Wiko Wax Hands-On: First Tegra 4i Phone Targets Budget Shoppers

This player is used on Facebook and anytime it's embedded outside of our sites.

Nvidia released some technically impressive mobile processors in the past few years, but the company has had few smartphone design wins to show for its efforts. At last year’s Mobile World Congress, the company showed off  its Tegra 4i platform for the first time, and now that low-cost, small form-factor SoC with integrated LTE has found a home in a pair of upcoming handsets. We had a chance to spend a few minutes with the Wiko Wax, which along with Latin American versions of the LG G2 mini, will be the first phone to sport a Tegra 4i processor and take note of its smooth performance.

The product of Wiko, a French manufacturer of unlocked phones that sell in Europe only, the Wax sports a 4.7-inch, 720p display, an 8-MP rear camera and a 5-MP front-facer for taking sharp selfies. We were impressed with the phone’s subtle but stylish black, soft-touch chassis, which has subtle curves that reminded us of the HTC One’s shape along with a snazzy gray accent stripe in the bottom bezel. 

MORE: 10 Smartphones with the Longest Battery Life

Though the display was only 720p, images like the background wallpaper, looked particularly sharp and colorful. The screen also seemed to have a more matte finish than most handsets as overhead lights in the room produced very little glare. 

The phone was running a stock version of Android Jellybean, which was skinned only with an Nvidia-themed wallpaper. The unit did not have much in the way of preloade software, but it did have TegraZone for downloading the latest games and a copy of “Real Boxing” which we used to try out the phone’s graphics capabilities.

When we fired up “Real Boxing,” a game with 3D rendered characters and fast action, images were smooth and fine details like the boxer’s skin seemed particularly detailed. Though not as fast as its big-brother, the Tegra 4, the Tegra 4i contains 60 GPU cores, which should provide really strong gaming and video playback experiences. 

For Nvidia’s Tegra 4i platform to succeed, the chip needs to appear in some more widely-distributed phones, but with the Wiko Wax, it looks like it’s off to a decent start. The Wax will start selling throughout Europe this April.

The official Geeks Geek, as his weekly column is titled, Avram Piltch has guided the editorial and production of Laptopmag.com since 2007. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram programmed several of LAPTOP's real-world benchmarks, including the LAPTOP Battery Test. He holds a master’s degree in English from NYU.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Acer Aspire V3 review: "Budget desktop replacement” needn’t be an oxymoron

It might seem as though every new Windows laptop has a bright, glossy touchscreen. After all, Windows 8 is a touch-centric operating system, and Intel requires any notebook powered by a fourth-generation Core processor to have a touchscreen. The hulking desktop-replacement models that gamers gravitate to, on the other hand, rarely have this feature. That omission has two reasons: First, gamers prefer to use wired mice or gamepads. Second, large touchscreens are expensive.

Acer’s Aspire V3 (model V3-772G-9402) isn’t necessarily a gaming machine, but it does have a 17.3-inch display (with resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels) and a powerful discrete graphics processor. Acer describes it as a “versatile entertainment powerhouse,” and its $1100 price tag puts it in budget territory for people who don’t mind lugging an 8-pound machine.

The absence of an SSD suppressed the Acer Aspire V3's overall benchmark performance numbers compared with the pricier Toshiba Qosmio. But its Haswell-class Core i7 processor and 12GB of memory helped it beat the older Asus VivoBook. (Click to enlarge image.)

It’s powered by one of Intel’s fastest fourth-generation Core (aka Haswell) processors, the Core i7-4702MQ; 12GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and Nvidia’s third-fastest discrete mobile GPU, the GeForce GTX 760M. But Acer skimps on storage by equipping the machine with just a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. That component choice explains the Aspire V3’s somewhat unimpressive Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 177.

While that score marks the Aspire V3 as 77 percent faster than our reference machine, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, pricier gaming notebooks have delivered scores well north of 400. But when you look at some of the gaming benchmark results that go into that composite score, the Aspire V3 looks a little better. With Dirt Showdown and BioShock Infinite at resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and visual quality set to low, it delivered very playable frame rates of 65.6 and 69.7 frames per second respectively.

And having a discrete mobile graphics processor boosted its performance with demanding games. (Click to enlarge image.)

Spend an additional $800 to buy something like Toshiba’s $1900 Qosmio X75, on the other hand, and you’ll experience those games at 119.7 and 165.3 frames per second respectively (and at lower—but playable—frame rates at higher resolutions).

The Aspire V3 is an attractively designed, well-built machine constructed mostly from plastic, but with a finish that looks like brushed aluminum. Its island-style keyboard is well spaced, includes a numeric keypad, and delivers very good tactile feedback. But if you like to play in the dark, you won’t like the fact that it’s not backlit.

