HP Touchsmart 520-1130ea review

HP’s all-in-one PCs typically occupy a competent middle ground – powerful enough to ensure that running multiple programs and keeping several browser tabs open at once won’t be a problem, while still being sufficiently quiet and attractive not to look out of place in your sitting room. With unassuming looks and a respectable overall score of 62 in our benchmark tests, the TouchSmart 520-1130ea fits comfortably within this vision of a family PC.

The size and brightness of the 23in touchscreen display are immediately appealing. There’s plenty of room on the 1,920×1,080 screen to work with images or spreadsheets, and the intense colours are pleasing, although they can seem a little harsh in combination with the reflectiveness of the glossy display. Unlike some all-in-ones, you can’t connect a second display. Neither can you use the TouchSmart’s screen as a standalone display for other devices, such as games consoles.

The display has intense colours, but it’s a shame it can’t be used for external devices.

The PC has an Intel Core i3-2120 processor and 4GB of RAM. As well as putting in a decent performance in our software tests, the processor includes an Intel HD Graphics 2000 on-chip GPU. This isn’t powerful enough for modern 3D games (the TouchSmart even failed even our 720p Dirt 3 tests), but it’s great for movies, casual games and even some older 3D titles, such as Valve’s Portal.

The 1080p display is great for watching HD movies, although you’ll have to get them from online services or use an external Blu-ray reader because the PC only has a DVD drive. For added entertainment value, a DVB-T tuner lets you connect an aerial and watch Freeview TV.

An integrated TV tuner means you can use Windows Media Center to record and view your favourite TV shows.

The TouchSmart has a 1TB hard disk, which means you won’t have to rely on external storage, but it’s always nice to have the option. Although it lacks eSATA support, the system is fairly well equipped with four USB ports and two USB3 ports. There’s also a memory card reader that can handle SHXC, xD and Memory Stick formats.

It’s good to see easy-to-reach USB3 ports on the side of this all-in-one.

The Beats Audio-branded integrated speakers provide more volume and more resonant bass than you’ll hear from many rival all-in-one PCs, but the treble is rather tinny and underpowered. There’s no scope to connect a 5.1 set unless you attach an external sound card, but it has 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports, as well as specialised connectors for combined Beats microphone headphone connectors and compatible standalone subwoofers.

The ambidextrous mouse fitted our hand particularly well, even though it doesn’t have much obvious ergonomic engineering, and the keyboard is pretty decent too. The PC’s chassis is well built and can be tilted back and forth to accommodate a wide range of angles, but it doesn’t swivel.

Probably our least favourite element of the system is HP’s touchscreen software, which provides an alternative interface with scrolling screens and widget bars. This isn’t particularly useful, and we were also irritated to find that the scrolling virtual desktops sometimes left our windows inaccessible when we returned to a standard Windows desktop view. You can use the TouchSmart Magic suite to access movies and media, but it’ll be more of a redundant gadget than a killer feature for most users.

Ultimately, this isn’t an amazing PC. It isn’t particularly powerful and it isn’t particularly cheap, but nevertheless, this is a well-made and attractive family PC.