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Polywell Mini-Box2 939NP @ [H] Consumer

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Polywell Mini-Box2 939NP - Polywell's small form factor PC is inexpensive, quiet, and performs well. But does this system integrator cut too many corners or do they give you your money's worth in a plain brown wrapper?

The Mini-Box2 is a solid, no-frills computer from what appears to be a solid, no-frills manufacturer. Polywell offers a versatile and varied online configurator with two levels of options – catering to both enthusiasts and mainstream users alike. That is something we have yet to see elsewhere.
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damn was the computer really a bit above $1000? If so I think that system is a VERY good bang for buck system. It isn't maingear, but your'e not paying for one, and it's still a good system in its own right.
 
RoffleCopter said:
damn was the computer really a bit above $1000? If so I think that system is a VERY good bang for buck system. It isn't maingear, but your'e not paying for one, and it's still a good system in its own right.
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Yup, the price surprised me too.
 
Glad to see you guys are still consistent with getting defective hardware! How do you do it?
 
Another good read. Love the price, hate the hardware failure! Can't wait until you guys review a similar spec'ed HP / Compaq / mainstream desktop. Would love to see how they stack up against the boutique builders.
 
HappyJack said:
Glad to see you guys are still consistent with getting defective hardware! How do you do it?
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You got me. It's not done on purpose, I can assure you of that.
 
As always, well done. Nice priced system as well. First SFF if I'm not mistaken.
Looks like a company worth considering.
Graphics cards are afraid of you guys.

I recently built a Shuttle with almost the same configuration. Your end comments are very much correct, for about 200 dollars more you get all the support and warranty you will need. A very wise consideration.

To be honest, it doesnt seem the any corners were cut, except that there was less bling. You have reported on worse tech support and the RMA was very timely. I really expected a slightly higher grade.
 
Another great review - thanks for your consistent dedication to providing your readers with thorough and comprehensive reviews. Much appreciated!
 
lovemyPC said:
Another great review - thanks for your consistent dedication to providing your readers with thorough and comprehensive reviews. Much appreciated!
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My pleasure, thank you for your appreciation.
 
magoo said:
As always, well done. Nice priced system as well. First SFF if I'm not mistaken.
Looks like a company worth considering.
Graphics cards are afraid of you guys.

I recently built a Shuttle with almost the same configuration. Your end comments are very much correct, for about 200 dollars more you get all the support and warranty you will need. A very wise consideration.

To be honest, it doesnt seem the any corners were cut, except that there was less bling. You have reported on worse tech support and the RMA was very timely. I really expected a slightly higher grade.
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It definitely was a tough system to grade. Honestly, I think if the purchasing experience had gone a little better, along with packaging, it would have deserved an editor's choice award.
 
nice review, definitely a company i hadn't heard of but will have to keep in mind as i get less and less willing to deal with RMAs & tech support.

one small thing, you mentioned that users would need to download TweakUI to move the My Documents folder to the 2nd partition...in our copies of XP pro here at work, we can just right click on the My Documents icon on the desktop and change the path and/or select Move to do the same thing...is this not available in the copy you guys got?

thanx again for reviewing systems like these, i personally find it a big help when dealing with relatives.

-dennis
 
another good review, this is the type of OEM I am interested in. I'll give up the bells and whistles and the Johnny-on-the-spot technical support for better pricing. I want someone to give me a head start on putting together a system with the compnents I want. I'll take care of the bells and whistles myself.

Now .... on to Monarch!!
 
"Furthermore, if users wished to fill out their music, video, or pictures folders in My Documents, they would have to download TweakUI, so they could move these folders to the larger partition."
No, you don't - just right click on My Documents>Properties>Target>Move.
It's 1 of the first things that I do with any build so Polywell really should have too.
 
BUFF said:
No, you don't - just right click on My Documents>Properties>Target>Move.
It's 1 of the first things that I do with any build so Polywell really should have too.
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Good point. I don't think polywell 'should' have, but it's one of those things they 'should' have gone out of their way to make the user aware of and given clear simple instructions on how to change.

With that said I think this configuration (limited OS patrition) is a great feature.
 
BUFF said:
"Furthermore, if users wished to fill out their music, video, or pictures folders in My Documents, they would have to download TweakUI, so they could move these folders to the larger partition."
No, you don't - just right click on My Documents>Properties>Target>Move.
It's 1 of the first things that I do with any build so Polywell really should have too.
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Thanks, I've always used TweakUI, appreciate you letting me know about that!
 
I really liked the final part of the review where you priced it out on Newegg. That's the first thing I wonder about when I see a computer built entirely by off the shelf components.
I think it's important to know how much you're paying for the build, service, and support. You should add this section to all future reviews. Newegg would like it, but the OEMs might not. Then again, if you buy a $400 computer from Dell (or some other big OEM), it would probably cost more to buy the same thing from Newegg and build it yourself.
 
Thanks for the review... now onto the part that bothers me.

Assuming they are using some clone of the Q-Pack...How does the system do with a decent power supply?

General consensus and online testing have proven that the power supply that comes with that case is not very good.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/PSU/AspireXQpack/420W.html

I guess you'd get your moneys worth out of the "3 years limited components" warranty on it if they kept sending you power supplies every few months to replace the stock one.
 
They didn't use that powersupply, they used a Hi Power 300 watt. Coincidentally, almost the same model in our eMachines we bought today.
 
I'm sorry if I came across as snotty in that post, I just hate seeing these companies put somewhat substandard equipment in their products. I meant no dis-respect.

MD
 
Excellent review! Thanks, I've been waiting for this one. It seems that info on this company is hard to come by on the Web.

