Screen Quality

The screen is unfortunately one of the places where HP's TouchSmart 610 made the right investment while Dell sacrificed quality for the price point. I've honestly never been happy with TN panels this large on the desktop; viewing angles are oftentimes poor and it can be difficult to find a sweet spot. Unfortunately the design of the Inspiron One 2320 exacerbates things; by being slightly tilted back, the top of the screen washes out a bit. Viewing a TN panel from below is pretty much the worst way to look at it, and that wisdom applies here.

LCD Quality - Contrast

LCD Quality - White

LCD Quality - Black

LCD Quality - Color Accuracy

LCD Quality - Color Gamut

The color gamut is good, but everything else about the Inspiron One's panel is just awful. These numbers would be unacceptable in a standalone panel, and would rank "slightly above average" at best as a notebook screen. Our color accuracy after calibration was particularly bizarre, suggesting the gamma in this panel is unusual as that much of a deviation is extremely rare on even the worst of screens. In practice the Inspiron One seems to trend towards a slightly reddish hue, and it suffers from the same kind of hot reds that I'm used to seeing on Dell screens.

Viewing angles are wider than a notebook's, but really the poor quality TN panel used in the Inspiron One makes the composite, HDMI, and antenna inputs on the back of the unit feel more like a convenience at best. I get the feeling Dell was gunning for something that could be used as a TV and more, but it seems most end users would be better served just going out and buying a separate television.

Gaming Performance User Experience, Heat, and Power Consumption
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  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Just to help avoid confusion, I've added a bit to the offending paragraph. Here's the updated version, so if you still have complaints with this wording please let me know what you disagree with and why:

    "When I spoke to HP's representative about the meager graphics hardware in the TouchSmart, she suggested that it was really meant to be more of a family computer and thus didn't need particularly aggressive graphics hardware. That may be the case, but it undermines the necessity of a dedicated GPU to begin with. If the integrated HD 2000/3000 graphics are inadequate, you probably plan on doing at least some gaming, so you'll want more. The fact is that these mobile graphics chips were designed for notebooks with 768p screens, and at that resolution they're fine. On an all-in-one, though, they're much harder to justify and really speak to a fundamental problem with the all-in-one ecosystem: we need an in-between point for graphics hardware. What we really need for "upscale" 1080p AIO systems is at least GT 555M or (preferably) GTX 560M level hardware; we've seen such chips in 14" and 15" notebooks; would it really be that hard to stuff something faster into a significantly larger AIO system? The GT 525M upgrade from the base model Inspiron One 2320 ends up costing over $200, and for that price it just doesn't add enough performance."
  • tzhu07 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    This looks like the retarded younger brother of the iMac. Steve Jobs is fundamentally correct when he said that Dell makes boring beige boxes. Dell hasn't really done anything to prove him wrong.

    And God damnit those fucking stickers (lower right corner) keep appearing on Windows based machines. Stop, just stop already. I can't roll my eyes far back enough at this practice.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    NOTE: Sigmatu, personal attacks on people is not something we like to see in our comments, and they have been deleted. tzhu07 has expressed an opinion that this looks like a crappy knock-off of the iMac, and that's certainly a valid opinion. Complaining about the stickers on systems is also valid. Your attacks suggesting he... whatever... are uncalled for. Any more of that and I'll pull out the banhammer.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    I guess when I was told to "stfu" when I was talking about my horrible 3gs in another one of your articles, that was ok because I was talking the truth about Apple? gotcha.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    I don't read through every comment on every thread, but your attacks were personal and I saw them. If someone makes unwarranted attacks on you, feel free to drop me an email. If it's in the forums, though, don't talk to me -- talk to one of the forum moderators. The bottom line is your comments here were out of line and I saw them. Instead of pointing the finger at a vague "other post", accept that your posts were inflammatory and personal attacks that contributed nothing, and move on with better posts. It's what helps separate the AT readership from, say, the DT readership (though there's obviously overlap); we like to hold our comments to a higher standard. :-)
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Fine, next time I will just say how fucking stupid Macs are and go on a diatribe about that since that seems to be fine by you. Fuck Macs! I guess that's the higher standard you are looking for?

    In all honesty, both of our comments should have been deleted. By you posting about this instead of a personal message, then you should not be surprised by a response.

    Anyways, I got it. I will not call people names, but apparently I can throw up all the profanity about products and that is fine. Sounds fairly hypocritical to me but whatever man.
  • Dustin Sklavos - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Or you could just behave yourself in the first place.

    That is also an option.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Fuck Macs.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Macs are fucking grossly overpriced.

    I am expressing my opinion and "that's certainly a valid opinion".
  • niva - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Right on about the stickers, they're so hard to remove... I wish companies would stop doing that. Their main logo is obtrusive enough.

    Same about bloatware sold with the machines. I want a clean windows install on it.

    Agreed with the sentiment that this is a VERY cheap iMac. Hate Apple but props must be given in terms of design. Dell failed in execution of this AIO.

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