Review: Mesh Elite IQ 2180 desktop PC

Opening up a desktop PC and inspecting the internals gives a few clues as to how much care and attention has gone into the making of the machine.

It’s hard to level any criticisms relating to tidiness on the Mesh Elite IQ 2180 since there are so few wires inside ­ this also means there’s plenty of room for air circulation, so overheating isn’t a problem.

The power supply offers a modest 300W, with only a few power connectors. Still, that’s enough to power the multiformat DVD writer and the 250GB hard disk.

The other chief power-drawing components are the Intel Pentium E2180 dual-core processor, clocked at 2GHz (along with 4GB of system memory), and the Nvidia Geforce 8400GS graphics card (which has 256MB of its own memory). That makes for a middling computer.

It’s not slow by any means, but neither does it have much kick to it. It came out with a Windows Experience Index score of only 3.7 (this is dragged down by the graphics performance), while in our benchmarks it clocked up 4,882 in PCmark05 and 3,274 in 3Dmark05, neither of which will set the world alight.

All that said, though, the price of the Mesh Elite IQ 2180 is its real stand-out feature ­ at under £400 it represents excellent value for users who don’t need high-power performance but who also want a computer that will last.

The generous 4GB of memory means it’s going to be happy running multiple programs, and the processor is likewise capable, even if, for the hardcore applications such as games and video editing, the IQ 2180 will struggle.

Expansion potential is limited; there’s a single 5.25in external drive bay ­ should you wish to add a Blu-ray drive at some point in the future, for instance ­ as well as a single internal 3.5in bay for another hard disk (the 250GB included is not miserly but it’s the sort of capacity we’re starting to see regularly in notebooks).

There are only two memory slots on the cut-down size Asus P5N-MX moth erboard, both of which are taken in this configuration, but then Vista (the 32-bit edition of Vista Home Premium is supplied) can’t really do much more than that anyway, so it’s a moot point.

Again, though, the type of user who doesn’t need raw processing horsepower is the same type who won’t want to install lots of extra disks either. There is one free PCI slot (actually, there are two, but one is pretty much obscured by the overhang from the graphics card fan) and a x1 PCI Express slot.

There are a few frills. A multiformat memory card reader occupies one of the front bays, along with four USB ports and headphone and microphone sockets. On the back, in addition to the VGA and DVI sockets on the graphics card, are four more USB sockets, parallel and serial ports, keyboard and mouse ports and an Ethernet connection.

Supplied with Windows Vista Home Premium are Microsoft Works 8.5 and a video-editing suite from Cyberlink (including PowerDVD and Powerdirector), as well as a 2GB USB key and Creative webcam and headset combo.

Mesh supplied a rather unusual looking 19in Hanspree monitor with our review system; however, it advised us that the monitor may change over the coming weeks so we recommend you ask which monitor you’ll receive before parting with your cash. A Logitech keyboard and mouse completes the package.

The Mesh Elite IQ 2180 won’t set your heart racing, but at this price you wouldn’t expect it to. Instead, you get a solid PC that would suit general day-to-day usage.

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