PC Nextday Zoostorm 3377-4400 review

While PC and component prices are always dropping, we didn’t expect to see a decent dedicated graphics card in a PCs costing this little. If gaming is high on your list of priorities, the Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 card should put the Zoostorm on your shortlist.

It managed a playable 29.4fps in our demanding Crysis benchmark, and blitzed the low-detail Dirt 3 test with over 80fps. Most PCs at this price can’t manage 20fps.

The only problem is that the cost of the card has led to obvious compromises elsewhere. The most obvious is the monitor; we’d expect a 22in as a minimum, but it’s possible to get a decent 24in display at this price. By contrast, the AOC 936swa is a 19in model with a solitary analogue VGA input and a 1,366×768 resolution. It has a dull and uneven backlight but although contrast suffered, colours were reasonably vibrant and images were sharp.

Another major compromise is the processor. We’d expect to see a processor from the latest ranges in any new PC, but the Zoostorm is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad 8400, a processor that’s two years – and two generations – old. It may have four cores and come with a generous 8GB of RAM, but its overall score of 66 in our benchmarks is poor.