Asus Eee Box review

Connecting the Eee Box to your existing home network is fairly easy thanks to the integrated Ethernet adaptor round the back, but it also boasts extensive wireless capability. It supports the ubiquitous 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi networks, as well as the faster 802.11n Wi-Fi protocol, which can allow bandwidth of up to 300Mbps.

Performance
The Eee Box is pretty much an Eee PC 901 in a desktop chassis, so it offers very similar performance to its laptop counterpart. Its PCMark 2007 score of 1,407 places it in the lower end of the performance bracket, but we can forgive it this limitation -- aside from not being able to run 1080p video, it churns its way through most tasks with aplomb.

Things start to get a little hairy if you take liberties by multitasking with several demanding apps at once, but keep things simple and you won't have many complaints. In fact, you might start to appreciate certain aspects of its performance, including the fact that it doesn't generate much heat and runs so quietly. The fans are almost constantly running, but you'll be hard pressed to hear anything except in the quietest of rooms.

Conclusion
The Eee Box is rather a mixed bag. It's not powerful enough to challenge the vast majority of desktops on the market and, as a Media Center PC, it's only mediocre. Despite this, we think it's worthy of consideration -- particularly because it's so cheap. You might be better off with an Eee PC, but if you really must have a super-cheap desktop, it should be near the top of your list.

Edited by Nick Hide