Braebo Mithras budget desktop computer

Editor's note: the print version of this review (issue 346, publised May 26) gave the wrong star rating for this product. The correct rating is four stars, as shown on this page. Apologies for the confusion.

The Braebo Mithras is a bit of an oddity: while most computers we look at these days come with the Windows 7 operating system pre-loaded, this one includes the almost-10-years-old Windows XP instead.

That's not necessarily a bad thing – many people prefer Windows XP – but users will miss out on the improvements offered by the newer Windows 7, some of which we'll discuss later.

You can buy the same PC with Windows 7 installed for £50 more. Although Windows XP isn't sold by Microsoft, manufacturers are allowed to continue putting it onto new computers and it will be supported for another couple of years. We recommend the Windows 7 version, but if you are happy with XP you can keep the cost down.

The computer's processor is an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, and it has 8GB of memory. Those combine to make it powerful: it sailed through our DVD test in 18 minutes, as fast as any desktop computer we have seen recently (the test replicates the real-world activity of copying a DVD for playback on a portable device, an intensive process that can take an hour or two on some computers).

That means it will handleh most computing tasks from the simple email and office work to such things as video editing. It has a CD/DVD drive that will read and create all CD and DVD formats, but not Blu-ray discs, so if you want to watch high-definition films on Blu-ray you will have to add a disc drive. Luckily there is plenty of room to do so with several drive bays free, some of which can accommodate extra hard disks to add to the 500GB of storage supplied.

Games are an exception, however. It has a Nvidia Geforce 210 graphics card with 1GB of its own memory, but that is not enough to make it play games well: it displayed recent games in a useable frame rate only after turning some detail levels down.

It will be fine with most current titles, but future ones may cause problems. Gamers will have to upgrade the graphics card, which can be done on the purchasing website or afterwards.

The version of Windows XP supplied on our test computer is the 32-bit edition, which means the computer cannot make use of anything close to the full 8GB of memory. The company says that anyone who buys the Windows 7 version will get the 64-bit edition of that operating system, which does make use of all the memory – one of the reasons we recommend the latter over Windows XP.

It also includes a 22in flat-screen monitor: our test unit was supplied with an AOC model that was very good. It has a clear and bright screen with anti-glare coating to cut down on reflection from light sources. The supplied wired keyboard and mouse were perfectly adequate.

The graphics card has connections for VGA and DVI monitors and a HDMI socket for attaching to a flat-screen TV, and there are six USB ports – four using the USB 2 standard and two in the newer, faster USB 3.

The PC also has standard and optical surround-sound audio connections and an eSata socket for attaching external storage devices. And it comes with a small, poor-quality pair of rather pointless speakers. The computer's all-metal case does the job well, but it won't win any design awards, and the front panel came off too easily when we lifted it, though it slipped back on easily too.

This is an impressive computer at this price, but we recommend paying the extra £50 to get Windows 7.