Toshiba Qosmio PX30t-A-11C review

The Qosmio PX30t-A-11C is one of Toshiba’s brand new all-in-one PCs. It’s not quite as slim as other models we’ve seen this year, but this is to be expected when all its components are housed just behind the screen. Its stylish combination of a smart black bezel and matt silver stand look great, though, and its 23in touchscreen display as a generous amount of screen tilt to help you find the best working angle.

Most of its ports are located on the side of the chassis, including two USB3 ports, an SD card reader, separate headphone and microphone jacks, a DVD rewriter and a row of media buttons including volume and brightness controls.

There are also another two USB3 and two USB2 ports round the back of the chassis, along with a Gigabit Ethernet port and an HDMI input so you can use the PX30t like a monitor when the power’s off. This is particularly handy if you want to connect another device like a games console to the PX30t, and it helps broaden the PX30t’s uses beyond a mere home PC. It won’t automatically switch to the HDMI input, so you’ll need to use the source input switch on the side of the screen to enable this.

Its integrated speakers are provided by Harman/Kardon. These had a great level of bass in our test tracks and plenty of volume for all-in-one speakers, but a dedicated set of speakers will give you better results.

SPECIFICATION

As one of the higher range models of the PX30t, this model comes with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-3230M processor that can Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz to improve performance when there’s enough thermal headroom, and 8GB of RAM. Since it’s one of Intel’s mobile processors, we weren’t expecting the PX30t to blow us away with its processing power, but it still managed a respectable 54 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. For reference, a 3.4GHz Intel Core i5-3570K processor scores 100, so it’s roughly half as powerful as a Core i5 desktop processor. This means it’s still capable of complex tasks like photo and video editing, but it will take a little longer to load while multi-tasking if you’re using lots of demanding media programs that require multi-threading.

The Qosmio’s not particularly well equipped for playing games, as the PX30t doesn’t have a dedicated graphics chip. Instead, it relies on the processor’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip. This is fine for playing 2D Flash games from the Windows 8 Store, but you’ll need to tailor the settings quite significantly if you want to play modern 3D titles. It only just scraped through the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test with 17fps on High quality at a 1,280×720 resolution, let alone pass the PC version which uses Ultra quality at a 1,920×1,080 resolution, so you’ll need to keep both the resolution and the graphics settings very low indeed to play games at a reasonable speed.

DISPLAY

The 23in touchscreen was a delight to use. The screen responded very well to Windows 8 shortcuts, and multi-touch gestures were smooth and accurate. The display’s image quality was also one of the best we’ve seen on an all-in-one PC. Whites were a little grey toward the bottom of the screen in our solid colour image tests, but its colour accuracy was superb. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 92.7 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, which is quite high for an all-in-one panel, and its extensive coverage of the three main colour groups meant our solid reds, greens and blues all jumped out of the screen. Blacks were also deep and inky across the display, which was backed up by our black level reading of just 0.17cd/m².

Our high contrast images looked even better. The screen’s impressive contrast ratio of 1,236:1, is considerably higher than most other all-in-one displays we’ve tested, and we were pleased to see that areas of darker shadow detail weren’t overwhelmed by its deep blacks. Instead, we were able to see a high level of detail in all of our test photos, and its glossy display didn’t cause any problems with reflections either.

PERIPHERALS

The PX30t has an integrated receiver for the bundled wireless mouse and keyboard, so you won’t need to lose a USB port to use them. The mouse has quite an unusual, angular shape compared to your typical mouse, but it’s responsive and perfectly useable once you’ve got used to its design. The keyboard, on the other hand, was a little more temperamental. It has a full numeric keypad and sensibly spaced keys, but there could have been a lot more vertical travel between the keys and keyboard. This meant it often didn’t register keys we thought we’d pressed, which led to an increase in mistakes.

CONCLUSION

Keyboard issues aside, the Toshiba Qosmio PX30t-A-11C is well-priced for an all-in-one PC. It has a high quality display, a great range of ports to complement its stylish design, and it’s also one of the most powerful all-in-one PCs you’ll find for less than £900. However, it’s not as great value as Acer’s Best Buy-winning Aspire 7600U.