HP TouchSmart 610: For Business or Pleasure
by Dustin Sklavos on November 2, 2011 2:50 PM ESTScreen Quality
While gaming takes a backseat with the HP TouchSmart 610, the screen is frankly stellar. Those of you used to (and sick of) mediocre TN panels will be happy to see what appears to be Samsung's new Super PLS panel in the TouchSmart 610. That said, there are a couple of trade-offs, but before we get to those let's run the numbers. We've included results from some of our 23" and 24" standalone LCDs for comparison.
The 610's screen offers a stunning 3100:1 native contrast ratio, derived from 248 nits of brightness at white and a gorgeous 0.08 nits at full black. Average delta-E after calibration is good, too, at 1.67 (under what we consider to be the 2.00 maximum), while the color gamut is a less agreeable 64% of AdobeRGB. Ultimately this screen should be adequate for color-sensitive work, but stellar for non-gaming tasks.
I did say non-gaming, though, didn't I? Unfortunately, the 610's panel suffers from noticeable smearing and ghosting problems in motion. Samsung's PVA panels have historically been pretty inadequate in motion-oriented tasks, and those problems look to continue with PLS here. The anemic graphics were going to ensure a mediocre gaming experience to begin with, but the panel really does it in.
That said, viewing angles are still terrific. Shifting is minimal, and I suspect HP went with this type of panel due specifically to the sliding hinge. A TN panel would be basically impossible to use, and I've found myself underwhelmed by the low and high angle performance of my IPS-based ZR24w (that said, straight on it's just fantastic for games). PLS if nothing else looks to offer fantastic viewing angles.
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ABR - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
That's all I have to say.GotThumbs - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Whats the point of including an i7 and 8 gigs of ram when your running the OS off a drive with turtle speed? At least include a decent WD Black/Blue drive or better yet.....Run the OS off a separate SSD and use the Turtle drive for media storage.I still prefer building/upgrading my own systems, but this would be a decent unit for the kitchen. I'd be even more interested if they offered this with an AMD APU at a much lower cost. I just don't see the value in offering this product at such a high price.
Good review though.
shin0bi272 - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
While I was working on an iMac in 1999 I noticed that it didnt have a floppy drive. forward thinking sure but all the boot disks that we had for that version of the mac os were on floppy and cd burners were really expensive. So while it was forward thinking it also screwed its customers and the techs trying to repair one hit by lightning.Roland00Address - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
When you use a TN panel with a touchscreen, and you actually touch the panel the image distorts where you touch it.IPS does not have this limitation, this is why many touchscreen phones use IPS panels over the cheaper TN, furthermore IPS have better viewing angles.
PLS is a variant of IPS that Samsung has come out with.
Death666Angel - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I don't really understand you. Any touch screen of course needs a layer of glass or something else that is between the panel/pixels and the finger, because if you touch any open LCD, the image distorts.shashank7040 - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Great.....Asus Eee Pad is the first Android tablet with slide out QWERTY.....................http://goo.gl/B4rJU
Samus - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Really HP? REALLY!?Why didn't you just put a 7200RPM 2.5" in there if you were concerned about heat/power!? This is just stupid. Why bother pairing the fastest CPU on the market up with the slowest hard drive?
Snotling - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
they wanted to save a dollar on each system sold.Really, the difference in heat and power draw nowadays is close to non-existent and of course, at least on 2.5 HD... which I hope is what they used right?
What... They didn't??? those stinking bastards!
Snotling - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
"The HDMI input is great,"not so great if you consider that you have two of them (or so it seems) and no VGA, HDMI or otherwise method of plugging in a second display, projector or whatever...
please... laptops half this size have had it for decades.