HP TouchSmart IQ500.uk review

HP's latest TouchSmart PC has an all-in-one design, similar to Apple's iMac range.

The IQ500 has a 22in LCD screen and uses laptop components. Its glossy black finish looks great, and it comes with an attractively designed wireless keyboard and mouse.

You may not need these much, as you can control the IQ500 just by touching its display. Unlike a traditional touch screen, it employs a series of hidden IR LEDs around the edge of the screen to pick up inputs. This makes it more accurate, and there's limited support for multi-touch gestures like those used on the iPhone.

You can navigate the Windows desktop using the touch screen, but you'll need to increase the size of desktop icons. Meanwhile, any tasks requiring pin-point accuracy are out of the question. Windows Media Center is far better suited for hands-on control, and HP sensibly provides its own TouchSmart interface. Here you can browse photos by sliding your finger across the screen or create audio playlists by simply dragging tracks into a box. You can view websites, organise your RSS feeds and even do basic photo retouching. There are also a handful of games for both kids and adults that make good use of the interface.

A Media Center remote is included for when you're out of arm's reach. A single hybrid TV tuner is built in, but you'll need to add an extra USB tuner to record and watch TV simultaneously. The screen isn't big enough for use as a main living room TV (unless you have a particularly small lounge), and the lack of a Blu-ray drive is also disappointing at this price.

The bright 22in display has a native resolution of 1,680x1,050 pixels. Colours are vibrant, and there was plenty of crisp detail in images. Because it isn't a traditional touch screen, there's no need for a touch-sensitive layer on the screen, which often results in a grainy-looking finish. The glossy coating is quite reflective, though.

There are plenty of connectors on the side and rear, with the five USB ports accompanied by FireWire, a memory card reader and a coaxial S/PDIF output. The built-in speakers are surprisingly good. Both Gigabit Ethernet and Draft-N wireless networking are present.

The 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5850 processor has more than enough power for day-to-day computing tasks, but the inclusion of 4GB of RAM and 64-bit Vista is over the top and pushes the price up unnecessarily. The 500GB hard disk is roomy, but smaller than we'd expect at this price. Still, a similarly priced non-touch-screen iMac has a larger 24in display and a faster 2.8GHz processor, but only 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard disk.

Despite our best efforts, we couldn't get our PCMark Vantage benchmark to run on the IQ500. This was due to a compatibility problem with the driver of its GeForce 9300M GS graphics card. The card couldn't run our Crysis benchmark, either, and managed only 3.7fps in Call of Duty 4. The PC will never manage a playable frame rate, so we've listed the score as a fail.

These drawbacks are a shame, as we like the TouchSmart interface. The ability to access your media files using only your fingers is convenient. However, the IQ500 is too expensive if you just want to play media files and browse the web. It's an interesting alternative to an iMac, but isn't good-enough value to recommend.

Author: Seth Barton