISO (Sintel) OK

Media playback on the Nexbox T11 was generally excellent, on par with other Cherry Trail-powered Windows mini PCs.

All the most common codecs played back well and even my 1080p Hi10p samples were able to be played via software decoding.

Deinterlacing performance was good and automatic framerate switching is supported for correct playback of videos once enabled in Kodi’s settings.

Nexbox-T11-Review-02

5.1 Audio Passthrough

Dolby Digital 5.1 passthrough via HDMI worked fine via Kodi 16.1

Netflix

Netflix plays back in HD via the native Windows 10 app, offering a superior experience to the web version.

External Storage Support

Playing back movies from my 2.5″ USB-powered HDD and USB flash drive worked perfectly.

Nexbox T11 Review: Gaming Performance

Nexbox-T11-Review-Beach-Buggy-Racing

To test gaming performance, I installed 2 games,1 2D and 1 3D title:

I was initially worried about the gaming performance as my first boot showed low frame rates during gaming. However, after a reboot, everything seemed to be stable so it’s possible Windows was still configuring.

Gaming performance was good. The relatively simple Jetpack Joyride played smoothly and I didn’t have any issues maintaining a good framerate in Beach Buggy Racing, even at maximum settings.

Nexbox-T11-Review-Jetpack-Joyride

Gaming Controllers and Bluetooth

I was able to hook up my Gamesir G3 using the USB dongle to have it detected as an Xbox 360 controller.

Pairing up a Bluetooth keyboard was easy and worked well without any issues.

Nexbox T11 Review: Networking

Networking performance was tested using Wifi performance was tested using Wifi Speed Test, conducting 3 tests and averaging the results. My router is approximately 5m away, with a single wall between the router and the device. WiFi performance is heavily impacted by a number of factors so your performance may vary.

Wireless Performance

Wireless performance was decent on the Nexbox T11, with upload and download speeds of 23.3 Mbps and 38.1 Mbps respectively on the 2.4GHz band.

Real world performance was good, streaming 1080p and 4K H.264 videos from my NFS share without buffering.

Nexbox-T11-Review-03

Ethernet Performance

Ethernet performance was reasonable, with upload and download speeds of 87.1 Mbps and 86.1 Mbps respectively.

Nexbox T11 Review: Benchmarks

Benchmark Score
PCMark Home Conventional 1046
PCMark Work Conventional 1406
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited 17485
3DMark Ice Storm Extreme 10446
3DMark Cloud Gate 1486
GeekBench 3 Single Core 741
GeekBench 3 Multi Core 2233

Nexbox-T11-Review-05

Nexbox T11 Review: Thermal Performance

The Nexbox T11’s thermal performance seems to be decent. After stressing the Nexbox T11 using HeavyLoad, HWiNFO reported that the SoC temperature capped out at 82°C. HWiNFO didn’t report any throttling however the CPU speed did periodically drop to 480Mhz so I’m not sure what’s occurred. Ambient temperature was 19.6°C.

Nexbox T11 Review: Power Consumption

Off Standby Idle 1080p24 Video Under Load
0W 3.5W 5.0W 6.3W 9.5W

Verdict

Nexbox-T11-Review-04

The Nexbox T11 is another decent Windows 10 PC powered by Intel’s X5-Z8300. Performance was comparable with other Cherry Trail boxes whilst the ability to use dual monitors without adapters and add another HDD via the 2.5″ bay will undoubtedly be a benefit for power users.

It’s not the flashiest of boxes, but it held up well during testing and extra features such as the VGA port and SATA bay make it a winner for power users.

Getting One

You can get the Nexbox T11 from GeekbuyingGearBest and Amazon for around $130.

Use our exclusive coupon “OCCEWBKS” to get $10 off at GeekBuying!

Check Price at GeekBuying
Nexbox T11
Respectable performance and great inclusions such as the VGA port and SATA bay raise this device above its ordinary looks.
Pros
Cons
7.4

Michael

Michael is a technology expert with over 15 years of experience in IT, Home Theatre and Automation. Feel free to send Michael a message here.

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