Over the last year sound cards have got cheaper and cheaper, but this model from Pine really is reaching over and removing the entire cookie jar. Eighteen quid for a digital sound card - can you Adam and Eve it? As far as we are aware this is the cheapest sound card you can buy without going to a car boot sale and picking up some ancient full length ISA SoundBlaster card caked in an inch of dust.

The question must be, with a budget card of this nature, how much have the corners been cut and where? Well the packaging is certainly minimalist, although that really doesn't matter. The software bundle consists of a CD which has a copy of MusicMatch Jukebox on it, and that's your lot, aside from the drivers themselves.

The actual card is a fairly standard looking half-length PCI affair, powered by a Crystal CS 4614 audio processor. There are no fancy features built in, as you'd expect, just a game/midi port, line in, mic in, and line outs for both rear and front channels.

Yup, this is a four channel sound card, concentrating on what this card has rather than hasn't got for a moment, which is quite impressive for the money. It does support Sensaura 3D sound as well, which means you can get some fairly funky gaming sound out of the Pine card.

We know we've referred to the price of this card several times in this review, but it really is this card's biggest strength. This is not cheap rubbish, it's just cheap - you get more than enough value for money with decent 4-channel sound and Sensaura support, but no extra trimmings whatsoever.