VeryPC BE 2 Business review

VeryPC's approach has always been a little different to the majority of PC manufacturers. While other companies concentrate on blistering frame-rates and the latest components, this Sheffield-based firm prefers a more environmentally-friendly approach.

The company's ecological concerns can be seen in its choice of CPU for its new business desktop: a 2.3GHz AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400, with a low TDP of 45W. This is less than half the requirement of older Athlons, and 20W more than today's equivalent Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

The hard disk has also been chosen with an eye on the environment - the 2.5in 160GB Western Digital Scorpio is a 5400rpm drive usually found in laptops, but chosen here for its modest power requirements.

And it all adds up to an impressively low power draw: when idle, the total draw hovers at around 36W when the machine is idle - lower than the average home PC and any machine in our last Business PC Labs too (issue 164), though not by much. In that test, 41W was the lowest we saw. Intense load saw power drain rocket to 81W, however.

These low-power parts naturally hamper performance. The BE 2's 2D benchmark score of 0.95 makes it one of the slowest business PCs we've seen recently, with even most modern laptops achieving higher scores. It's fine for everyday business and internet tasks, but we wouldn't choose it for more demanding applications.

On the upside, the BE 2 has an appealingly compact chassis, thanks to its microATX motherboard. It's not the smallest PC we've seen, but it's well-built and can be positioned either vertically or horizontally to fit into any office space. It's not, however, as small as the minute HP Compaq dc7800p or the Lenovo ThinkCentre M57.

Inside there's a trio of free drive bays (one 5.25in and two 3.5in) plus a free PCI-Express slot for a potential graphics upgrade, though the integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 should be well up to office applications. Our only complaint here is the mounting of the hard disk: it sits towards the rear of the chassis, which makes it quite difficult to access. The Lenovo or the NEC PowerMate ML470 would be easier to upgrade.

Round the back, the range of ports and sockets is good: plenty of USB ports, audio, Ethernet and FireWire are as expected, but eSATA is a welcome addition. The motherboard offers an HDMI output too, though it probably won't be needed on a business PC such as this.

The included LG Flatron L1953S monitor is adequate for everyday use, with a native resolution of 1,280 x 1,024. We did, however, see a small amount of backlight bleeding through at the top and bottom of the screen, so it might not be ideal for image-based work.

We liked the three-year RTB warranty, which is one of the longest you'll get on any PC. It can even be extended for a further two years, with a free health check at the three-year mark if you keep up a subscription to Kaspersky Anti-Virus, which comes bundled. And, although the BE 2 comes preinstalled with Windows XP Professional, you also get a Vista Business licence in case you prefer Microsoft's more modern operating system.

Overall, though, we can't recommend the VeryPC. Compared to the business PCs we've seen lately, it fails to excel in either performance or design - and, despite its low power draw it's not low enough to justify this compromise.

Please note: an earlier version of this review included an incorrect idle power reading of 51W. This review has been updated and amended to include the new, correct figure of 36W.

Author: Mike Jennings