Gateway 610XL Review

With just two cables and one remote, you'll gain a PC, LCD TV, Personal Video Recorder, DVD player, FM Tuner, MP3 player and stereo in one compact system.

Summary

Conclusion

Gateway’s 610XL Media Center PC in a way sets a new standard. It shows that you do not have to sacrifice power or connectivity when creating a small form factor PC. We love the fact that the 610XL simply works as designed and looks great while doing so.

Perfect for the kitchen or the office, the 610XL plays multiple roles. It can either be a stereo system or television while eating your breakfast, or the family PC used to do taxes, editing home movies or playing games. The intermittent WiFi issues we had seem to be fixed by Gateway via a driver update and even still could be related exclusively to our network setup so this is nothing that seriously hurt the 610XL.

If you have been in the market for a system of this type, instead of choosing between an Apple iMac or Sony’s W-series systems, we recommend taking a look at the 610XL first.

Introduction

When it comes to Media Center and Home Theater PC’s, there are several ways to build them. The first way is to integrate the PC with your home theater system; put it into a receiver-like case and slide it into your audio video rack. Or you could opt to integrate the home theater experience into the PC itself while making the system as streamlined as possible. Gateway offers two computers which target both of these types of integrations. The 901X Media Center PC looks like a home theater receiver but packs a powerful computer inside, and the 610X Media Center PC which looks like a sleek lifestyle computer but packs home theater functions into the system.

In this review we look at the Gateway 610X Media Center PC priced at $1999.99 and purchased directly from Gateway.

Design and Features

Physically the Gateway 610X Media Center PC is one of the smallest desktop computers in the consumer market. Its physical prowess falls in the same category as the Apple iMac and Sony VAIO W series of home computers. It features an all-in-one design with every aspect of a full-fledged desktop computer integrated into the system, including speakers and a sub-woofer. Now if you think that is nothing special, consider what the 610X packs beneath the hood. With a 3GHz Intel P4 w/Hyper Threading CPU, 512MB of memory and a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card, the 610XL has the horsepower to stomp many of the desktop systems out there.

But of course we all know it takes more than a good video card and a processor to make a legitimate Media Center PC. So Gateway decided to add a 17″ wide-screen LCD display, a DVD writer, 802.11g wireless networking, an FM radio tuner, integrated speakers and a subwoofer.  Gateway chose Microsoft’s Media Center operating system to tie everything together.

Performance

When it comes to speed and power, the 610XL has the heart of a desktop and the soul of a laptop. In every benchmark we ran, the 610XL simply blew the socks off of the competition in our tests when compared to the smaller all-in-one PC’s. The 610XL also posted scores that bested Gateway’s own desktop Media Center PC, and while the video card in the 610XL might not be the best for some of the intense 3D games out there, it certainly is fine for most software programs.

Gateway 610XL
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 3GHz Intel P4 w/Hyper Threading; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; Integrated ATI RADEON 9200 AGP graphics with 128MB; 200GB Ultra ATA100 7200rpm hard drive

Gateway Media Center XL

Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.66GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440G 128MB; Seagate 80GB7,200rpm

Sony VAIO PCV-W20

Windows XP Home Edition; 1.8GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; SiS integrated 32MB graphics; Samsung Spin Point SV0602H 60GB ATA 100 5400 RPM HDD