ASUS’S NEW ET2702 (go.pcworld.com/et2702) is the company’s first 27-inch all-in-one to sport a quad HD display—with a resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels, instead of the usual 1920 by 1080 pixels that full HD offers. But there’s more to the Asus ET2702 than just its screen.
Our review model came configured with a quad-core Intel Core i7-4770 processor (a member of the new Haswell family), 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, a discrete graphics card (AMD’s Radeon HD 8890A), a Blu-ray player, and a 2TB, 7200-rpm hard drive. At $1899, the ET2702 is more expensive than the $1440 Vizio CA27T-B1 (go.pcworld.com/ca27tb1), which has a slower processor and a lowerresolution display, but it’s about $200 cheaper than the $2099 Dell XPS 27 Touch (go.pcworld.com/xps27touch), which incorporates a lower-voltage version of the Core i7 processor.
The ET2702 earned a good but not great mark of 174 in our Desktop WorldBench 8.1 tests, 5 points less than the CA27T-B1, and 88 points behind the XPS 27 Touch.
Still, the ET2702’s superior graphics—due in part to its AMD Radeon HD 8890A card—make it the best choice of the three for playing games. In our Dirt Showdown test (at 1024 by 768 pixels, with low visual-quality settings), the ET2702 turned in a frame rate of 131.7 frames per second, versus the Dell’s 125.7 fps and the Vizio’s 54.4 fps.
Show me the cache
The ET2702’s most noticeable weakness is its storage subsystem: Whereas Dell and Vizio supplement their machines’ hard drives with a 32GB solid-state drive to handle caching, the Asus all-in-one does not. You can
obtain an SSD with a capacity of up to 128GB on other versions of the ET2702, however.
The ET2702’s touchscreen display delivers crisp, clear text and images, and bright, accurate colors. Touch is especially nice on the ET2702: The all-in-one handles multitouch gestures smoothly and accurately, and the system’s bezel-free, edge-to-edge glass design makes performing Windows 8 gestures such as swiping from the side or the top of the screen to access menus much easier. I also enjoyed watching HD streaming video on the ET2702’s screen, though I did notice some visual artifacts and blurred details.
Four labels situated in the lower-right corner of the screen identify touch-sensitive nubs below the screen for mode, volume up/down, menu, and brightness up/down—but they’re inconsistently sensitive and they’re not intuitive. Tapping the volume nub, for example, changed the screen’s brightness.
The wireless mouse is too small and square, and the keyboard sports soft, superslick keys. The adjustable stand barely tilts the screen 15 degrees, and the plastic door covering the side ports feels as if it will break within the first five uses.
Asus ET2702
PROS:
• 2560-by-1440-pixel IPS display
• Blu-ray player
• 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter
CONS:
• No SSD cache
• Uncomfortable mouse and
keyboard
• Confusing display controls
BOTTOM LINE:
Though the ET2702 has a very attractive
display, its lack of an SSD cache
leaves it an also-ran in our benchmark
competition.
PRICE:
$ 1899
PC World USA October 2013
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