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We've been fans of Gateway's $500 to $600 SX line of slim tower PCs, but HP's fixed-configuration, $750 Pavilion Slimline s5660f makes a strong showing as a higher-end living-room-friendly desktop. Bulging with digital media features, the Slimline s5660f was clearly conceived with home entertainment in mind. It's also no performance slouch, thanks to its fast quad-core AMD CPU. At $750, this system costs more than dedicated media boxes, or even Nettops that can provide similar Web video-streaming capabilities. But with a Blu-ray drive, a TV tuner, a dedicated budget 3D card, and fast performance, the Slimline s5660f is impressively well-rounded, and easy to recommend to those trying to inject the freedom and breadth of PC-based media into their home entertainment setup.
HP's Slimline chassis has been around for a few years, but this is the first model we've seen in a while that fully makes use of the chassis' size advantages by including an HDMI port. Though it is certainly larger than either Apple's Mac Mini or Dell's Inspiron Zino HD, two competing systems, the 12-inch high, 4.75-inch wide, 16-inch deep Slimline isn't that much larger than the original editions of the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360. It's also just an inch taller than the Gateway SX2850-33.
| HP Pavilion Slimline S5660f | Gateway SX2850-03 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $759 | $549 |
| CPU | 2.9GHz AMD Phenom II X4 840T | 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 550 |
| Memory | 6GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 4GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM |
| Graphics | 512MB ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card | 64MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 HD integrated graphics chip |
| Hard drives | 1TB, 7,200rpm | 640GB, 7,200rpm |
| Optical drive | Blu-ray/DVD burner combo | dual-layer DVD burner |
| Networking | Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n | Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) |
Gateway's SX2800 series provides the most apt comparison with the Pavilion Slimline. Unlike the Slimline, though, the available Gateway configurations don't go higher than $649. That means the SX2800 doesn't offer Blu-ray drives or a discrete graphics card like the Slimline. Specific to these two models, the HP also boasts a larger hard drive, more RAM, and a TV tuner card to let you pull in live TV from a compatible input cable. From a value standpoint, both systems offer a reasonable amount of hardware for their price. By virtue of its higher price tag, the HP provides a more complete living-room experience.
The comparison with the Gateway is most appropriate for the HP Slimline s5660f. You can argue that the Dell and Apple systems are better suited to the living room for their size, but you also have to pay a premium for that smaller footprint. The smaller cases also don't allow for full-size desktop processors and full-power discrete graphics cards like you get in a slim tower. Which one is better depends on your priorities, and if you favor looks and out-of-the-way storage, you might lean toward the smaller systems. For our money, the extra size of the slim tower PCs is worth accepting given the features and the performance edge over the smaller desktops.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Rendering multiple CPUs | |
Rendering single CPU |
The differences between the HP, the Gateway SX2850-33, the Mac Mini, and the Inspiron Zino HD are more or less obvious on our performance charts. We included the Gateway DX4840-03e, a standard midtower desktop, to provide a baseline. The Mac Mini fares better than the Dell system, but both eventually hit a performance drop-off, depending on the test. The HP and the Gateway are far more consistent. Of those two, the Gateway posted a better score on iTunes file conversion, which is mostly a test of single-core processor speed, but the HP wasn't that far behind, and it also enjoyed faster multitasking and multithreaded application performance.
The HP does well because of its fast, native quad-core AMD Phenom II X4 chip. You certainly don't need all the multimedia extras in the HP if all you want is standard computing performance, but we appreciate that the Slimline has solid performance for when you want to convert media between file types, play games, or run multiple programs at once.
If you've seen our reviews of recent Slimlines, you'll know we haven't looked favorably on them. That's mostly because the past few review units have been low-cost, fixed-configuration models that lacked any appeal for living-room computing. The biggest offense was leaving off the HDMI port, which never made sense to us, considering the Gateway SX systems, also found in retail in the same price range, do include HDMI. You can still find those dated Slimlines at Best Buy and elsewhere, and we encourage you to avoid them because they don't take advantage of the slim tower design.
