Asus ET2300 review

We’ve not seen a 23in all-in-one include an integrated subwoofer, and the Asus has a 3W unit on the underside of its base. It provides rumbling bass to complement the slightly tinny mid-range and high-end produced by the ET2300’s quartet of 1.5W drivers. The audio setup is loud, but provides better balance than most.

Performance

It’s an impressive start, but the £880 budget doesn’t stretch to high-end components. The 3.3GHz Core i3-3220 processor, housed inside the Asus ET2300’s base, is at the bottom end of Intel’s Ivy Bridge range. It has only two Hyper-Threaded cores, there’s no Turbo Boost and it’s saddled with Intel’s weaker HD Graphics 2500 integrated GPU. There’s only 4GB of RAM and the system also lacks a Blu-ray drive, dual-band Wi-Fi and a TV tuner.

In our Real World Benchmarks, it scored 0.74 – a mediocre result. In our Low quality Crysis test (run at 1,366 x 768), it managed a smooth frame rate of 39fps, but this tumbled to 13fps when we ran the Medium quality benchmark at 1,600 x 900; don’t expect the latest games to run without a hitch at the native, Full HD resolution of the panel.

Windows 8 felt perfectly responsive, though. The Start screen’s Live Tiles flicked back and forth smoothly, and there was no sluggishness when running Windows Store apps. There’s enough power to handle the majority of desktop software, too, although if you regularly edit and render HD videos, you may want more power and RAM on tap.

Verdict

No matter how good the screen, 27in panels are too big for comfortable touch-based use – Dell’s XPS One 27 is an example. Smaller 23in screens are more manageable – and this Asus is the best example we’ve seen.

As well as the adaptable stand and great screen, the ET2300 has enough power to cope with general-purpose applications, media and low-end games. The Dell Inspiron One 23 and Toshiba LX830 are cheaper, but the Asus ET2300 is more accomplished than both.