HP TouchSmart 610 review

For all of the Asus ET2400XVT and Sony VAIO L21’s technological innovations – the former with 3D and the latter with gesture control – both of those systems still rely on somewhat unadventurous chassis designs. HP’s new TouchSmart 610, by contrast, has one of the most interesting all-in-one designs we’ve seen.

For starters, it’s built around an iMac-style base rather than a slanting stand, which enables its tilting 23in screen to take centre stage: pull it forward and the display hunkers down towards the desk, angled upwards; push it back and it reverts back to the standard upright pose. This makes it easy to operate from a standing or sitting position – handy for when you’re either working or walking around the house.

HP has given its software suite a lick of paint since the last generation, too. Gone is the horizontal band of huge icons, to be replaced by a freeform front end with icons and widgets that can be moved and positioned freely. There’s a smaller carousel of all the PC’s apps running along the bottom, too, reminiscent of the Asus ET2400XVT.

The HP is far more pleasant to use, mainly because it’s smoother and more responsive. HP’s media tools are slick: albums and movies have their own carousels, and are joined by links to social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter alongside usual note-taking and painting tools and the software served up by Microsoft’s Touch Pack. A link to HP’s app store holds promise, but at the time of writing included only nine apps, the majority of which are children’s games.

HP has also ensured that its TouchSmart 610 is reasonably fast, with Intel’s Core i5-650 processor running at 3.2GHz and delivering a benchmark score of 0.68 – one of the best results we’ve seen from an all-in-one and not far behind the 0.74 of the Sony, which was powered by a mobile Sandy Bridge chip.

Gaming performance is less stellar – the ATI Radeon HD 5570 is a modest, low-end part – and the TouchSmart’s score of 38fps in our Medium-quality Crysis test is the limit of its powers. Media files are handled with aplomb, though, and the rest of the specification is good: a 1.5TB hard disk provides a huge amount of storage, and there’s Blu-ray alongside 6GB of RAM – two gigabtyes more than the Sony offered. There’s a Hybrid DVB-T TV tuner, too, alongside a pair of USB 3 ports.

The screen is an inch smaller than the Sony’s, but still has a 1,920 x 1,080 native resolution along with sharp detail and accurate colours, with its whites brighter and blacks darker than all its rivals bar the VAIO. One minor quibble is that it appears slightly cold compared to the Sony, but it’s better than the oversaturated Asus.

The final feather in the HP’s cap is its Dr. Dre-branded Beats speakers, which are as good as anything we’ve heard on an all-in-one. They’re very loud, have plenty of punchy bass and rich, accurate audio reproduction across the rest of the range.

HP’s TouchSmart 610 has few weaknesses. Its innovative design is paired with plenty of power, a fine screen and top-quality speakers. The extra inch of screen space and better software mean the Sony is still our favourite, but the HP still wins an award – and is a fine alternative if the VAIO doesn’t appeal.