Mesh Elite Voyager CS review

There’s no dedicated graphics card in the Mesh Elite Voyager CS so you’re limited to basic productivity and media tasks. If you have no interest in gaming this probably won’t affect you, but for the sake of completeness we ran our graphics benchmarks anyway. Unsurprisingly, the processor’s onboard Intel HD Graphics 4400 failed our Dirt Showdown test and produced a slideshow 4fps in the Metro: Last Light test.

Adding extra hardware to the Elite Voyager is possible, although you’ll have to remove several case panels to gain access to the components you want. If you want to replace the 120GB Patriot Blaze SSD or the 1TB Seagate hard disk or add an extra disk of your own (there’s one free bay and one free SATA3 port) you’ll need to remove a panel at the rear, the left side panel and the panel on the top of the chassis. If you want to add a dedicated graphics card there’s room for one in the PCI-E x16 slot on the MSI Z97I AC motherboard, too. There are no other PCI or PCI-E slots on the board, so any extras you want to add will need to be USB-compatible. Both RAM slots are filled, too, so you’ll need to buy two 8GB sticks if you want to reach 16GB of memory at a later date.

Unusually, Mesh has bundled a 22in BenQ GW2255 Full HD monitor that has a VA (vertical alignment) panel instead of TN or IPS. The advantage of this technology is sky-high contrast and great viewing angles, both of which were present in our review model. Colour coverage wasn’t great with just 88% of the sRGB colour gamut covered, but the high 2,650:1 contrast levels we measured mean it’ll be great for watching movies and TV shows with dark scenes without having to bump up the brightness of the monitor.

The Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 keyboard and mouse are about what you’d expect from a budget peripherals set; their only special feature is a play/pause button and volume control. Still, they’re a good starting point for a budget PC.

Mesh’s warranty is competitive. Your cover begins with a year of collect and return cover and two years of parts cover, and labour is covered for the lifetime of the machine.

The Mesh Elite Voyager CS is a decent compact PC, but it lacks the overall power of similar machines in this price range. The lack of a quad-core processor and dedicated graphics means it’s not as fast as its competitors. The presence of 802.11ac Wi-Fi, an SSD and the well-made case are highlights, but you can get more for your money with the similarly-sized Palicomp AMD Nemesis Cube.