ROBERT CARDINThe Acer Aspire V3 has four USB ports, but only two are USB 3.0. A DVD burner is nice to have, but a Blu-ray player would be better. (Click to enlarge image.) 

Since it’s not a touchscreen, the 17.3-inch display has a nonglare finish (most touchscreens are highly reflective, which can be problematic if you’re using the computer near a bright light source). I didn’t miss the touchscreen, because the large multitouch clickpad supports most Windows 8 gestures. You can pinch to zoom, for instance, and swipe in from the right to reveal the charms bar and in from the left to switch application windows.

Don't plan to be away from a power source for more than two hours—that's about all the Acer Aspire V3's battery will last. (Click to enlarge image.)

The screen looks good, for the most part. It displays crisp, clean text and images with an accurate color balance. But I did notice a few issues with it: First, I saw some occasional shimmering, even in static images. Second, I had intermittent problems with the machine’s brightness setting: Occasionally, when I turned the computer on, the display would be set to maximum brightness and refused respond to changes (even when I changed the power scheme). A restart resolved the problem each time it happened.

ROBERT CARDINThe Aspire V3's other ports include gigabit ethernet, VGA, and HDMI-out. (Click to enlarge image.) 

The Acer Aspire V3-772G-9402 isn’t for everyone. It’s big and heavy, it’s a little clunky, and it doesn’t deliver top-shelf performance. If you’re looking for a powerful gaming laptop, or if you want to watch Blu-ray movies, Toshiba’s Qosmio X75 is the better choice. But if you need an inexpensive desktop replacement with a big, high-resolution screen, the Aspire V3 is one of the better choices on the market right now.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Toshiba PX35t review: This budget all-in-one is quick, stylish and a great choice for the student

Toshiba PX35t-A2210 $930.00 The Toshiba PX35t-A2210 is a relatively powerful all-in-one desktop machine. While it is more expensive than the rest of this field, it delivers the performance and features to back up its price tag.

If looks are your top priority, Toshiba’s PX35t-A2210 ($930 as of 8/30/13) will surely woo you with its slim, attractive design. This 23-inch AIO sports a glossy full HD touchscreen, modern-looking wireless peripherals, and a third-generation Intel Core i3-3120M processor. It also boasts 6GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a roomy 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive.

There's plenty to like about Toshiba's PX35t-A2210, but its sharply angular mouse isn't one of them.

But looks aren’t everything, and the PX35t-A2210 isn’t just a pretty centerpiece for your desk, it’s also a good all-around performer, delivering a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 131. That means it’s nearly one-third faster than our baseline machine, the Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13 . You won’t mistake the PX35t-A2210 for a top-of-the-line gaming machine, but it’ll do just fine managing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations; surfing the Web and checking email; and streaming HD clips from Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

The PX35t-A2210 relies on the Intel HD 4000 Graphics processor integrated into its CPU, rather than a discrete graphics card, but it can still handle many graphics-related tasks without falling over and dying. It outperformed the rest of the field with our BioShock Infinite benchmark, for instance, delivering the game at 26.6 frames per second (albeit with resolution of just 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality at Low). It took a first-place finish with Dirt Showdown, too, delivering the game at 47 frames per second (here again, with resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality set to low). This PC won’t have any problem with less visually intense games, such as MMORPGs. Simpler photo- and video-editing tasks won’t be an issue, either.

The Desktop Worldbench 8.1 chart is repeated here, so you don't have to have to go back to the previous page to see an overall performance snapshot.

Toshiba outfitted the PX35t-A2210 with a glossy 23-inch multitouch screen with native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It’s a very good display, but it’s not perfect. While it’s extremely bright, and images look crisp and clear on it, colors look a little dull and whites have a yellowish tint. It’s also not the most accurate touchscreen I’ve used. There were several moments in my testing when I accidentally hit the link below the one I was trying to tap. Multitouch gestures are smooth and seamless, but the glass has an ever-so-slightly tacky feeling to it, which can make gliding across its surface a little tough. But it’s a much better input device than the PX35t-A2210’s mouse, which is a modern-looking angular thing that felt uncomfortable and sharp in my hand. The keyboard, meanwhile, delivers shallow tactile feedback but accurate typing.

The Toshiba PX35t-A2210 is attractive, usable, and relatively powerful. It’s a great choice for college students looking to balance work and play, since it performs basic administrative tasks with ease and can also play streaming HD video without a hitch. It has excellent Harman/Kardon speakers (with a Sleep and Music feature that lets you play your digital media player through them), and an ample collection of other I/O ports: Four USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, and one HDMI input (so you can plug in a cable/satellite set-top box or a videogame console).

