Dell Dimension 9150 review

One thing you won't be able to help but admire is the Dell's gorgeous 17in TFT monitor. It's one of Dell's own branded models, namely the catchily named E1761PF. It only has an analogue VGA connector at its rear, rather than the preferable digital DVI socket, but this didn't prevent it from providing sterling picture quality in our tests. Photographs were impressively reproduced with bright vibrant colours and plenty of detail even in really dark parts of the picture. Fast-moving scenes from DVD movies and a spot of Call of Duty 2 was no problem for the Dimension's screen either, as it only showed the slightest evidence of ghosting when things got really hectic. We did notice a hint of graininess when we looked really hard, but this wasn't a serious fault when set against the monitors numerous plus points. The screen also felt substantially more sturdy than the uniformly plasticky models provided with the other PCs in this test.

Game for a laugh

The PC from Q Multimedia by LG was the only other contender that managed to provide a dual-core processor for the money and while it managed to supply a faster 3GHz model, it had to settle for 512MB RAM and onboard graphics. There are no such nasty compromises in the Dimension. The graphics card is a powerful nVidia GeForce 6800 model with 256MB of dedicated memory. The GeForce 6800 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but it's still a great performer. Our Call of Duty 2 benchmark is enough to intimidate even fairly hefty graphics cards and the Dell did well to muscle its way to a score of 49%. That may not sound particularly impressive, but when you consider that our reference card is a GeForce 7800GT that costs over £200 - that's a third of the value of this entire PC - then the Dell's performance is exemplary.

All the trimmings

As if great performance in our benchmarks and a quality monitor weren't already enough, Dell has thrown in some good peripherals too. The speakers are a 2.1 set and despite slim satellites and a tiny subwoofer, they reached impressive volumes before starting to sound stressed. Everything we played through them sounded crisp and clear, and vocals were particularly well reproduced for a budget set. The keyboard was also good quality and one of the best on test. It provided a lovely positive key action and some handy shortcut buttons for pausing music tracks and changing the volume without having to use the mouse.

The Dell Dimension 9150 is one of the best value PCs we have ever seen in Computer Buyer. Its specification and build-quality are such that it would have severely challenged the PCs in our £799 dual-core group test a couple of months ago, but at £599 it offers a truly mind-boggling level of performance.

If you're looking for a desktop PC that's good-looking, supremely well-built and has impressive performance across the board, then you'll be delighted with the Dimension 9150. Well you'll be happy with everything bar one tiny detail, the mouse. It seems churlish to complain, but ball-mice are horrid things at best and we'd send this one back to Dell in an instant. As for the rest of the PC, well we're not going to give that up so easily.