Dell Inspiron One 2320 review

Dell’s Inspiron One 2320 is surprisingly powerful for an all-in-one PC, with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2400S processor alongside 6GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk, making it a credible rival for many mid-priced desktop systems. If you buy directly from Dell, it costs a rather reasonable £799, although we’ve seen exactly the same system on sale from various high street retailers for around £900, so you’ll want to make sure that you get the best price.

We’ve seen several impressive all-in-one PCs this year, the most notable of which is the Asus ET2410INTS. The Inspiron One’s 22.5in touchscreen display is conspicuously smaller than the similarly priced Asus’s screen, and it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card, but it’s otherwise similarly specified. The Inspiron performed well in our benchmark tests, with an overall score of 74, which shows it has more than enough power to run any desktop or multimedia application. The extra memory gives you plenty of scope for more intensive tasks such as batch image manipulation and video effects rendering.

Even if you ignore its relatively small size, Dell’s 1,920×1,080 integrated touchscreen display is something of a disappointment, with a greyish-blue cast on pale colours and slightly uneven backlighting that leads to light bleed around the screen’s edge. Films look good on the glossy screen, but the display is prone to reflections. We’re also not particularly enamoured of the glossy, round-edged chassis. It looks a bit like a budget TV, but at least it feels fairly well made and has a clear plastic stand that makes it easy to adjust the PC’s height and angle.

The Inspiron relies on the Core i5-2400S processor’s integrated graphics, which means that you won’t be able to play modern 3D titles at even low resolutions, although old games and less demanding 2D titles such as adventure games won’t present too much of a challenge. The PC is obviously built for entertainment: there are HDMI, VGA and composite video inputs, so you can use the display instead of a TV for connecting games consoles. There’s also a VGA output so you can plug in a second display or a projector. The PC has a built-in Blu-ray player as well as a digital TV tuner. Dell has provided CyberLink PowerDVD 9.5 to handle Blu-ray discs, while Windows Media Center – along with the supplied remote control – makes it remarkably easy to browse through TV channels and media files.

The supplied wireless mouse and keyboard work well enough; the keyboard’s flat, widely-spaced keys are rather unresponsive, but their layout doesn’t interfere with swift typing, while the ambidextrous mouse is comfortable but entirely unremarkable. You’ll have to expend a USB port to connect the wireless adaptor for the keyboard and mouse set, but this isn’t a great loss, as there are plenty more: two at the front, and four more at the back. There’s an SD card reader, too, but no eSATA or USB3 ports. You can connect the PC to your network via either the Gigabit Ethernet port at the back or the built-in dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi.

This is a great little all-in-one, even though our tests found that it uses a remarkably high 11W when in sleep mode. However, it’s not quite as well-rounded as the Asus ET2410INTS, which has a bigger, better display, dedicated graphics chipset and costs just £70 more.