ASUS Eee Box

Asus has performed a minor miracle in the laptop market with its Eee PC, so it stands to reason that it would try the same trick in the desktop arena. The Eee Box is tiny, attractive, requires little power to run, and most importantly it costs just £199

Design; quiet operation; price

Lacklustre performance; small hard drive; can't play 1080p Full HD video

The Eee Box is rather a mixed bag. It's not powerful enough to challenge the vast majority of desktops on the market and, as a Media Center PC, it's only mediocre. Despite this, we think it's worthy of consideration -- particularly because

Small design may have some aesthetic appeal Integrated Draft-N Wi-Fi Pre-Windows ExpressGate OS lets you browse and do other basics seconds after turning on the power

Small design may have some aesthetic appeal Integrated Draft-N Wi-Fi Pre-Windows ExpressGate OS lets you browse and do other basics seconds after turning on the power

Terrible performance and features compared with standard budget desktops A cheap notebook will offer similar capability, space savings and portability

Despite a few useful features, the ASUS Eee Box is a novelty at best. It can't come close to the performance and robustness of even the most basic standard budget PC, while a low-end notebook can do everything it can do and more. The appeal of the Eee PC

The Asus Eee Box is a well-designed, ultrasmall desktop PC that is adequate for basic computing - but don't expect much in the way of performance.

The Asus Eee Box is a great value PC that's geared toward students, as well as home and small-office users. That the system comes with Windows XP Home, Microsoft Works, and Sun StarOffice only sweetens the deal.