Medion Akoya P36888 review

Designing a PC starts with setting your priorities, and the Akoya has been assembled with digital media in mind.

So a portion of its price has been spent on a Blu-ray drive, which plays HD movie discs and can also read and write DVDs. It’s also the only machine in this group with a quad core processor, Intel’s 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Q6600, which will help ensure HD video decodes smoothly. And Medion has thrown in an extra large hard drive: its 1TB (1000GB) capacity provides plenty of space for your movie and music collection. Another way to fill it up is to record TV programmes received via your aerial using the included hybrid TV card, which supports both Freeview digital broadcasts (DVB-T) and analogue terrestrial stations.

All this makes the Akoya a good choice for media fans. However, we wouldn’t recommend it if your leisure activities include PC games. Beside other mid-range graphics cards, the nVidia GeForce 9300GS is a weak performer, only managing 12.3 frames per second in our Call of Duty 2 benchmark. That’s not enough to be playable, though you might get by with less demanding titles if you slash the graphics quality settings. Nor is a monitor included in the ?500 price; the Akoya’s DVI port will connect to a flat panel monitor, or to an HDTV with an HDMI converter.

Since the Akoya is the kind of machine that might work well in the living room, Medion have built it in an attractive low profile case, albeit one that’s quite plasticky on closer inspection. Beneath its glossy black finish, the audio, USB and FireWire ports and the memory card reader are hidden by a sliding door. This feels like a tacky addition, and can be tricky to close properly. Inside the case, there’s little room for expansion: both memory slots are used up by the installed 3GB of RAM, and only one PCI-E slot is free for other add-ons.

The Akoya P36888 is a fine media machine, but the lack of a monitor and poor games performance mean it’s not exceptional value.