The eMachines T6420 Media Center PC should work well as a value PC for home or office, and it provides a solid foundation on which you can build a full-featured system in the future. The T6420 comes with some extras that don't always show up on an $800 (as of January 17, 2006) PC, including a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 3400+ processor, 1GB of DDR400 SDRAM, and a 200GB hard drive. Still--despite its name and the Windows XP Media Center OS it runs--the T6420 lacks digital audio and video ports, making it a general-use system, not the star attraction of your living room.
The T6420's respectable but unspectacular score of 90 on our WorldBench 5 test suite suffers by comparison to the mark of 98 posted by the only other Athlon 64 3400+ system we've tested, Polywell's Poly 916NF4-SLI. Even so, the T6420 is fast enough to perform any routine home or home-office task with ease.
The T6420 is not a good choice for the latest, most demanding games. Because the system's integrated nVidia GeForce 6100 graphics rely on system RAM, its frame rate scores on our gaming tests were mediocre. Its score of 52 on our Unreal Tournament test at 1024 by 768 with 16-bit color, for example, was the third lowest we've seen. It did, however, support fluid game play at the same resolution on the older Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
The eMachines E17T4 17-inch LCD display ($270 extra) displayed 6.8-point text with above-average clarity.
Definitely a bare-bones Media Center system, the T6420 doesn't supply the TV tuner or the remote control seen on virtually all high-end Media Center PCs, and it comes with only one optical drive--a dual-layer, 8X DVD+/-RW drive. The system also comes up short on common multimedia connectors: A VGA port is the only option for video-out. The system lacks digital DVI, analog component, and S-video ports. The three analog audio jacks at the back of the case do support 5.1 surround sound, but you'll find none of the S/PDIF digital audio ports included on many Media Center PCs.
Fortunately, hardware upgrades can overcome many of the T6420's limitations. The interior of the PC is exceptionally roomy for a minitower case, and though a few cables do slightly impede access to the two free RAM slots, you can generally reach the expansion slots and drive bays without hindrance. Adding a graphics card to the open PCI Express X16 slot would improve graphics performance, and you can add a TV tuner or sound card to the one free PCI slot (on our test unit, a second PCI slot held a modem). If 200GB isn't enough storage, you can supplement the original hard drive with a second one. And an open external 5.25-inch drive bay accepts a second optical drive.
The back of the T6420's silver-and-black minitower case holds five USB 2.0 ports, an ethernet port, headphone and microphone jacks, and an eight-in-one media card reader. The system includes a basic mouse and a surprisingly nice keyboard with a solid feel, good key action, intelligently arranged multimedia control keys, and lots of programmable function keys.
The affordable eMachines T6420 Media Center PC delivers decent performance for the price--and budget-conscious users with an eye to the future will appreciate its upgradability.
Kirk Steers
