Review: PC Specialist Trident s500

The Trident s500 is certainly one of the better-looking PCs in this group. The perforated metallic grille on the front panel is neater and more robust than that used by many rivals.
There’s a convenient set of connectors on the front of the PC, including USB ports and audio connectors, so that you can quickly plug in devices such as a webcam or a set of headphones.

There’s also a media card reader so that you can plug in a memory card from a digital camera and quickly transfer photos onto the PC, and even a good old-fashioned floppy disk drive. They’re almost obsolete these days, but might come in handy if you’re upgrading from an older PC and need to transfer some files onto the new PC. Finally, there’s a built-in network socket that will allow you to connect to a network or broadband internet connection.

It’s a shame that PC Specialist didn’t bother to include some sort of manual to help first-time users get started. There’s a couple of little booklets with technical details about the internal components, but nothing that guides you through the initial steps of actually plugging the machine in and turning it on for the first time. Fortunately, all the connectors for components such as the keyboard, mouse and monitor are clearly labelled.

Once that’s done the Trident performs pretty well, and should be suitable for a variety of different tasks. It’s more than powerful enough to handle word processing and spreadsheet work, and even complex video editing or digital photography.

The inclusion of a full gigabyte of memory will help here too, as it will improve performance when working with large audio or video files. Its 3D graphics performance isn’t the best in this group but it can still cope with 3D graphics and games quite well.

There are a couple of minor weaknesses. The Trident doesn’t have a Firewire port that would allow you to plug in a DV camcorder. The 80GB hard disk is also quite modest, and could quickly fill up if you’ve got a large library of video clips or music files. That’s a shame, as the Trident’s processor is more than powerful enough to cope with video-editing work.

This article is part of a group test of budget desktop PCs.
Others are:
Watford Performa 3500+RV
PC Nextday Zoostorm 1-3301 Versatile PC
Mesh D820 Value+
Evesham Axis STR Plus
Ambros Shuttle SS31T
The table can be read via our pdf download