Introduction

I would like to thank Sapphire for supplying the review sample.

Sapphire is well known for their full range of AMD based graphic cards. In recent years the company has tried to diversify into many areas like mainboards, power supplies, ultra high resolution displays, pico projectors and multimedia products. Some of these advances were rather short lived, while others may not really fit the bill of a large video card manufacturer. The newest offering is the Edge-HD Mini PC, which is a complete ION 2 based Nettop. This is a logical step to take for a company like this, but I am bit surprised it is with an NVIDIA offering. I would have expected to see a AMD Fusion based system first, but no matter - here we are and Sapphire was kind enough to lend us one of these for a full review.

Packaging

Sapphire packages the Edge-HD in a compact, full color box. The front shows the device, along with a few pointers and a visual listing of the contents. It is nice to see that Sapphire is including a USB Stick with drivers and an HDMI cable with this compact system. The back goes into further detail about the possible connectivity and also has a comparison image of the device and a woman's hand. While this is a fun little comparison, the hand could be gigantic for all we know and I do dare say that it is fairly large considering the actual size of the Edge-HD.


Inside the box, the system has been bedded in a foam cutout and reinforced with cardboard. An additional carboard cover puts some space between it and the outer box, so that you won't have to worry about any damage to the unit during shipping or transport.

Contents

You will get a well rounded package with the Edge-HD. There are two stickers which you may apply to the unit if you wish, a fairly short, but good quality HDMI cable and an HDMI to DVI adapter, allowing you to use the unit with a traditional monitor as well. On top of that you will receive a manual to get you started, a stand which may be screwed unto the Edge-HD and the afore mentioned USB flash drive which contains all the drivers. It has a total capacity of 1GB with some room to spare, so you could actually go ahead and save the most recent drivers on here if you wish.


The power supply is of normal size considering today's netbooks for example. There are no moving parts or LEDs on this unit. It is produced by a company called Meic and carries an output rating of 19V and 3.42A.