The m8070 is a stylish addition to HP's Pavilion Media Center range of PCs and features a quad core processor, 2GB of memory, plenty of storage for your media files and Vista Home Premium, all housed in a distinctive and compact black case.

At the heart of the m8070 is one of Intel's Q6600 Quad Core processors clocked at 2.4GHz, backed up by Intel's P965 Express chipset and 2GB of PC2-667 (333MHz) DDR2 memory. The memory comes in two 1GB modules so there are two free DIMM slots, the motherboard supporting up to 4GB of memory in total.

With all that lot you'd think the m8070 would have plenty of grunt to perform everything you ask of it. In truth it does, but when benchmarking the m8070 you get a different answer; just 6,592 in PCMark05 and a pitiful 4.3 overall score from the Vista Benchmarking Tool.

The reason for both of these results lies in the graphics sub-system. Instead of choosing something you might expect in a system at this price point, for example the 320MB version of Nvidia's 8800GTS, HP has chosen an AMD Radeon X1650 SE with 512MB of memory to provide graphics output. This severely limits any games-playing potential of the m8070, hence the score of 4.3 for both graphics tests in the Vista Benchmark and an average frames-per-second score in F.E.A.R of just 30fps.

But back to the positives. HP supplies the m8070 with not one but two hard drives; a 250GB drive for the system files and a 320GB drive for your data files. If you want more space or need a removable device to back up your files, the m8070 has a Personal Media Drive bay in the front facia of the system that's accessed through a vertical door. This bay accepts any of the HP Personal Media Drives (currently just two drives; 300GB and 160GB) that are sold separately.

Matching this bay on the other side of the front panel is one that holds the Connectivity Centre comprising S-Video, Composite Video and three audio ports, all of which can used in conjunction with the included analogue and DVB-T TV tuner card. Below these ports are two more audio ports, two USB 2.0 ports and a single FireWire port. You also get an 8x DVD Dual Layer burner while above this sits a 15-in-1 memory card reader.

Disappointingly, the integrated Ethernet is only 10/100Mbps but this disappointment is very short-lived when you realise that the m8070 comes with built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.

To complete the hardware package sent with our review system there was a 20.1-inch HP w2007v widescreen TFT monitor (with a native resolution of 1,680 by 1.050 pixels and HP's BrightView technology), a wireless keyboard and optical mouse and a Vista Media Center remote control.

The m8070 comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and a whole bundle of useful HP utilities but you only get a 1-year pick up and return warranty.

The complete home package? Well, not quite. The choice of graphics card is a huge disappointment, especially for the amount of money you are parting with, but the rest of the system is well balanced and, graphics aside, this is a fast performer.