Product Reviews

VeryPC has developed its business using the philosophy that you don't need to guzzle power to have a decent PC. Instead of using the latest desktop parts, the Sheffield firm concentrates on the use of power-efficient components - and intelligent design - to reduce power requirements while maintaing decent performance. The Fulwood, VeryPC's tiny Media Center PC, continues this laudable tradition.

As expected, power draw was remarkably low in our tests. When idling, the Fulwood used only 17W - that's nearly half of the 31W used by the A-Listed Transtec Senyo 610 and considerably lower than VeryPC's last offering, the Treeton II XS, which drew 27W when idle.

With the processor working at full capacity, the machine still only drew 27W - again lower than the Treeton II XS and Senyo 610, which drew a comparatively greedy 75W and 36W respectively. Quite simply, the Fulwood is the greenest PC we've ever seen.

These impressive stats are achieved by a selection of mainly mobile parts. The Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P9500 processor - which runs at 2.53GHz - is normally found in laptops, as is the SODIMM RAM and 2.5in hard disk.

Despite the focus on power saving, though, the Fulwood was still remarkably quick. An overall score of 1.31 in our application-based benchmarks is on a par with the A-Listed Transtec Senyo, which scored 1.36 - a highly respectable performance given the low power draw.

The Fulwood adds to this sound performance with a decent selection of media-centric components. A digital/hybrid DVB-T TV tuner - complete with an aerial in the box - allows programmes to be watched and recorded (though not simultaneously) and there's 802.11bg wireless so you don't need to worry about placing your router next to your TV. Draft-n would have been preferable, however.

The chassis is the same model - AOpen's MP45-DR - that impressed us with the Novatech Nbox Pro. It's made from classy-looking brushed and machined

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aluminium, is fractionally smaller than a Mac mini and crammed with sensible design features to ensure that every component fits.

The WLAN card and TV tuner, for instance, sit in sockets on small riser cards, and another pair of PCB risers handle the two USB ports - as well as the power button and various LEDs - that make up the Fulwood's front panel.

Also worth mentioning is the Fullwood's warranty - it's an extremely generous three-year deal that can be extended to five years if the included subscription to Kaspersky Anti-Virus is maintained. VeryPC will also give your PC a free health check and service at the end of the initial three-year period.

The sheer number of parts inside the case, though, means that its upgrade potential is limited. And, aside from the core spec, the rest isn't quite as impressive. The hard disk, crammed between the slot-loading DVD writer and the rest of the Fulwood's components, is just 250GB - rival machines, such as the Sony VAIO VGX-TP3, offer 500GB of media storage space.

Its 3D performance is nothing to write home about either. Though the Fulwood romped through our application-based benchmarks, its integrated Intel GMA X4500HD graphics failed to produce any kind of a decent frame rate in Crysis, even on low settings where it returned a rate of just five frames per second. Playing the latest games at high resolutions is clearly beyond this diminutive PC.

And while VeryPC offers plenty of customisation when ordering the Fulwood, the tiny dimensions of the AOpen chassis means that compromise is inevitable. If you'd like a dual TV tuner, for instance, then say goodbye to wireless internet, and the same goes if you'd like any of the other options that VeryPC offers - including modem, FireWire and USB cards for extra sockets.

The big problem with this little PC, however, isn't the specification or the compromises you may have to make, it's the price: at a starting cost of £739, with the TV tuner and wireless chip adding £69 and £39 respectively, it totals a whopping £847 exc VAT - far costlier than either the £606 Senyo or the £765 VAIO, the latter of which comes with Blu-ray and dual TV tuners.

The Fulwood is a perfectly competent Media Center PC. It boasts excellent performance, a decent feature set that includes both TV tuner and wireless, plus highly commendable green credentials. Only the high price robs it of a recommendation.