Evesham Solar Storm Plus review

Today's PCs are used for so many different tasks that it's difficult for computer manufacturers to keep everyone happy. This is particularly true for a family PC, but thankfully Evesham's Solar Storm Plus has something for almost everyone.

The Storm has a generous amount of RAM and a mid-range Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It attained an impressive score of 250 in our video-editing benchmark and a speedy 192 in our image-manipulation test, so it's more than powerful enough for everyday Windows applications. Even processor- or memory-intensive jobs should be well within its capabilities.

We were impressed by the performance of the GeForce 7900GS graphics card in our 3D games tests. Its strong result in our Doom 3 benchmark shows that it shouldn't have any trouble playing current 3D games. Its less impressive - but still playable - score of 29.5fps in our Call of Duty 2 test shows that you'll need to lower the resolution or graphical detail for the highest frame rates on very demanding games.

You can use the Storm's dual digital TV tuner to record one channel while you watch another. Using the included remote and Vista Home Premium's Media Center software, you can browse your recorded shows as well as your music and photos. If you play games or watch lots of movies, you'll want to add a set of surround-sound speakers, but the included Creative i-Trigue 3220 set is fine for listening to music.

Pictures, films and games look good on the large widescreen ViewSonic monitor. It has a 1,680x1,050 resolution, which is ideal for working on panoramic photos or for comparing two Office documents side by side. White areas are bright and evenly lit while other colours are rich and deep. There was only minor, subtle coarseness in our greyscale and colour gradient tests. The stand's tilt motion feels a bit stiff, but you can swivel the monitor effortlessly with one hand.

There's plenty of room for upgrades inside the Storm's case, with space for another two optical drives and four more hard disks, as well as five spare SATA sockets for connecting them. The two FireWire 400 ports and an eSATA port are useful for adding external storage, and Evesham supplies this computer with a handy 4GB Kingston flash drive for backing up files. One of the two empty PCI slots is squeezed up against the PCI Express x16 slot, however, so fitting a card in both could prove difficult.

Evesham's Solar Storm is fast in Windows and games. It comes with a good-quality, high-resolution display and a dual TV tuner, so it's perfect for a wide range of users. However, if you don't need to please everyone, it's expensive compared to the competition. Mesh's Elite E6600 Express (see What's New: PCs, Shopper, January 2007) doesn't have a TV tuner or such a good screen, but it's even faster, comes with better speakers and costs £65 less.