Product Reviews

It's a great time to be buying a mid-range PC. There are plenty of good makers competing for your cash, trying to squeeze in as much hardware as possible alongside an impressive range of versatile peripherals within a price calculated to entice you. That means there are some excellent deals to be found, but one golden rule still applies: if you want the very lowest price, somewhere or other there's going to be a compromise.

Mesh is one of the country's best known PC makers, with a wide variety of systems on offer. This one seems determined to go the extra mile, cramming in a high definition optical drive that's capable of reading both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, so you can play both future Blu-ray titles and any you may have acquired in the now defunct HD DVD format. It also writes CDs and DVDs.

Here comes the first catch, though. To get the benefit of HD movies you need a top quality monitor, and the 22 inch screen, made by Chimei, doesn't fit that description. It's fine for everyday use, but a few niggles can't be ignored. Fine detail, including text, looked a little blurry, and there was a slight red tinge to bright white areas. Colours lacked some of the vibrancy of more expensive rivals. A case in point would be the beautiful 24 inch Iiyama panel that Mesh supplied with the Elite Pulse HD. The Chimei isn't in that league.

Moving on to the other peripherals, the Logitech S220 2.1 speakers comprise a pair of satellites and a decent subwoofer

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whose sound belies their diminutive status. It's a good enough set, but for movies and games it can't be denied that the lack of surround sound leaves something missing.

Inside the Elite Pro's case, things get much more impressive. The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 is a popular processor, providing huge amounts of power at a reasonable price. The four cores - each running at a swift 2.4GHz - achieved a superb score of 240% in our 2D (general) benchmark, which would befit a PC costing a lot more.

Graphic detail

The Q9300 also impressed in the graphics department. The nVidia GeForce 9600 GT is the mid-range card from the new 9000 series, but it motored through our demanding Call of Duty 2 benchmark with a score of 225%. That may not compete with the latest top-end cards, but makes this a system that will handle almost all current games at the highest quality settings.

The Mesh case is one we've seen before; build quality is solid, and there's good expansion potential. A couple of free memory slots are available if you want to boost the 2GB of RAM already included, and three spare 5.25 inch bays lurk underneath that impressive high-definition drive. The processor is kept cool by a custom fan made by Akasa, which does a fine job of chilling the quad core chip, allowing it to run quicker. This also makes it ripe for overclocking, if you're the type to tinker with such things.

Some software has been thrown in too. The CyberLink HiDef Suite is a set of seven tools and utilities providing a wide variety of video editing options, and you also get copy of Assassin's Creed, a stunning new action/adventure game, to show off the graphics capability.

There's no doubt that the Q9300 Elite Pro boasts an impressive core specification. What denies it top marks is the lacklustre monitor and speakers, which simply can't do justice to the powerful and versatile Blu-ray drive. If you want a really convincing high performance HD system, you might just have to spend a little more.