It looks like Polywell delivers a solid machine at a reasonable price and although there were some problems, they are covering a niche that the bigger (more expensive) boutiques and "computer factories" and missing out on.

I am glad to see that you are not too harsh when it comes to equipment failure- any company can get a bad part- that is not their fault. However, how they act after it's been reported means everything. Polywell did an admiral job replacing the video card, so that is promising.

Since this review, I will eventually be deciding between Polywell and VM for my next PC...

Now I can quit bugging Chris about the Polywell review! :p
 
kilgore777 said:
Excellent review! Thanks, I've been waiting for this one. It seems that info on this company is hard to come by on the Web.

It looks like Polywell delivers a solid machine at a reasonable price and although there were some problems, they are covering a niche that the bigger (more expensive) boutiques and "computer factories" and missing out on.

I am glad to see that you are not too harsh when it comes to equipment failure- any company can get a bad part- that is not their fault. However, how they act after it's been reported means everything. Polywell did an admiral job replacing the video card, so that is promising.

Since this review, I will eventually be deciding between Polywell and VM for my next PC...

Now I can quit bugging Chris about the Polywell review! :p
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I agree, not everyone wants that cool looking custom case, just a solid system that may not be big on bling, but on performance.
 
That's funny. I was reading the review and then i ran across the uitweak thing, and i was thinking to myself that i've moved those folders multiple times, and never used that program before.

But then like 4 people beat me to it, so nevermind.

Great review guys, keep em coming.
 
One thing that I would love to see.... someone from Polywell respond to this review like the Maingear and VM guys did....it is great to have an open line of commucication with someone in the company.
 
Chris_Morley said:
They didn't use that powersupply, they used a Hi Power 300 watt. Coincidentally, almost the same model in our eMachines we bought today.
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I'd like to add a few details for you guys to consider. We at PC Club tested that case/psu combination. The case used is an AOC not an Aspire. AOC is a China based company, they sell the same case (or get it from the same Chinese manufacturer) with 300 w psu. We have a very similar system based on the Aspire case available on the open market .

You can tell the difference between the AOC and the Aspire is lower cost and two things. The AOC comes in 2 colors, and has no top window compared to the 6 of Aspire. The design is almost identical. One reason we didn't like the AOC is because the 300 watt PSU is utterly terrible compared to the Aspire 420 watt.

Our engineering department tests and must pass every component before we put it in the store, web or our systems. The way they measure power supplies is they tape all the ducts, attach it to 250watts of load (9+ case fans, a few neon tubes and a cigarette lighter). We then attach it to a sophisticated output sensor that detects the true output voltage and registers fluctuations. We found that this particular power supply couldn't deliver (by far almost half) the voltage rated on the power supply label for the 12 v channels and wouldn't pass our 48 hour test.

I would love to see [H]Consumer have a head to head comparison of this polywell and our SFF the Enpower Media Center Xpress. It would be great to see how they shake up, similar case, though we take it in a totally different market direction. I hope I added some useful information from my experience in an unbiased way.
 
I have had extensive experience with Pollywell as a vendor for server hardware. This includes application servers, webservers, and database servers. I know that building servers and home PC's are a very different thing, but I thought I'd offer my experiences with the hardware none the less as it was from the same builder.

Our servers arrived in the same beat up, over taped boxes that it looks like HardOCP got as well, just bigger.

The build quality on their servers was poor. The cases weren't designed to fit correctly into the standard size racks generally used for mounting servers since the case wasn't long enough, and the mounting hardware that was included with the servers were very poorly designed. In most cases, the flat out wrong kind of mounting rails were included. Fans included in the cases were also an issue, with many of the case fan's fins cracking and breaking, even though our servers were stored in a high end Colo facility with strict climate controls ect.

We had numerous hard disk hardware failures with many of their machines. While this is not uncommon, especially when you have large arrays of disks, the failure rate of the hard drives supplied were unacceptable and led us to belive that they were using refurbished drives. In many cases not only would a hard disk fail, but the entire raid array would become corrupted and fail to function properly, thereby defeating the whole point of having a redundant disk array.

We also had power supply issues where machines would simply fail to turn on after being shutdown.

I understand these kinds of things happen from time to time even with the best of hardware vendors, but the rate at which we had problems pointed to a larger quality issue.

That being said the customer support we recieved was good and they were generally quite helpful. They replaced all of the components in the machines that failed, and got the machines back to us in a timely manner. They had their hearts in the rate place, but had some catching up to do in terms of building reliable servers.

To be fair, many of the machines we order from them worked fine and had no problems, but this fact was out-wieghed by the issues we had with a good portion of the machines.

We went with them because they were cheap. I guess we got what we paid for.
 
I bought a this same model Polywell computer [solely based on your review] and I love it. I got a couple upgrades then what you had, and of course took your reccomendation about getting a better power supply.

I love this computer.
It's amazing.

I had a different computer case then you, so it was packaged different [I presume], and didn't really have any real shipping damage done to the packing box. It was completly sourounded by foam padding, with the motherboard box holding all the accessories on top with a cardboard leaf seperating it from the computer.

My packing box wasn't overtaped like yours was, but one corner was a little dinged up.

Their tech support is great. I was having trouble with my monitor, so I called them up, was on hold for about 20 seconds, and the guy was really polite and told me what to do [I felt like an idiot after he told me, I had a VGA monitor, but the graphics card was DVI. Polywell included 2 DVI to VGA adaptors].

Again, thanks for this review.
It got me a really great computer at a really great price.

*thumbs up*
 
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