Reviews / Meivo - Stuff
» Stuff says 4/5

At first glance, you could mistake the Meivo for Sony’s Vaio LA2 – the polycarbonate acrylic enclosure and ‘floating’ LEDs are very similar. But while the Meivo is a special machine in its own right, it doesn’t carry a brand with such cachet. This, we think, plays to its advantage: look beyond the branding and you’re left with an impressive all-in-one system.

The contemporary 22in flatpanel design certainly has chic appeal. Mounts on its back mean that it can be stuck on a wall, though desktop use is also entirely plausible. But the real draw is that it’s a good-value computer, offering similar potency to the Sony without the vast price tag. As with most of the PCs in this test, gaming is not the Meivo’s forte. It plays standard-def movies and 720p MP4s like a pro, but there’s no HD-DVD or Blue-ray drive, and the 22in display might not be large enough to shoulder the burden of an everyday entertainment system.

Also, the 250GB hard-drive is a tad too small for serious media use, so you’ll be baying for another to attach to the eSATA port. As a second-room TV and PC, however, it shines, with a built-in-digital TV tuner and Media Center PVR functionality. With the iMacs’s storage and a sprinkling of Sony’s class, the Rock could be a winner.

You’re so transparent – Rock can do a jaw-dropping polycarbonate acrylic enclosure and floating LEDs too, but at a lower cost than Sony. The only problem facing Rock is branding…

Visual impact – If you’re putting a computer inside a display, you’d better make sure the screen is good. Thankfully, the Meivo’s is bright and colourful and can be viewed at decent angles, making it a good choice for movie and TV viewing.

Gimme Space – What’s the point of a multimedia media centre with a storage capacity of just 250GB? It doesn’t matter if it’s a speedy 7200rpm SATA hard drive – video junkies and gamers will fill it in five minutes. But all is not lost – the chassis allows two SATA disks to be installed simultaneously, and there’s on eSATA port for connecting an external drive.

It’s all in the details

Mounting pleasure – At the rear of the Meivo is a VESA connecter, so you can mount the machine on a wall. Of course, you’ll have to further budget for a VESA mount and pay someone with a drill and those plastic wall thingies.

Input output – The Meivo has a memory-card reader and a PC Card slot, as well as a slot-loading 8x +/- Dual Layer DVD drive. Now you’ve no excuses for not backing up those precious holiday photos…

VERDICT

Stuff Says: Top marks to Rock for value – only a few finishing touches keep it from matching Sony and Apple.

Overall 4/5