rock Meivo-E4300 review

Typical price: £999

What is it: All-in-one Media Center PC

What we think: Not quite large enough for out tastes, but a great example of an all-in-one Media Center PC

rock Meivo-E4300 Review

Reviewed by: Rory Reid

Reviewed on: 30 June 2007

At this price point, it's no surprise to see rock has omitted an HD DVD or Blu-ray optical drive. The 8x DVD rewriter you get with the Meivo is only good for making backups of 4.7GB (or 8.5GB with dual layer discs) in size. This should suit most people's needs, especially if you have a large collection of DVD movies. If you really must ride the early adopter bandwagon, you can attach an external Blu-ray player via the HDMI port at the rear.

The Meivo uses Windows Vista Home Premium edition, which ships with Media Center software as standard. The menu system is easy and intuitive to navigate thanks to an infrared remote, and it won't be long before you're watching Freeview TV, playing and recording video, or browsing the TV guide. The Meivo, thanks to Vista, could use up to four tuners simultaneously, raising the possibility of watching one channel while you record three others. But rock has erred on the side of Scrooge by integrating only a single DVB-T tuner for Freeview.

We love Trisha as much as the next gadget site, but one of our favourite things to do with the Meivo was explore Web TV via services such as TVTonic. You can even get clever and stream media around the home using the Meivo's Ethernet jack, or better still, the Wi-Fi adaptor. Naturally, this allows you to surf the Web without littering your living room or bedroom with cables. These abilities, in conjunction with the TV and PC features, make the Meivo far more impressive than an ordinary dumb telly.

Performance
The Intel E4300 CPU inside the Meivo offers a good compromise of performance and energy-efficient running. Our sample never got too loud or too hot -- a desirable quality in a Media Center PC. It won't shirk from most computing tasks, either, but forget about gaming -- the integrated Intel graphics adaptor is rubbish at pushing polygons.

Conclusion
We like the Meivo. The 22-inch display isn't large enough to meet the demands of most modern lounges, but it would make a great second PC, particularly in a bedroom or kitchen.

Its most recent rival, the HP TouchSmart PC has a greater list of features, but if simple elegance is a priority, the Meivo is a sound investment.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield