Novatech Solo review

The Novatech Solo is a rebadged L390T Uno, originally manufactured by Canadian company Eurocom. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but import deals are vulnerable to exchange rate turmoil and it's a shame to see this all-in-one system now offered at a higher price than the more powerful Solo Pro last summer.

What you get for your £759 is a rather basic package. The Core 2 Duo P8400 is a laptop processor, and it comes with just 1GB of RAM. That isn't enough to let Vista Home Premium run at full speed, and in our 2D Benchmarks the Solo scored an unimpressive 0.82. The 160GB hard disk is as small as those in the nettops. And while the Intel GMA X4500 graphics are a cut above the the Atom-based machines, it's still useless for current games. Even in our low-detail Crysis test, the Solo averaged just 2.6fps, and the Call of Juarez test wouldn't run at all.

Video performance was better, with most types of media playing smoothly, but this isn't a media centre: there's no TV tuner or remote, the 19in screen is on the small side and the speakers have neither the weight nor the volume to fill a room satisfactorily.

As a conventional PC the Solo is rather more persuasive. It offers five USB ports and plenty of other connectors, including eSATA and ExpressCard/54, plus Gigabit Ethernet, draft-n wireless and Bluetooth. If you want to use a second monitor, you can hook one up via VGA or HDMI. Novatech supplies it with a decent Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, and you even get two serial ports and a modem - rare inclusions indeed in this day and age. The 49W idle drain is easy to swallow too.

But for this kind of price, we'd really hoped for something more glamorous and media-friendly. As it is, the Solo is limited its performance is disappointing too. It's unfortunate for Novatech to find itself undercut by Zoostorm; but even if we'd never seen Zoostorm's take on the L390T, we'd still find it hard to recommend the Novatech Solo.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith