Mesh Elite Voyager CS review

Mesh’s Elite Voyager CS edition is about as compact as desktop PCs come. It has a smaller footprint than most tower cases so can easily be tucked away on a desk or near a TV, depending on how you plan on using it. It also has built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which is a handy addition for those with slightly awkward home networks.  It’s also pretty short at just 290mm high so the top will be in easy reach if you store paperwork, coffee cups and desk toys on it

The Corsair Obsidian 250D is an expensive case and, while it looks great from the outside, it doesn’t lend itself to particularly tidy PC builds. This is a shame, because there’s a window on the top of the case that allows you to look at the handiwork of the PC builder, but because of a lack of cable gutters and vanity panels, all the cables used in the build are visible and look a bit messy.

The front of the case has two USB3 ports although, slightly annoyingly, they’re mounted upside down. At the rear, the motherboard has four more USB3 ports and a further two USB connectors alongside six 3.5mm audio connectors, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, the aforementioned wireless receivers and an S/PDIF audio connector. There are also three video output ports with DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort all represented.

While it’s not the quietest PC we’ve tested, it’s not particularly noisy and things don’t ramp up at all even when the PC is under load. Handling your processing demands is dual-core 3.6GHz Intel Core i3-4160 processor paired with 8GB of 1866MHz DDR3 RAM. It performed admirably in our benchmarking tests, with a score of 91 in the image-editing test hinting at nippy single-core performance in basic tasks. Scores of 61 and 48 in the video processing and multitasking tests respectively are pleasing, too, although we can’t help but feel that perhaps cheap quad-core chip from AMD could have lead to better overall performance

We had performance issues brought on by the pre-installed BullGuard Security suite. Until we uninstalled it, our review PC was a bit stuttery but, more irritatingly, constantly hamstrung but software that is laughably overzealous in which programs it blocks from accessing the internet. For example, it asked us whether we wanted Internet Explorer to be allowed to access the network – twice. Aside from this, Mesh hasn’t installed any other bloatware on the PC.

There’s no dedicated graphics card in the Mesh Elite Voyager CS so you’re limited to basic productivity and media tasks. If you have no interest in gaming this probably won’t affect you, but for the sake of completeness we ran our graphics benchmarks anyway. Unsurprisingly, the processor’s onboard Intel HD Graphics 4400 failed our Dirt Showdown test and produced a slideshow 4fps in the Metro: Last Light test.

Adding extra hardware to the Elite Voyager is possible, although you’ll have to remove several case panels to gain access to the components you want. If you want to replace the 120GB Patriot Blaze SSD or the 1TB Seagate hard disk or add an extra disk of your own (there’s one free bay and one free SATA3 port) you’ll need to remove a panel at the rear, the left side panel and the panel on the top of the chassis. If you want to add a dedicated graphics card there’s room for one in the PCI-E x16 slot on the MSI Z97I AC motherboard, too. There are no other PCI or PCI-E slots on the board, so any extras you want to add will need to be USB-compatible. Both RAM slots are filled, too, so you’ll need to buy two 8GB sticks if you want to reach 16GB of memory at a later date.

Unusually, Mesh has bundled a 22in BenQ GW2255 Full HD monitor that has a VA (vertical alignment) panel instead of TN or IPS. The advantage of this technology is sky-high contrast and great viewing angles, both of which were present in our review model. Colour coverage wasn’t great with just 88% of the sRGB colour gamut covered, but the high 2,650:1 contrast levels we measured mean it’ll be great for watching movies and TV shows with dark scenes without having to bump up the brightness of the monitor.

The Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 keyboard and mouse are about what you’d expect from a budget peripherals set; their only special feature is a play/pause button and volume control. Still, they’re a good starting point for a budget PC.

Mesh’s warranty is competitive. Your cover begins with a year of collect and return cover and two years of parts cover, and labour is covered for the lifetime of the machine.

The Mesh Elite Voyager CS is a decent compact PC, but it lacks the overall power of similar machines in this price range. The lack of a quad-core processor and dedicated graphics means it’s not as fast as its competitors. The presence of 802.11ac Wi-Fi, an SSD and the well-made case are highlights, but you can get more for your money with the similarly-sized Palicomp AMD Nemesis Cube.