Mesh Elite 2180 Review
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Mesh Elite 2180 (2 out of 5)

When it comes to going back to school, just about every student needs a good, solid desktop for school work. So, parents are trying to find the best computer for their money, yet still get a good quality computer that will serve their child well. Most parents assume that they will have to spend a pretty large amount of cash to get their child the computer that they need for school work, and some actually go a bit overboard with the selection when they don’t really need to. The question that they really need to be thinking about is if they can drop their price for a computer without compromising the quality of the system that they are purchasing. Well, without compromising too much, the Mesh Elite IQ 2180 is a great all-around system that any student can use for school.

Of course, there will be a few compromises that you will have to deal with. The Elite IQ comes standard with a Intel Pentium Dual Core instead of a Core 2, but this is a compromise that a student computer can deal with. It does run at 2GHz, but you only get one megabyte of L2 cache with the system, which is usually 2MB with a Core 2 processor. When it comes to the RAM, this little computer offers a ton – a whopping 4GB, and you get a 250GB hard drive as well. This makes up for the lack in some other areas that we just mentioned. There is more than enough here to web surf, work, store and edit photos, and more – anything that a student could need.

Now, when it comes to the graphics on the Mesh Elite 2180, they aren’t really that great, which is yet another compromise. The graphics card here is the Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS, which is one of the lowest end cards that Nvidia has and is more for video decoding than for gaming, so for those students out there who are avid gamers – this is not a computer that will let you run those mega games (such as World of Warcraft). You will more likely be stuck with older games that you probably aren’t into playing. The low price of course also kicks out some of the extra perks that other systems come with – like speakers or any other extras, for example the mouse and keyboard are just standard spec. And, the monitor that comes with the Mesh Elite 2180 is nothing to really be desired either. It is a standard 1,440 x 900 resolution and the image quality on it is less than desirable. The details are blurry and the colors seem to melt together in areas, and completely change in others.

There is also no real room for upgrades either. There is no room for any other RAM sticks, and the graphics card takes up the only PCI Express slot available on the system. You can really only up the system by replacing parts instead of trying to augment or add to them. So, this computer is by no means meant to be a gaming rig, or a super computer. But, for those students that really just want to work… yeah, right!… this system has more than enough to surf the web and get some work done with basic office software. This computer is also good for younger students, where all that is really needed is the Internet and no major power or gaming is involved.

So for those on a smaller back-to-school budget, the Mesh Elite 2180 is a good choice if power is not the thing that you are after. Overall, though, I have to give it a 2 star rating. The only thing keeping it from a 1 in my book is the amount of memory that is available for such a small system.

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