HP TouchSmart 600 All-In-One PC Review

With a claim of “nearly 30-years of touch innovation” under its belt, HP is no stranger to touch-input technology. The company has recently integrated touch input into a number of its consumer and business product lines, such as tablets and displays and perhaps is most well-known for its line of TouchSmart all-in-one desktop PCs. In fact, when the TouchSmart first debuted in 2007, it was one of very first multi-touch desktop PCs to hit the market, though touch technology has come a long way since then, especially with the advent of Windows 7's touch capabilities.

Taking advantage of a good thing when they see it, HP has produced a few major updates to the TouchSmart line, culminating in the latest release of the TouchSmart series, the 20-inch TouchSmart 300 series and 23-inch TouchSmart 600 series. Other than screen size and specs, both the 300 and 600 series have much in common, including a relatively thin chassis, glossy 16:9 widescreen display, and a plethora of touch-enabled features and applications.
Many of the touch features take advantage of the new and improved touch features built into Windows 7, but HP's new TouchSmart PCs also come with a bevy of custom touch-enabled apps as well.  More on these in a quick video preview we have for you here and in the pages ahead...

HP TouchSmart 600-1055 System Specifications

                    Direct Price (as tested): $1,499.99

---

Pricing for the 20-inch TouchSmart 300 series starts at 799.99, and the 23-inch 600 series starts at $999.99. We were sent the TouchSmart 600-1055, which sells for $1,499.99 (at the time of this review). All of these are the prices you would pay if you were to purchase the systems direct from HP. We were hard-pressed to find other vendors selling the system for much less--about $50 lower is the best we could find. The TouchSmart 600-1055 is a specific, non-configurable configuration--HP refers to it as a “quick-ship model;” but HP also sells versions of the 300 and 600 series that can be configured to order on HP’s site--these are the TouchSmart 300z, TouchSmart 600t, and the TouchSmart 600xt.

The TouchSmart 600-1050 is powered by a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P7450 processor, 4GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM, Nvidia nForce 730i chipset (1,066MHz Front-side bus), Nvidia GeForce GT230M GPU (1GB), 750GB 7,200RPM SATA hard drive, slot-loading BD drive, and running Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). The system also includes Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless networking, and Bluetooth. Rounding out the system’s feature set are integrated stereo speakers and a built-in TV tuner.