CyberPower Ultra Triton review

CyberPower's Ultra Triton is certainly an eye-catching desktop computer with its imposing black tower case, lit from the inside gently by the blue LED lights of the cooling fans. With a 22in Full HD monitor included, this is one PC that looks more expensive than it is.

Fortunately, things are as good on the inside. The 2.8GHz quad-core AMD Phenom II X4 925 processor and 4GB of RAM are a potent combination, scoring 102 overall in our benchmarks. This shows that the Ultra Triton can handle any application. Should you want a bit more headroom for more complicated tasks, the motherboard can handle up to 8GB of RAM, although you'll need to dispose of some of the existing modules as both of the motherboard's memory slots are filled.

As is to be expected at this price, there's no dedicated graphics card, and the onboard AMD 760G graphics chip isn't up to playing games. It is capable of decoding HD video should you want to watch movies, though. There's a free PCI-E x16 slot should you want to add a dedicated graphics card later.

This would seem to be a good choice for this computer thanks to the 22in AOC Full HD monitor. Although it looks striking with a flash modern design, it's a rather basic model with a VGA injput only. Image quality wasn't up to scratch and we found colours were over-saturated and not very accurate, while contrast was a little dull.

Instead of separate buttons for the menu and navigation, the monitor has a single button surrounded by a ring that acts as a four-way pad. It's also the power button, so if you press too hard you turn the monitor off. The menu system uses colourful but unclear icons for each section, but no matter how much we tweaked the various options, we were unable to produce a bright, natural image.

There's plenty of storage space thanks to the 500GB hard disk, and with eight free USB slots and an eSATA port you can easily add more or other peripherals. If you're a bit more adventurous and don't mind messing around on the inside of a computer, you'll find that there's plenty of upgrade potential and lots of room to work. There's plenty of room for more hard disks or optical drives, as well as four free SATA ports. With two PCI and one PCI-E x1 slot, there's lots of room for adding expansion cards, too.

Cyberpower has chosen to ship the Ultra Triton with a PS/2 Logitech keyboard and mouse set, which are no different to their USB equivalents and mean that you save two USB ports. They're comfortable enough to use and a very respectable choice for a budget PC.

It's good to see a 22in monitor with a £500 PC, but in this case the monitor doesn't do the system justice and we'd have preferred a smaller one with better image quality. That said, if you already have a monitor and only want base unit you can buy the Ultra Triton without its display for just £392. This makes it great value, particularly considering the three-year warranty, if you don't want the display. For people looking for a full system, the Mesh Nero Pro has comparable performance and comes with a decent 23in Full HD monitor for the same price. It's the better choice.