All-In-One Review Roundup

Posted 01/30/2013 at 1:51pm | by Michael Brown

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Who’s the Fairest of them All?

Can any of the latest all-in-one machines lure us away from a conventional desktop? 

The all-in-one market has grown and changed for the better this year, thanks in large measure to efforts by Asus and Dell to push the envelope. Sony also deserves a measure of credit for introducing picture-in-picture, picture-and-picture, and gesture‑recognition innovations (even if its Vaio L Series trails the pack in terms of price/performance ratio). But can any of these contestants tempt a hard-bitten PC enthusiast into giving up separate boxes?

Dell comes close with its new XPS One, especially the configuration reviewed here. We can’t overstate the beauty of that gorgeous Samsung PLS panel. The display might not satisfy a professional photographer or illustrator, but games, movies, and websites look fantastic, and it delivers higher resolution than most of us are using today (this review was written using a Dell U2410, with native resolution of 1920x1200). Plus, it’s the only machine in the roundup to include an SSD, albeit a small one.

The Asus ET2701, on the other hand, delivers the best bang for the buck. Yes, its IPS panel has native resolution of only 1920x1080, but it costs a full $500 less than the Dell, and the rest of its most critical infrastructure—CPU, GPU, memory, and mechanical hard drive—is exactly the same. (But if you decide to buy one, don’t bother unpacking the keyboard—it well and truly sucks.) If you—or your friends and family, if they’re looking for your recommendation—have the budget, this is the machine to buy.

But not everyone has that much cash to throw down for a new PC, so what do we recommend for smaller budgets? Certainly not the HP Omni 27—it’s nearly as expensive as the Asus, but it’s not nearly as good a value. The same goes for the Sony Vaio L Series, although we applaud the company for introducing new features into the market. That leaves Gateway’s little engine that could. The ZX6971-UR10P is nothing to brag about, but for those who need a simple productivity machine that can double as a display for a set-top box or a gaming console, it’s the machine we’d recommend.