Product Reviews

When I was a child, I loved Dr Who. But most of all, I loved his Tardis. It might have sounded like a Morris Minor starting up on a cold morning, but the Tardis had a fancy trick up its sleeve. It may have been small on the outside, but you could get a lot inside it. It was a marvel of magical compactness. And so, for that matter, is the Watford SpaceCube 2500AIW 9000.

This PC is little bigger than a toaster, yet manages to house some fantastically powerful components. It's built inside a case manufactured by PC specialist Shuttle, the same company responsible for the machine's petite FS51 motherboard. Yet despite the reduced dimensions of the case and motherboard, Watford has managed to build a machine with some serious muscle.

At the heart of the SpaceCube is an Intel Pentium 4 processor, running at 2.5GHz. This is impressive for several reasons. The most obvious of these is that dissipating heat from a fast processor is always going to be more difficult in a small case. This has led to mini-PC manufactures fitting slower, cooler processors. Not so with Watford. It has dropped in a full-bodied P4. This is made possible by Shuttle's clever 'heatpipe' system, which uses a metal tube to draw excess heat away from the processor and towards the case's single fan.

Working alongside the Pentium 4 is 512MB of RAM. This is a good amount as Windows needs a least 256MB to work at its best. Sadly, though, the Watford's memory isn't the fastest. We're used to seeing DDR333 with a processor of this calibre. Watford has fitted slower DDR266 RAM. This is a shame, given the speed of the processor.

The IBM Deskstar hard disk offers a cavernous capacity of 120GB, but it's also quick. Its platters spin at 7,200rpm - always a good sign when looking for performance.

Overall system performance was a little disappointing, though. The machine musters only 1,039 in our 2D benchmark tests. Certainly, it trounces the

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similarly petite Evesham E-Style C2.2 we reviewed last month. But considering the potential and power offered by its 2.5GHz Pentium 4, the Watford really ought to have produced a higher score - especially given its price tag of £855.

Watford has made a clever choice with its graphics, though, fitting an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9000. This card is both a TV tuner and a 3D graphics card in one. As a raw 3D gaming card, this ATI Radeon 9000 won't set the world alight. It's certainly not the Radeon 9700 card in the Mesh on page 96. That said, with a 3DMark 2001 score of 8,413, this machine will happily play the latest games.

Compensation for any shortcomings in its graphical might are more than made up for by the All-In-Wonder's multimedia prowess. It will let you watch stereo TV and record it straight to your hard disk. It's also an excellent card for DVD playback, renowned for its sheer quality. With such capabilities at its disposal, the Watford makes a perfect entertainment system for your living room.

However, to be even considered for a place in the modern lounge, a PC has to be quiet. And here the Watford, though not silent, is fairly quiet. Use the machine to play a DVD, and what whispers it makes will be easily hidden.

As a screen for watching movies, though, the Watford's 15in TFT flat-panel has a few limitations. It's excellent for word processing and detailed work, with a crisp, sharp image. For DVDs, its narrow viewing angle meant I had to look from a very precise viewpoint to appreciate the full colour and detail of the movie.

It's speakers, on the other hand, excel. Well, almost. They're VideoLogic's fine ZXR-500 set - cracking 5.1 surround-sound speakers are great for gamers and movie buffs alike. They have, however, been superseded by the marginally better ZXR-550s. The old system will still impress - but the perfectionist in me would still have preferred the newer set.

My only major gripe with the Waford was with its wireless mouse. The radio link between the receiver and the mouse kept breaking. It also feels a bit sluggish.

So, should you buy the Watford Aries SpaceCube 2500AIW 9000? Given its extra oomph and surround speakers, the Watford steals the Top 50 Best Buy award from the Evesham E-Style C2.2 we reviewed last month. If you really need Pentium 4 performance, your choice is clear: buy the Watford. If quality visuals are more your thing, the Evesham's monitor was far better- buy the E-Style C2.2, and you'd save yourself £50 into the bargain.