Digital Trends

Hy-Tek Tek Panel 300

May 17th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

A Few Refinements Needed

While it's hard not to like the Tek Panel — in fact a few tears were shed when we had to part with our review sample - the unit could use a few refinements. First, the optical drive just looks out of place. The color matches but the square-faced drive sticks out too much from the rounded side. It doesn't look that bad from the front, but from the side, it is a bit of an eyesore. Hy-Tek could avoid that by using a laptop-sized optical drive instead of a full sized 5 1/4-inch drive.

Also, the included peripherals don't seem to go with the Tek Panel. The Bose 2.1 channel speakers aren't terrible, but a high-end rig like the Tek Panel with a Creative Labs Audigy sound card would be better suited with a 7.1 channel speaker system. The Bose Mediamate speakers are included in the price, but Hy-Tek has a relationship with Klipsch and offers their 2.1 and 5.1 Promedia speakers as upgrades. In our opinion, a no-speakers option would be ideal here, as you can either hook the Tek Panel 300 up to your stereo or a better set of PC speakers purchased separately. And the included keyboard and mouse were certainly nothing special. The mouse actually felt quite small. With such a high-end model, we'd expect to see a better keyboard and mouse combo included.

As we mentioned, the Tek Panel 300 we reviewed was configured with 2GB of PC3200 RAM. This may be overkill for most applications, but it was certainly nice to have for the review. However, the RAM was unbranded — as far as we could tell — and lacked heatsinks. We'd expect a high-end system like the Tek Panel 300 to use branded memory, as experts will tell you, quality, brand-name memory does make a difference. With everything else top-of-the-line, we wondered why Hy-Tek seemed to “skimp” on this one component.

When we met with Hy-Tek at CES 2004, they explained that they use a proprietary scaling technique to make TV images on the Tek Panel look even better than HDTV. Unfortunately, our review unit didn't have the Radeon All-In-Wonder that features an integrated TV tuner, so we were unable to validate this claim or try it out. This effectively made our review unit just a high-end gaming system, instead of the HTPC we were expecting. In our opinion, the Tek-Panel really needs a TV tuner to make it the ultimate home entertainment PC.
 
We also would like to see the inclusion of a wireless network adapter as an option for the Tek Panel. There are now USB 2.0 802.11g adapters and this would be a good addition for the Tek Panel, especially if it is to be wall-mounted.

As mentioned before, the power switch was an issue for us and we hope that Hy-Tek can improve on this design in future revisions.

Finally, our test unit came with slightly outdated video drivers and we also needed to update the RAID driver to stop an error message from continually popping up during each boot up. This was a very minor inconvenience and one we easily fixed, but we would expect that on the production units, Hy-Tek will be sure to fix this at the factory before the product goes out the door.

Is it all Worth it?

As configured, our Tek Panel would cost a little over $8,100 plus shipping direct from Hy-Tek. That is of course a lot of money to pay for a top-of-the-line gaming rig, but certainly not unheard of, especially when you add in a 30-inch display. So is it worth it?

We configured a very similar collection of hardware at Newegg.com and from various retailers found on Shopping.com and we came up with a price of about $6,300. The computer hardware totaled about $2,800 and the LG Electronics 30-inch LCD was about $3,500. This price does not include a case and keep in mind that Hy-Tek uses a bare LCD as well as a custom power solution.

When you take into account the custom case, which would take weeks to create yourself, the custom power and cooling solutions, and the fact that prices on these individual components have surely dropped since Hy-Tek put the unit together, we'd say that the $1,800 price difference is negligible and makes the price of the Tek Panel 300 right on target.

The main problem with the Tek-Panel 300 is that it suffers from an identity crisis. At 30-inches, the display is just too big and bright to put on a desktop in front of you and comfortably play games or browse the Net. Ideally, you'd need a deep desk with plenty of free space so that the display was far enough away from you to view at the optimal distance.

On the other hand, many consumers may find that a 30-inch widescreen display just isn't big enough for their living room or home theater. The display is probably perfect for board room presentations and whatever cool uses the military has for it, but at home you may have a tough time finding the right place for it.

We think the ideal location may be in a bedroom, dorm room, home office or on the ultimate gamer's desk. Don't get us wrong - it is not impossible to use the Tek-Panel 300 as your main workstation or gaming platform and in fact it is quite an experience. You'll just need to do some planning. If you get creative, you should have little problem finding the best location for the Tek-Panel 300. And since it can be mounted on the wall or free-standing on a desk with the included brackets, you'll have plenty of options.