Dell XPS One 27 review

The Apple iMac has consistently been the most desirable and powerful all-in-one computer for years, but the Dell XPS One 27 could finally be a worthy contender. On Dell’s website this is sold as simply the XPS One 27, though the model number is actually 2710.

Its highlight is the gorgeous 27in panel, framed in edge-to-edge glass, which has a huge resolution of 2,560×1,440. It looks fantastic and, on a 27in screen, it’s hard to settle for anything less, as this gives you plenty of space to have multiple windows open simultaneously, or edit photos in fine detail. A 1080p (1,920×1,080) resolution on the same-size screen feels positively primeval by comparison. We found that the screen’s glossy finish made it quite reflective, but this was a minor complaint in the face of such crystal clear precision.

This bore out in our solid colour image tests. Reds, blues and greens were extremely bright and vibrant, and blacks and whites were deep and true. We did notice a very slight shadow in the bottom right hand corner of the screen as well as all the way across the bottom of the screen, but you wouldn’t really notice this on a day-to-day basis and the rest of the screen was near perfect. Its contrast and brightness levels were similarly excellent, with our high contrast test photos showing plenty of detail in both the light and dark areas of each image.

Our review sample also came with a touchscreen, but this optional extra will set you back an extra £300, over the standard model. This makes the Dell XPS One 27 feel rather expensive, as the hardware underneath is exactly the same regardless of whether you opt for a touchscreen or not.

Whether or not you need the touchscreen is up to you. As Windows 8 now fully supports touch and has a brand-new touchscreen interface, you may find it more useful. In fact, for the new Start Screen apps, a touchscreen is really useful and you’ll find yourself using it a lot.

The extra £300 also gets you an articulating stand, so you can tilt the screen up to 45 degrees backwards, making it even easier to use on a desk. At this angle, we found it more comfortable to use standing up, making touch controls by far the most natural way to interact with the PC. That said, a touchscreen’s not essential and the base model, at £1,399 including VAT, is excellent value, so you may want to save the money.

We found the bundled wireless keyboard and mouse were also very comfortable and easy to use, as all the Chiclet-style keys had plenty of bounce and tactile feedback, and the mouse was just the right size for our hands.

We have no qualms over the main specifications. Our review sample came with the excellent quad-core 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-3770S processor, which uses Hyper-Threading to add four more virtual cores. With an overall score of 94 it makes the XPS One 27 more than capable of handling multiple programs at once as well as those that require multi-threading.

Such a high resolution screen will also take its toll on the XPS One 27’s ability to play games, and even 8GB of RAM and a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card failed to produce 15fps in our Dirt Showdown and Crysis 2 tests on Ultra Quality settings at both its native resolution and at 1,920×1,080. It fared much better in the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test, which produced 52.6fps on High Quality settings at a resolution of 1,280×720.

This shows that tailoring the graphics settings for each game proved a much more fruitful exercise. We managed a much more playable 20.1fps in Crysis 2 on High settings and 29.4fps in Dirt Showdown on Medium settings at its native resolution, which means it’s still possible to have a competent gaming experience on the XPS One 27 as long as you’re not too fussy about graphical fidelity.

For storage there’s a 2TB hard disk, which provides plenty of storage for even the most avid of media collectors. Then there’s a 32GB SSD, which acts as a cache, improving boot times and load times of your most commonly-used applications. It certainly helps and Windows 8 boots extremely quickly when used with an SSD.

The Dell XPS One 27 also comes with a Blu-ray Combo drive embedded into the right hand side of the chassis, so you can easily watch films. It also has a multi-format card reader, two USB3 ports and separate headphone and microphone jacks on the left. Around the back are another four USB3 ports, an HDMI input for connecting up your DVD player or games console, an HDMI output for connecting your PC to your TV or another display, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and an S/PDIF port that allows you to send digital audio to external speakers. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the XPS One 27’s integrated speakers, as these had plenty of volume and excellent bass. PC.

The Dell XPS One 27 is an excellent all-in-one PC, and can certainly hold its own against Apple’s iMac. The touchscreen model is a little expensive for our liking, but the non-touch Core i7 model will get you one of the best all-in-ones money can buy.