PC Specialist Apollo Home Pro review

Powerful PCs are often used for playing the latest graphically detailed 3D games, but not everyone wants to decapitate zombies or command vast virtual armies.

PC Specialist's Apollo Home Pro is aimed at non-gamers who still want a well-specified computer for other tasks.

The Apollo Home Pro did well in our video-encoding and image-manipulation tests, scoring 258 and 200 respectively, thanks to 2GB of RAM and its 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo E6550 processor. The Apollo Home Pro is by no means slow, but it's not as quick as Mesh's similarly priced G92 Pulse Pro, which has an even faster 3GHz processor.

The Mesh may be faster and better for gamers, but the Apollo Home Pro will appeal to anyone looking for a workhorse that can also double as an entertainment system. To this end, PC Specialist has installed a dual Freeview TV tuner and bundled a remote control so you can, for example, record one TV programme while you are watching another using Vista's Media Center.

Then there's the 22in widescreen display. We were dazzled by it's brightness. It's almost painfully bright, especially for a monitor without a glossy finish. It's evenly lit, too, so it's great for watching movies. It's not perfect, though; there was some noticeable banding in both our colour and greyscale transition tests, although this is unlikely to bother you.

The Apollo Home Pro can easily accommodate a high-definition optical drive in future, as the Radeon HD2600 graphics card supports HDCP, has an HDMI output and its Universal Video Decoding (UVD) feature can help the processor play back Blu-ray and HD DVD movies.

The 500GB hard disk should be roomy enough for hours of TV shows. If it isn't, there are three spare SATA ports and three empty 3½in drive bays for adding more disks. Hard disks are held in place by a series of retractable plungers, rather than fiddly screws, which makes installation a little easier.

Bizarrely, the Apollo's Asus motherboard only supports a RAID array made up of an internal SATA disk and an external eSATA disk. This might make sense in a compact mini PC, but not in a tower computer with plenty of empty drive bays.

Movie fans will find the Creative T6100 5.1 surround speakers appealing, but we were a little disappointed by the sound quality. There's plenty of bass, but they sound woolly and muffled overall. With a bit of tweaking in Windows' sound settings, though, they're acceptable.

If you'll take advantage of the Apollo Home Pro's PVR capabilities and use it for watching movies, you won't be disappointed. If not, it can't quite match Mesh's G92 Pulse Profor outright performance and value.