Dell XPS One review

The rest of the system is without fault. An 802.11 draft-n wireless module is ready to take advantage of the latest fast WiFi routers as well as older 802.11g ones. You also get Bluetooth 2.0 for communicating with your mobile phone, and an 8-in-1 memory card reader on the side for your digital photos. A pair of USB ports sits alongside, with two more on the rear.

There are two levels of specification available. The black version comes with a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo E4500 processor and 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard disk, basic Intel integrated graphics and Windows Vista Home Premium. At £999 inc VAT it represents excellent value, even if we'd have liked Blu-ray and a second TV tuner too.

The red edition, at £1299, is part of the Product RED charity scheme, and Dell and Microsoft will donate $80 to AIDS charities for every unit sold. Admirable enough, but you're paying a whopping £300 extra, with only a few upgrades apart from the paint job: a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo E6550, 500GB hard disk, ATi Radeon HD 2400 graphics and Windows Vista Ultimate. That ATi graphics card is too old and slow to be a realistic gaming option (though it would be useful for decoding HD video if there was a Blu-ray drive - did we mention we'd have liked a Blu-ray drive?), so we'd have to recommend sending £40 to charity off your own back and opting for the black version.

The price of frame

And so to the inevitable comparison with Apple. As luck would have it, the iMac range was upgraded shortly after the XPS One appeared. The base model now costs £799 and has a glossy 20 inch screen like the XPS'; a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, beating Dell's 2.13GHz chip; and ATi Radeon HD 2400 graphics, matched only by the red XPS at £500 more. True, this iMac has only 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard disk, but the next model up matches the Dell's 2GB and 320GB respectively, adds an even faster processor and graphics card, and still costs £50 less at £949.

For £1149, £150 below the red XPS (or £110 if you count that £40 donation), Apple will give you a massive 24 inch screen - big enough for 1080p HD movies, though you'll have to download them from iTunes, since Apple doesn't do Blu-ray either. And if you can stretch to £1389, you can move up to a stonking 3GHz Core 2 Duo and 512MB nVidia GeForce 8800GS graphics, blowing the XPS' performance out of the water for less than £100 extra.

The iMacs don't have TV built in, and if you want to run Windows Vista (rather than Mac OS X) you'll need your own copy, adding to the price. At the time of writing, we hadn't had chance to put either the XPS or the new iMac through our benchmark tests, so definitive comparisons will have to wait. But we and Dell will both have to admit that the days of equating Apple with expensive are well and truly over.

Thanks to the touch controls, superior speakers and perhaps slightly crisper screen, the XPS One is just as desirable as the iMacs in its own distinctive way, and still reasonably priced. Dell is getting better and better at being trendy rather than businesslike, and if Apple's aggressive pricing heats up the competition between these two and Sony, there should be some fantastic deals ahead. The all-in-one PC may finally have arrived.