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Asus Eee Box B204

The Asus EeeBox really is quite a stylish and compact system. It measures approximately 22cm x 18cm – much smaller than a standard size magazine! This small size allows for more desk space and for the unit to be hidden away behind a TV or monitor.

It’s available in a mixture of colours: White, Green, Black and Red. Asus have kindly set us a black unit for review, not the fanciest of colours, stylish none-the-less.

The two sides are pretty boring with them being a bit plain and simple. In the corner of each side panel is the ‘Eee’ logo. The right side does however have a range of license and specification stickers. The sides are constructed from plastic, this helps with noise vibration as it doesn’t rattle around like Steel or Aluminium. Moreover, as it has a Steel construction internally, the sides still feel rather solid and sturdy.

The front of the Eee Box B204 has a front flap. On this flap are three stickers: Intel Atom, XP Home and Energy Star. Also, there is a silver indented Asus badge; this adds brand identity to the system. The flap is made from plastic and is very flimsy, I actually broke it within just 2 hours of usage, so be careful.

Opening the flimsy flap reveals an array of ports, switches and LEDs. Firstly, at the top is a hard drive activity LED, below a power switch and LED, then a card reader (MMC, MC or SD supported), two USB 2.0 ports and finally a Headphone and Microphone jack. As you may have noticed, there’s no optical drive. Therefore, to play media files or games, you’re either going to need to stream it over a network to the EeeBox, or invest in an external device.

Moving to the rear of the unit, from top to bottom there are:

• Wireless antenna jack (WiFi)
• Power input (DC 12V)
• HDMI port
• Dual USB ports
• RJ-45 LAN port
• Audio Out (S/PDIF Out) jack

There’s no DVI or VGA, therefore you need to either use a HDMI compatible display (many are nowadays), or invest in an expensive HDMI converter.

The bottom of the Eee Box has a small screw hole where the stand is secured to.

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