Packard Bell OneTwo L X8020 UK review

Packard Bell’s OneTwo L X8020 all-in-one PC is very similar in design to Acer’s latest touchscreen models, like the Z5600. This is hardly a surprise, given that Acer owns Packard Bell. The OneTwo is well made, with clear Perspex feet and sturdy plastic stand that pulls out from the rear and props the PC at a comfortable, easily-adjustable viewing angle. It’s a perfect living room PC, with a large, friendly-looking touchscreen display that invites interaction. The display is multi-touch, so you can use all of Windows 7’s new touch features. Packard Bell provides some software to make the experience more fun, including some games, toys and applications that make the most of the touchscreen, as well as media player software and a copy of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 7. In case you get bored of using the screen, a high quality and comfortable to use wireless keyboard and mouse are provided, too. The X8020 is one of the most powerful all-in-one PCs we’ve seen, with a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor, 4GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM and a massive 1TB hard disk. Its performance in our benchmark tests comes close to that of our £650 Phenom II 920 reference system and it’s easily powerful enough for any typical desktop software. Graphics performance isn’t so good and the ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 struggled with our tests. Strangely, it wouldn’t let us run Call of Duty 4 at our standard resolution of 1,680×1,050; at the monitor’s native resolution of 1,920×1,080 we got 14fps. Dropping the resolution to 1,024×768 improved frame rates to a playable 29.4fps. We only managed 4.5fps in our Crysis test, showing that this PC can’t cope with the most demanding games at high resolutions. The graphics processor is much more use when it comes to using the X8020 as a multimedia entertainment system. The generous 23in widescreen display looks stunning and can display full HD video at a resolution of 1,920×1,080. Although its gloss finish can result in distracting reflections under bright light, we loved the display’s reproduction of bright, vivid colours, fine detail and subtle shading. Its pure bright whites are particularly impressive, although reflection detracts slightly from the depth of dark shades. Nonetheless, this is a stunning display and it was a real pleasure using its 1080p resolution to watch High Definition video. An integrated TV Tuner allows you to watch and record analogue or digital TV and the hard disk is big enough to store all your favourite shows. Sadly, it only comes equipped with a DVD-RW drive, rather than the Blu-ray drive we really wanted.

Unfortunately, although the system is surprisingly powerful, brilliant fun to use and comes with some great software, it’s hard to justify the £900 price. If you’re buying a new all-in-one PC, we prefer Asus’s Blu-ray equipped Eee Top ET 2203T-B0347.