Dino PC Mini Carnivore

The Dino PC Mini Carnivore is a home entertainment computer designed to look like a piece of hi-fi equipment.

It’s small enough to fit under a television, for watching films and playing games on a big screen, but it can also be used as an office computer that takes up little desk space. It doesn’t include a monitor, keyboard or mouse, so you will need to add those if necessary.

For its size, the Carnivore is astonishingly powerful. It has 4GB of memory, a fast Intel Core i3 530 processor, and an ATI Radeon 5570 graphics card, which ran games very well, though for recent titles you will need to turn the quality settings down a bit.

It also has a 320GB hard disk, and is even compatible with the latest USB 3 standard for fast file transfers, although there are currently few external hard disks on sale that can operate that fast.

It’s impossible not to compare the Mini Carnivore with Apple’s similar Mac Mini (see below), but the Carnivore is a lot more powerful and £100 cheaper, although it does not have the Mini’s stylish design.

The Mac Mini, especially the very latest model, is far smaller and made of aluminium, while the Carnivore is housed in a plastic-fronted case painted to look like metal. It's not ugly, but it does look as though design quality has been sacrificed to cut costs.

For example, the DVD drive is covered with a thin and flimsy piece of plastic that bent when pressed. The plastic face also obscures the eject button meaning there is no way to manually eject a disc other than using the menu in Windows.

A plastic stand is included so the Carnivore can be stood on its side, but doing so obscures one of the side vents, which are critical for keeping the computer cool. So we preferred to let the device remain in a horizontal position.

It is relatively quiet in use, which is great if you are watching films and don’t want to be interrupted by fan noise during the quiet bits.

There are lots of sockets at the front and back. Sound input and output, eSata (for attaching external hard disks) and two USB ports are built into the front, while at the rear there is another eSata connector, network socket, six more USB sockets, two HDMI, two DVI and a VGA connector, so you should have no problem connecting it to any display. It also has standard surround-sound and digital-audio sockets.

The Mac Mini can connect to wireless networks itself, but the Carnivore comes with a separate wireless adaptor in the box, which has to be plugged into one of the USB ports. It is an irritation and does not support the fastest 802.11n wireless standard.

Given the choice we would have preferred to sacrifice the USB 3 connection in favour of a fast wireless adapter. The hard disk is also small by modern standards, at 320GB, for a computer that is designed to be used for music and video.

Despite those niggles, however, the Dino PC Mini Carnivore is a powerful and impressive computer that will work well for most home users.

Unless you plan on using your computer for heavy-duty tasks there is little need in a small computer for more than what is offered here.