Polywell Mini-Box 939AX-3200

Photograph by Rick Rizner

At $1350, the Polywell Mini-Box 939AX-3200 is a modestly priced addition to Polywell's existing line of compact PCs. With its small footprint--the unit takes up the space of two stacked shoe boxes--and unique styling, the glossy-looking, black-hued Mini-Box would at home in a living room. And that would be the ideal place for it, thanks to its inclusion of the Windows XP Media Center operating system, which allows you to access live TV, movies, photos, and music.

The front houses a DVD-RW drive, a media card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, and basic sound jacks. The back has standard ports and additional USB and FireWire ports. The version we tested included an NVidia television tuner card to go along with the Media Center OS. The PC also comes with a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse, an IR receiver with a Media Center remote control, and an FM radio antenna.

Using a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 3200+ CPU and 1024MB of DDR2-533 SDRAM, the Mini-Box 939AX-3200 turned in a score of 85 in our WorldBench 5 tests. We haven't reviewed any other similarly configured system, but an Alienware PC using a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 3500+ CPU and 512MB of RAM earned a 92, a far better score. With integrated ATI Radeon Xpress X200 graphics using main memory, the Mini-Box managed 44 frames per second in Return to Castle Wolfenstein at 1024 by 768 resolution--not the best performance we've seen. Fortunately, there's a PCI Express x16 slot should you want to add a graphics card.

The 17-inch Hyundai L70S LCD produced easily readable text at 1280 by 1024 resolution. However, colors on our test DVD didn't look as robust as they did in our test photo of kids, where we saw nice flesh tones and bright hues. The Creative Inspire T5400 speakers produced rich, deep sound.

Installing or removing components from the Mini-Box is difficult, but that's to be expected with a compact design. The top of the case slides off easily once you remove a thumbscrew. A drive housing that covers the guts of the system can be pulled up and out, revealing the motherboard and allowing access to expansion and memory slots.

The 939AX-3200's compact case and average performance won't woo gamers and power users, but it will definitely appeal to people who like the stylish design and who seek a small multimedia system.

Photograph by Rick Rizner, John Goddard

Photograph by Rick Rizner

Photograph by Rick Rizner