Dell XPS 27 Touch: Looks are everything

DELL’S XPS 27 Touch all-in-one (go.pcworld.com/dellxps27touch) packs a speedy new Haswell CPU under its hood. Specifically, our review unit—about $2100 at the time of writing—sports a quad-core Intel Core i7-4770S processor; 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory; a discrete video card (Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750M); and a roomy 2TB, 7200-rpm hard drive augmented by a 32GB mSATA SSD cache. Beyond that, the XPS 27 Touch delivered a Desktop WorldBench 8.1 score of 262— meaning that it’s more than 2.5 times faster than our reference PC, Acer’s Aspire U. It’s also significantly faster than Vizio’s CA27T-B1. The displays on those models are limited to 1920 by 1080 pixels (versus the Touch’s 2560-by-1440 resolution), but they’re also much less expensive ($1000 and $1550, respectively).

The Dell’s score places the XPS 27 Touch solidly in the upper half of all the desktop systems we’ve tested under WorldBench 8.1, though it’s nowhere near the custom-built gaming rigs we’ve evaluated (Primordial Computer’s over-the-top, quad-Titan Medusa hit 385; Micro Express’s single-GPU MicroFlex 47B scored 421). And the XPS 27 will satisfy the gamers in your family—if their expectations aren’t too hard-core. In Dirt Showdown, with the game’s resolution at 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality set to low, the XPS 27 delivered a strong 125.7 frames per second. (Our reference PC ran Dirt Showdown at just 47.5 fps.)

As befits a Windows 8–era AIO, the XPS 27 has a 10-point touchscreen display, and it’s the best touchscreen I’ve seen from Dell. It’s extremely bright, and images and text look fantastically crisp and clear. Multitouch gestures are smooth and easy to perform. But colors, especially skin tones, have a tendency to look oversaturated.

While the media card reader and two USB 3.0 ports are conveniently on the left side of the bezel, other ports—HDMI (in and out), Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort, gigabit ethernet, and four additional USB 3.0 ports—are on the back, obscured by the stand, and hard to reach.

I also dislike the four touch-sensitive buttons on the front lower left corner. A proximity sensor causes these unlabeled buttons to light up when you hover your finger over them, though the only one you might use regularly is the Eject button for the DVD burner. Otherwise, the Dell XPS 27 Touch is an exquisite all-in-one.

Dell XPS 27 Touch
PROS:
• High-quality touchscreen
• 2560 by 1440 resolution
• mSATA SSD cache
• Great overall performance
• Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort
CONS:
• Skin tones look oversaturated
• No Blu-ray drive
• Unlabeled front-panel buttons

BOTTOM LINE:
Though we have a few minor quibbles
with the Dell XPS 27 Touch’s design, we
think this is the best all-in-one on the
market today.

PRICE:
$2099


(PC World USA October 2013)