VeryPC Parkwood II review

VeryPC's Parkwood II is one of the most efficient PCs here.

Its active power consumption of 37W is second only to that of Asus's Eee Box, even though this is a considerably more powerful PC, with a 2.26GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8400 processor and 2GB of RAM.

Unfortunately, this specification is virtually identical to that of PC Specialist's Impulse 625, which costs over £100 less, has the same amount of memory and uses the same case, motherboard and processor as the Parkwood II. The Impulse also has a larger 320GB hard disk.

Like the similar PC Specialist and Fujitsu Siemens PCs, which also have AOpen cases, this system uses laptop components, but there's still some potential to upgrade it. The system has two PCI Express Mini card slots, one of which is occupied by a Draft-N wireless adaptor, while the other is free for anything you want to add. VeryPC offers a selection of optional PCI-E Mini cards, including a TV tuner, that it will fit when you buy your PC. There's plenty of scope for external upgrades, too, thanks to six USB ports and an eSATA port.

The Parkwood II will fit anywhere, and the case's glossy black finish wouldn't look out of place next to the TV in your living room, and it also comes with a DVI-to-HDMI converter and a Media Center remote control.

It's powerful enough to play high-definition video files with ease, and its optical S/PDIF connection enables you to output digital audio to a surround-sound system. Sadly, without a Blu-ray drive, the Parkwood II isn't an ideal media system. It compares poorly with Sony's Vaio VGX-TP3E, which has a larger hard disk, a built-in HDMI output, an Nvidia graphics processor and a TV tuner, although the Vaio much less power-efficient.

The Parkwood II has a good specification and is very small and powerful, while its low power consumption makes it cheap to run. Despite this and the three-year warranty, we expected the most expensive PC in this test to offer a little more to set it apart from the rest of the group.