Conclusion

Intel’s new Atom looks like a promising piece of silicon. Built to a budget, the chip still manages to deliver a significant improvement on Bay Trail, especially in the GPU department. While GPU performance is not a huge deal on most cheap PCs, bear in mind that Cherry Trail will end up in millions of tablets running Android and Windows.

GPU performance was (and still is) the Achilles heel of Bay Tral SoCs, and Cherry Trail promises to change all that. However, it’s still not enough. High-end ARM processors, with the latest and fastest GPUs Qualcomm, ARM and Imagination Technologies GPUs, will still beat Cherry Trail in gaming, making them more suitable for premium tablets. However, Cherry Trail is an x86 chip and can also be used in tens of millions of Windows tablets and mini PCs.

Although it’s a “tock,” Cherry Trail is a good update and the chip looks like a winner. It’s a better all-round performer thanks to the new GPU, yet it’s more efficient and delivers more performance in the same thermal envelope. Also, bear in mind that this is an x5-Z8300 review – we haven’t had a chance to review the x5-Z8500, which can hit 2.24GHz on Turbo and address up to 8GB of memory (dual channel, naturally). Lastly, the x7-Z8700 is clocked at 1.6/2.4GHz and sports an even more powerful GPU, with 16 EUs.

Even the humble x5-Z8500 manages to beat the previous-gen Atom with a substantially higher clock, yet faster and more capable iterations of Cherry Trail SoCs should be much, much better.

As for the Tronsmart Ara X5, we liked the user-friendly design, the sturdy acrylic chassis, good thermals and relatively low price. However, we also encountered a few problems that may or may not be attributed to the fact that this is a pre-production unit. Hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before the WiFi/BT module gets a new driver that sorts these problems out.

Tronsmart Ara X5 Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Atom x5-Z8500 easily outpaces Bay Trail-based competition
• Virtually no throttling
• Windows 10 out of the box

Cons:

• WiFi/Bluetooth issues
• USB 3.0 performance or lack thereof