Evesham Mini PC Plus

Conclusions

Again, we come back to the issue of how exactly we evaluate a home theatre PC. The Evesham system does what you would expect - it's not about to be calculating spreadsheets and it's not about to be employed as the latest cutting edge gaming machine. We're throwing the floor open to you guys to let us know what you'd like to see in these reviews in the future by way of performance testing, so please let us know by dropping by the forums.

Raw performance: The Pentium M chip in this system is no slouch. As with all current systems based around this platform, the major bottleneck is memory bandwidth, since the Pentium M operates on a 533MHz bus.

MCE is slick in operation, and the system is perfectly capable of doing a whole bunch of things at once, as you'd expect - such as recording a TV show whilst playing back some photos and music.

If there is one noticeable performance bottleneck, it's probably the hard drive. At 5400RPM, it's slow when you're doing disk-intensive stuff. You will see a difference if you upgrade to a 7200RPM drive, but whether the extra expense is worth it for you will depend on how intensely you intend on using the machine. For general MCE use, the slow hard drive will be an occasional tut-inducer. For heavier use, it'll be more of a homicide-inducer. The same goes for the laptop optical drive - these drives are notoriously slow at huge data reads, so if you regularly import gigs worth of data via DVD-R, you might find that an issue.

Featureset: All those niggles, however, are by-products of the fact that the machine sports perhaps the most awesome feature of all - unbelievable coolness. There's no doubt that this is one heck of a PC. For its size, it packs in incredible amount of power and the fact that the only thing we can moan about performance-wise is the slow hard disk is something of a testament to the work that Intel have done with their mobile processors.

We're a little disappointed that there's no gigabit LAN, because HTPCs are all about access to content, and streaming and media transfer is far easier with gigabit. We would've liked to have seen a remote included and we're also bewildered at the lack of digital audio out. It's easy enough to integrate a digital connector with an analogue, and it's disappointing that this hasn't been done.

Noise: I have to confess that I was expecting this system to be a whiny little thing. Happily, I was surprised - it is whisper quiet in operation. The hard drive, running at a slow speed, really isn't noticeably noisy, and the single fan that chugs through the system is incredibly efficient. You can happily leave this on and not notice it, from a couple of feet away, over the ambient noise of a room. This is how HTPCs are meant to sound. Or rather, not sound.

Value: There are, I would suppose, two major competitors to this system. The first is actually the Mac Mini, which clocks in at 1.42GHz with a 80GB hard drive and costs £499. The second is the beblu Pentium M system which we reviewed last month, costing £1,199. Price-wise, the Evesham sits between the two. The beblu has the advantage of better connectivity, with digital audio, WiFi included in the price, a TV tuner and full-size drives. The downside is the noise produced.

The Mac Mini has a nicer, more expensive finish than the Evesham, and feels a little classier. However, it's woefully underpowered and, of course, doesn't run Media Center. Considering the cost of Pentium M chips and the platform to go with them, I think the Evesham is actually priced very competitively. If you want to watch TV, you'll need to go and buy an external tuner. However, that's not going to break the bank, and the system will still come in well underneath the price of the belbu.

Final Thoughts

This is a great system for the money. It's plenty powerful enough to run Media Center well, whilst being fantastically quiet. It lacks audio and network connectivity, but more than makes up for it in size and chic. If you're happy with the compromises the size necessitates, you shouldn't hesitate to drop the cash on this baby.