Dell OptiPlex 9010 All-in-One Review: Dell's All-in-One Goes Enterprise

Conclusion: Curtailed by the Display

Having put the screws to the Dell OptiPlex 9010 All-in-One, I come away pleasantly surprised in many ways. This is one of the few all-in-ones I've seen where the overall design feels appropriate to the hardware. All-in-ones have a nasty, reoccurring problem with heat and fan noise stemming from the way they often cram the hardware behind a display that's generating plenty of heat on its own. The result is a form factor that should benefit over notebooks by the additional real estate for cooling but promptly sacrifices that benefit by clumping those hot components right next to each other anyhow. Dell's 9010 AiO doesn't have that problem. Without dedicated graphics soaking up precious cooling, it maintains reasonable temperatures and becomes a pretty stellar acoustic citizen in the process.

The question that I posed early on with the 9010 AiO was whether or not it justifies its existence against other solutions and whether or not it's a good choice for the use cases that Dell is targeting it at. Unfortunately, this is where we start getting on shaky ground, and the blame can be placed entirely on the poor quality display. eIPS displays are increasingly common and inexpensive in the wild, and even Dell offers them, so there's no reason why the 9010 AiO shouldn't sport one or at least the option for one. The poor viewing angles of the TN-based display cause the 9010 to immediately rule itself out of contention for kiosk use, photo editing, and video editing.

What are we left with? Situations where the i7-3770S in our review system is overkill, unfortunately. The 9010 AiO becomes appropriate only for mass deployment in offices, schools, and libraries where not much more than a terminal is really needed. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a situation where even the option to upgrade could've allowed the 9010 AiO to serve multiple masters just as effectively. Markets were sacrificed, full stop.

That's really where the disappointment comes in, too. One of the unfortunate parts of this job is having hardware come in that is so close to being a great solution, only to fall short because it seems like a penny pincher with no business designing hardware decided to cut a feature or make a sacrifice that they didn't think anyone would notice. Is the OptiPlex 9010 All-in-One a bad all-in-one system? Heavens no, it's among the best I've tested, and easily recommended for situations where a basic system is needed in bulk. But it could've been a lot better if someone hadn't pinched the wrong pennies.