HP Pavilion Slimline s5360f Slim Desktop PC

Mar 8 2010 - HP's Pavilion Slimline s5360f is still one of the best options on the for a small desktop PC to be used with a home theater system. The inclusion of a Blu-ray compatible drive and over the air HDTV tuner essentially make this a great media center. The performance is not as high as some other options though as HP decided to switch to a lower performance Phenom II to cut costs. The use of USB based wireless adapter also reduces the available USB ports for peripherals.

Mar 8 2010 - HP has made some major changes in their Pavilion Slimline series with their latest s5360f offering. They are no longer using the Intel processor platform and have switched to AMD most likely to help keep costs down. The downside is that the performance isn't quite as good as it could be had they switched over to the new Core i series processors from Intel like Gateway chose to do with they latest slim desktop.

The AMD Phenom II X4 820 quad core processor does have a slight advantage for those doing heavy multitasking since it has four distinct processor cores instead of the Core i3/i5 dual core models that use virtualization to simulate four cores. For most tasks though, the extra cores probably won't make a huge impact and the Core i with its higher clock speeds will perform better.

The Pavilion Slimline has been very focused on being used as a small media center system and this doesn't change with the s5360f. The system still includes a Blu-ray combo drive for playing back high definition movies, DVDs or CDs as well as being able to record to DVDs and CDs. The over the air HDTV tuner also always the system to be used to record and playback TV programs. This is probably the best overall use for the system. If you don't intend to use it for either of these features, then there are more affordable options with higher general performance.

Rather than relying on an integrated graphics processor, the Pavilion Slimline s5360f uses an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card that is equipped with 512MB of memory. This is an older generation of graphics cards now and is on the very lower end of ATI's offering. It provides a boost for HD video playback but is not going to be useful for those looking to use it for casual PC gaming. Expect only to be able to use this at lower resolutions with limited detail levels.

One of the issues that has plagued previous models continues in this one. While the system has a total of six USB ports for peripherals, the wireless keyboard and mouse needs to use up one of these ports which gives it a very limited number compared to the competition. It has been improved since the last version as the wireless networking that makes connecting it into a home wireless network quite easy is now built into the system.

If the intended purpose of the HP Pavilion Slimline s5360f is for a media center to be used with a home theater system, it is probably the best overall option available on the market right now. Outside of this, the $800 price tag and limited features beyond media only make it an average general purpose slim desktop.