HP Touchsmart 520-1130ea review

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Verdict:

Not the most exciting all-in-one, but it’s a well-made and reasonably priced living room PC

Review Date: 16 May 2012

Price when reviewed: £749

Supplier: http://www.hp.co.uk

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

User Rating

HP's all-in-one PCs typically occupy a competent middle ground - powerful enough to ensure that running multiple programs and keeping several browser tabs open at once won't be a problem, while still being sufficiently quiet and attractive not to look out of place in your sitting room. With unassuming looks and a respectable overall score of 62 in our benchmark tests, the TouchSmart 520-1130ea fits comfortably within this vision of a family PC.

The size and brightness of the 23in touchscreen display are immediately appealing. There's plenty of room on the 1,920x1,080 screen to work with images or spreadsheets, and the intense colours are pleasing, although they can seem a little harsh in combination with the reflectiveness of the glossy display. Unlike some all-in-ones, you can't connect a second display. Neither can you use the TouchSmart's screen as a standalone display for other devices, such as games consoles.

The display has intense colours, but it's a shame it can't be used for external devices.

The PC has an Intel Core i3-2120 processor and 4GB of RAM. As well as putting in a decent performance in our software tests, the processor includes an Intel HD Graphics 2000 on-chip GPU. This isn't powerful enough for modern 3D games (the TouchSmart even failed even our 720p Dirt 3 tests), but it's great for movies, casual games and even some older 3D titles, such as Valve's Portal.

The 1080p display is great for watching HD movies, although you'll have to get them from online services or use an external Blu-ray reader because the PC only has a DVD drive. For added entertainment value, a DVB-T tuner lets you connect an aerial and watch Freeview TV.

An integrated TV tuner means you can use Windows Media Center to record and view your favourite TV shows.