Review: Watford Performa 3500+RV

Watford’s Performa 3500+RV throws down the gauntlet and shows few of the signs of cost cutting evident in most of its rivals.

The Performa is based on a single-core 2.2GHz Athlon64, which has scored highly in all our performance tests. More demanding users might prefer the dual-core Pentium D, used by rivals such as the PC Nextday Zoostorm, but the Athlon64 still provides plenty of raw horsepower for everyday multimedia tasks.

Watford has also included a good graphics card – a Radeon X1600 Pro that walks away with the top honours in our 3D graphics tests. It’s the obvious choice for games fans, scoring more that 52fps in our Far Cry test, with only the Zoostorm coming close in terms of all-round performance.

The 250GB hard disk provides all the storage you’re likely to need – which is just as well, since the clutter of cables inside the chassis means there’s not much room to install any additional drives.

The biggest surprise is the inclusion of a 19in TFT monitor, which seems almost too good to be true. Admittedly, it’s a budget model from Hannstar (Watford’s Savastore sells it separately for about £120), but we can’t complain about the image quality. Throw in a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a proper set of 2.1 stereo speakers and you have an impressive low-cost PC system.

The only disappointing omission – common to several of the PCs here – is the lack of a Firewire port. That’s not too much of a problem, although the inclusion of a non-functional Firewire port on the front of our review sample machine was annoying and needs to be blanked off in shipping models.

The Performa’s combination of all-round performance and features make for an impressive low-cost PC that will meet the needs of most home users.

This article is part of a group test of bargain PCs.
Other articles are:
Ambros Shuttle SS31T
Evesham Axis STR Plus
Mesh D820 Value +
PC Nextday Zoostorm 1-3301 Versatile PC
PC Specialist Trident s500
Is the desktop PC dead?
Graphs and table of features can be read via our Pdf downloads.