Mesh Titan Pro 24 review

Unlike with cheaper PCs, SLI graphics configurations are supported, allowing you to add a second 8800GT graphics card (or indeed a pair of even better cards) to ratchet up performance in top-end 3D games. And with two 500GB hard drives fitted already and two slots free for more, you've got the option of increasing the storage capacity if you somehow manage to fill up a terabyte. Five years ago, that would have been considered a decent capacity to serve a large corporation. Then again, that was before there were four seasons of Lost available for download...

To put you in touch with all those media extras, Mesh have thrown in a remote control for browsing your entertainment content, though the white unit is an odd match. There's a decent complement of ports and sockets: four USB in addition to the PS/2 ports used for the standard-issue Logitech keyboard and mouse, eSATA for fast external storage, Ethernet, FireWire, S/PDIF digital audio output, and even a parallel port in case you need to attach antique peripherals. A card reader is also included, accepting most major types of memory, including SD, MMC, CD and MD.

In your face

22 inch screens are becoming the norm, but a PC such as this deserves something even bigger, so you get a huge 24 inch Iiyama display. Both VGA and HDMI inputs are provided, and picture quality was sharp, but we found colour reproduction a little disappointing; images were slightly washed-out, lacking the bright vibrancy you'd get with a more expensive model. The 5.1 speakers also proved adequate rather than outstanding, delivering decent sound when used with movies, games and films, but nothing more notable than that. Audiophiles would want to invest in a better set, but casual users should be happy enough.

Even for a system that includes almost everything you could conceivably need in a personal computer, £1199 is a lot of money. You could shop hard and find a PC with a similar processor and graphics for less cash, but chances are it wouldn't provide the same build quality and extras, and although we've griped a little about the monitor, it could have been a lot worse. The Titan Pro is a powerful multimedia machine with the raw power to coast through almost any software, whether for work or play, and plenty of goodies to make sure you won't feel short-changed.