Product Reviews

Medion is well known for aggressive pricing, but even we were shocked by the specification of the company's latest PC, the Akoya P6888. Although it costs just £500 including VAT, it comes with a quad-core processor, a 1TB hard disk and a Blu-ray drive. However, as you can see, it doesn't come with a monitor.

Blu-ray movie playback worked fine using the supplied PowerDVD 7 software. To appreciate Blu-ray movies fully, you'll need a high-resolution monitor. Currently, HannsG's HG281DP is a good match. Alternatively, you could connect the PC to an HD TV.

The P6888's hybrid TV tuner works with Windows Media Center, and the 1TB hard disk gives you plenty of storage space to record programmes. However, you may wish to add a second tuner via USB, enabling you to record one programme while watching another. A Media Center remote is supplied, and this also works with PowerDVD, so you can use it for watching Blu-ray movies.

Another

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reason for the low price is that no speakers are included. You can connect a surround-sound speaker system to the 7.1 analogue audio outputs. Disappointingly, there are no S/PDIF outputs. The graphics card doesn't support audio via an HDMI adaptor, either.

A sliding panel on the front of the case hides numerous useful ports. There are S-video and composite video inputs for importing footage from sources such as VCRs. Beside these are two FireWire ports, for connecting DV cameras or hard disks. There's also a memory card reader, which accepts all the common formats, and two of the PC's six USB ports.

The Akoya is well-equipped to handle demanding tasks such as video editing thanks to its Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor and 3GB of RAM. It sped through our demanding benchmarks suite, and made remarkably little noise while doing so.

The P6888's GeForce 9300GS graphics card isn't great for games. Even lowering the resolution to 1,024x768 and disabling anti-aliasing, it managed only 13.1fps in Call of Duty 4. Upgrading the card may cause overheating, as there's only a single case fan fitted, and no mounting points for adding additional ones.

Some other compromises have been made to keep the price low. The spongy keyboard is uncomfortable to type on, and the ball mouse is frustratingly inaccurate. We'd recommend replacing them, unless you plan to use the remote most of the time.

Medion's P6888 is a very well-equipped PC, and is a bargain if you're not particularly interested in playing the latest 3D games.