HotHardware's 2012 Back To School Shopping Guide
All-In-One Systems
The TouchSmart 520-1070 is a fairly remarkable AIO equipped with high-end hardware and a robust selection of software, all of which comes wrapped in a 23-inch touchscreen display with a speaker bar blasting out Beats Audio. Any fears that HP's preoccupation with righting its ship would result in a degraded product line go right out the window when you run your finger down the 520's spec sheet, which includes an Intel Core i7 2600S processor clocked at 2.8GHz, 8GB of DDR3 system memory, a capacious 2TB hard drive, discrete graphics powered by AMD's Radeon HD 6450A GPU, and even a Blu-ray burner. Oh, and there's a TV tuner shoved inside too, for good measure.
These are low-power, desktop-class components crammed into an AIO form factor as part of a redesigned TouchSmart series meant to be "light, thin, and altogether stylish." Other than the part about this being a lightweight PC (the folks at HP must work out), HP delivers on its promises, and quite frankly exceeded our expectations. Our full review can be found here.
Dell XPS One 27
Dell's new XPS One 27, reviewed here, introduces a spacious and vibrant 27-inch display with a Wide Quad HD (WQHD) 2560x1440 resolution on a Samsung Plane to Line Switching (PLS) panel. It's absolutely gorgeous, more so than some professional monitors we've played with, and it's carrying an entire system in its belly.
The star of the show, however, is the 27-inch panel, qualifying the XPS One 27 as Dell's largest ever AIO system. It's a distinction that matters because there aren't very many 27-inch AIOs on the market, and because the display on this model is so darn good, graphics artists and professional photographers can join the AIO party without selling their soul to Apple.
Asus 23.6" ET2410
Asus envisions the ET2410 taking its place as the centerpiece of your domain, as long as you don't fancy yourself a gamer or overclocker. The Asus ET2410 is built to handle everyday tasks and multimedia projects. You can watch movies on the ET2410, burn DVDs, rock out to your favorite band, backup files to the web, and of course keep up with all your favorite social networks, all without ever having to use your mouse (if you don't want to).
Touchscreen computing on a relatively large screen got a whole lot more affordable, and the sub-$1,000 ET2410IUTS-B019C from Asus proves this. At $850, we hesitate to call this a budget machine, but it's at least affordable. It's also very attractive and will give the impression perhaps that you spent a bit more than you actually did, especially when you fire it up for visitors and start tapping at the screen to load up your playlist, filling your living room with sound from the surprisingly capable integrated speakers. If you're interested, here's our full review.
