Mesh Media+ Cubex64 939 MCE review

Mesh's Media+ Cubex64 uses a sleek Shuttle mini-case and will look great in a living room, but it's small enough to stash away should it clash with the curtains.

It runs Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and you can control the PC via the bundled remote. The interface is excellent and easy to set up.

The real stand-out feature of this system, however, is its striking 19" Iiyama display. It has a TV tuner integrated into the chassis, providing the screen with a TV picture without the need for a PC. It also has SCART and RGB inputs, so you can use the display directly with non-computer equipment such as video recorders and DVD players.

Although this allows you to watch TV with the PC turned off, it does seem an expensive accessory, and you can't use any of Media Center's time-shifting functions while watching TV in this way. In our opinion, it would be much better to install dual TV tuners, so you can watch one channel while you record another. This is also a much cheaper option.

Although its 25ms response time isn't ideal for an entertainment screen, the picture is otherwise excellent. A gloss coating provides a much higher contrast image than is possible with a typical anti-glare finish. This is great for watching TV or playing games, but it does make the screen reflective. Punchy speakers are bolted on either side, but you may prefer to use the supplied Creative I-Trigue 3200 stereo speakers instead. They look great and produce good-quality sound for their size.

Powered by an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor with two 256MB RAM modules in a dual-channel configuration, the Media+ Cubex64 is fast enough for home computing, as illustrated by its benchmark results. Although it's a media centre, it can handle basic gaming reasonably well, although when it comes to more intensive games such as Doom 3, the 128MB Sapphire ATi Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card struggles to keep up.

Recording TV takes up a lot of storage, so Mesh has included a whopping 300GB hard disk. Should this fill up you can always use the double-layer DVD writer to archive data. There is no modem but you can connect to broadband via the network adaptor.

Physically attractive and technically proficient, the Media+ Cubex64 939 MCE has a lot going for it. However, the LCD adds considerably to the price. This means that better standalone Media Center PCs can be found for a lot less elsewhere.