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Advent Firefly FP9004 review

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Verdict

A fine space-saving PC for basic, everyday tasks at a very attractive price

Review Date: 23 Dec 2009

Reviewed By: David Bayon

Price when reviewed: £278 (£320 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

We see plenty of cheap PCs in the PC Pro Labs, but the majority that manage to creep beneath the £300 barrier do so by using low-powered Atom processors. That's fine for a basic nettop, but if your needs extend to more processor-intensive applications what you really want is a full-fat, dual-core alternative packing Windows 7. Step forward the Advent Firefly FP9004.

Its £278 exc VAT price puts it firmly in ultra-low budget territory, but you wouldn't know it from using it. The glossy black chassis is big enough to house the necessary cooling for a proper processor, and Advent has opted for Intel's 2.6GHz Pentium Dual-Core E5300. It's at the low end of the scale, but it still performs around three times faster than a dual-core Atom 330 in our application benchmarks.

The Firefly partners this CPU with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard disk, and its overall score of 1.11 shows it's more than capable of coping with the daily needs of a family or home office. The trade-off for this is that it's nowhere near as compact as some other cheap systems we've seen - the redesigned Asus Eee Box, for example.

It is flexible, though. It can stand upright or lie on a desk, and the top edge forms the main air vent grille. The sleek front panel, split down the centre by a white LED, makes it look more expensive than it is, and we'd almost go so far as to call it mildly stylish. It isn't too large - around 300mm tall and 320mm deep - so it will tuck away on the corner of a desk where a full desktop chassis might stick out. It isn't exactly built like a Lenovo but the finish feels sturdy enough, with only the flimsy DVD drive flap posing a potential weakness.

Open it up and you'll see everything is rather snug inside; Advent has used every inch of the available space. The 250W power supply sits at the foot of the chassis, beneath a microATX Foxconn motherboard, while a stock Intel cooler sits atop the CPU. No expansion cards are installed as standard, but there are PCI Express x16 and x1 slots free should you want to add a graphics card or TV tuner. However, the single RAM slot is filled, so there isn't much scope for boosting performance.

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Comments

User comments

Question

I'm curious to know what everyday tasks, other than those involving graphics - for which you say it isn't suitable - most people would use this machine that would not run so well on an Atom 330 device? Surely, most PC's get used for Internet, Music, Word Processing, a bit of Digital Photography and that's about it. Any current processor (Atoms included) can handle that lot - all at the same time.

The next level seems to include Video processing, graphics processing, games etc. I'm not sure what is "in between" that lot and therefore I can't work out what market this is aimed at?

I vaguely remember, many years ago, you used to do a guide as to what you saw low, mid and high-end PCs being used for.

Today, there seems to be a High-end for HD video editing, graphic-design, computer games etc. Then there is a "the rest". The mid-range seems to have disappeared from the PC market with even the most basic machines being more than adequate for the vast majority of users.

By Bassey1976 on 23 Dec 2009

@Bassey1976: Selling increasingly powerful desktops relies on making people believe that they need a 3GHz quad-core and a GTX295/HD5970. An Atom is easily powerful enough for web browsing and Microsoft Word.
'
The above machine with an ATI HD4650 and 4GB of RAM is what I use for gaming (COD4, Fallout 3 and similar.) It runs modern games at maximum detail (with the exception of only 3 titles like Crysis) at 1440*900 with no problems. High-end PCs are simply over-specified unless you have a truly enormous monitor.
'
Only professional video editors or obsessive gamers need bother paying more than about £500 for a desktop. But don't tell anyone, or the PC industry will collapse.

By phantombudgie on 23 Dec 2009

where can I buy this for this price!!!

Dixons / PC World / Currys etc.. for £419

Come on its been a month and already the price has changed. I cry foul to the A - List

By DSuthers1 on 22 Jan 2010

Graphics card

I have the following graphics card and was wondering if this will fit into this unit?

ATI Radeon X850 XT PE 256MB PCI-Express

By Icosphere on 29 Jan 2010

great pc

i would reccommend this Pc as it runs superbly, the RAM capacity is great also the wireless internet is really good as i thought i would connect because my router id at the other side of the house but i connects perfectly.
5*

By PcMan123 on 2 Feb 2010

CHECK THE PRICE!

What's it all about?
Has anybody checked the PC Worlds price? On it's web site it gives you £419- and at this price it's not all that great at all!

By pasma1 on 10 Feb 2010

£419 not £319

Thought this looked too good to be True :(

By MAugier on 12 Feb 2010

PRICE CHANGE

Thanks for the comments. You're correct, the price has gone up. PC World told us the demand created by this review sold the stock out quickly. Given the review was six weeks ago they're within their rights to raise the price, so the Firefly is no longer on the A List.

By DavidBayon on 12 Feb 2010

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