Product Reviews

If you'd like a PC with a bit of style, and which takes up less space than a traditional desktop, Qrex has something for you. Its all-in-one PCs squeeze all the necessary PC bits and bobs into the monitor stand, so the whole system takes up barely more room than a regular TFT screen.

Aside from a slightly naff glowing power button, this PC's understated silver finish is stylish without being too flashy. For a PC designed to look chic and save space, the X150 is rather squat at first sight. Seen from head-on, though, its main body is almost hidden from sight by the screen.

The main reason for getting an all-in-one PC like this, rather than a notebook, is that it can use desktop components. This should make its performance closer to that of a regular desktop, and keep costs down. Our X150 came equipped with a desktop 2.8GHz Pentium 4 and 512MB of RAM, plus a healthy 80GB Western Digital hard disk. A DVD/CD-RW combo drive was included as well, although this is of the slimmer notebook variety to save space. There's also room for a low-profile 3.5in floppy drive, but this isn't installed, so you'll have to fit one yourself. Unlike some all-in-ones, the CD and floppy bays are placed sensibly under the screen for easy access. The X150's 15in screen is designed to work at a resolution of 1,024x768 - not outstanding, but enough to give you a decent amount of detail on your Windows desktop.

Another benefit that an all-in-one offers over a notebook is that there's usually room for a wider variety of ports. The Qrex offers four USB 2, two FireWire and a 10/100 Ethernet port, a parallel port, two serial ports and a game port. This is great if you

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have old printers, games controllers or other pre-USB devices. You can even attach an extra monitor to create a dual monitor setup. However, it would have been better if at least a couple of the USB ports had been accessible from the front. Even the audio connections for headphone, line out, and microphone are round the back, although they're not hard to get to.

There are always some compromises in compact systems such as the Qrex, and the most common one is graphics. As there's no room for a full-size graphics card, the X150 has to make do with the graphics built into its motherboard's Intel 845GE chipset. These are fine for everyday business use but, with a woeful score of 1552 in our 3DMark 2001 test, this machine won't cope with anything that demands decent 3D performance, so that rules out gaming. In fact, it didn't fare well in our 2D performance tests, either. With a score of only 1044, the Qrex has sufficient power for everyday office activities, but it's hardly outstanding.

Still, the specification of the Qrex is pretty comprehensive. It even has a removable USB video camera screwed to the top of its screen. This can capture video at a resolution of 640x480 pixels. An external V.92 USB modem is supplied, too, so you can connect to the Internet. Having an external modem, though, does seem slightly at odds with the compact, 'all-in-one' idea. Considering the speakers are built-in, audio quality is passable - a subwoofer in the base of the unit reduces the inevitable tinny quality of the small integrated speakers.

The X150 is also much quieter than most desktop PCs. The mouse and keyboard, on the other hand, aren't that great. The keys don't strike home with a clean motion, instead they feel a bit 'mushy' and unresponsive. The mouse feels too light and rattly, and there's hardly any movement in its two buttons, which makes it rather uncomfortable to use after a while.

The Qrex looks good, doesn't cost the earth and saves space - but you sacrifice a lot of power compared to the kind of performance you'd get from a similarly-priced desktop PC. Unless you really need a space-saving, attractive PC, the Qrex's lack of expandability and processing power will make it an unhappy substitute for a standard desktop PC.