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch review: An attractive budget all-in-one with unsatisfying peripherals and sound

Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch $699.00 The Dell Inspiron One is a sturdy, non-nonsense all-in-one. But Dell's ho-hum component choices deliver equally ho-hum benchmark performance.

I’m a big fan of Dell’s Inspiron One lineup of all-in-one PCs. These computers manage to be gorgeous, sturdy, and versatile while remaining relatively budget friendly. The Inspiron One 20 reviewed here has a smaller display than the Toshiba, but it costs more than $300 cheaper ($699 as of 8/29/13). It’s equipped with an Intel Core i3-3240T processor; 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory; and a 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive. It also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, and a 20-inch capacitive touchscreen.

Design-wise, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is tough to beat, though the Toshiba PX35t-A2210 has a slightly more premium look. This all-black AIO features an edge-to-edge glass screen, which gives it a bezel-less appearance and also makes for easy swiping when performing common Windows 8 gestures (such as swiping from the side to pull up the charms bar). The minimalist bezel sports a small, mirrored Dell logo at the bottom and a built-in webcam at the top. The system’s speakers are just below the screen. There are no buttons or ports on the front of the One 20 Touch, these are all relegated to the system’s sides and back.

Dell's Inspiron One 20 Touch boasts a great design, but its performance leaves a bit to be desired.

The One 20 Touch’s great-looking design is slightly marred by its below-average peripherals. The system comes with a wired mouse and keyboard, both of which are utterly basic (though mostly comfortable to use). The keyboard offers very light tactile feedback, which can make accurate typing difficult. The mouse is large but comfortable, and offers an average input experience.

As for performance, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is good, but not great. It will get you through schoolwork and basic entertainment, such as streaming HD movies and playing music, but it won’t handle PC games or media-editing software very well. This Inspiron scores a very average 109 on WorldBench 8.1, which means it’s just nine percent faster than our Acer baseline model . Compared with the other AIOs in this roundup, the One 20 Touch is solidly in the middle – it comes in fourth, but it’s just one point below our third-ranked HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 (110).

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

In our graphics tests, the One 20 Touch performed as expected: It managed a playable, if far from excellent, 30.7 frames per second on our Dirt Showdown test, and but only 14.8 fps with the more demanding BioShock Infinite (with both games, resolution was set to 1024 by 768 pixels, and image quality was set to Low). In other words, it can handle low-end PC games at an acceptable frame rate, but it’s about as far from a gaming powerhouse as a Commodore 64. HD video looks just okay—there’s quite a bit of artifacting and foreign objects in scenes with a medium amount of motion—and skin tones have a tendency to look burnt and oversaturated. Audio is also somewhat disappointing: The speakers aren’t very loud, and music lacks depth, even when all the software enhancements are turned on.

This chart indicates how well each all-in-one PC performed with a variety of media editing and encoding tasks. If this is an important consideration for your,the PCs with the shorter bars are your best choices. 

The Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch is a nice starter machine for those who like the Inspiron One look and feel. The touchscreen remains one of the better touchscreens that I’ve used, with smooth, accurate touch and a nice glidey feel to the glossy display. I especially like the adjustable stand, the minimalist design, and the overall sturdiness of the chassis. But it has its issues, including cheap, basic peripherals; mediocre performance; and weak speakers.

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo C540 Touch review: An excellent budget all-in-one that delivers on performance

Lenovo’s C540 Touch is one of the two best all-in-ones in this roundup. And while I have no significant complaints about the quality of its multitouch display, the manner in which the glass is recessed behind the bezel is disconcerting when you’re sweeping your finger in from the edge to call up the Windows 8 charms bar. The display measures 23 inches diagonally—just like the Acer, HP, and Toshiba models—but it’s mounted to a stand rather than being incorporated into a monolithic frame.

Lenovo pairs the Intel Core i3-3240 CPU with 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory—more than any of the other machines we looked at—and it packs a 1TB, 7200 rpm hard drive inside its somewhat thick chassis. All-in-ones are notoriously difficult to upgrade, so having lots of memory onboard to start is a major benefit.

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

The C540 Touch’s Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 129 identifies it as nearly 30-percent faster than our Core i5-powered reference machine, Acer’s Aspire A5600U-UB13 , and just a whisker behind the Toshiba PX35t-A2210. The Lenovo has a faster CPU, which helped it deliver very good media editing and encoding scores, but its weak Intel HD Graphics 2500 integrated GPU left it running in the back of the pack on our gaming benchmarks, producing just 16.1 frames per second with BioShock Infinite, even with the game running at resolution of just 1024 by 768 pixels and with its visual quality set to Low. The Toshiba, which features an Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated GPU, produced this game at a much quicker 26.6 frames per second. Neither experience is ideal, but at least the Toshiba won’t leave you looking at a slideshow.

The recessed display on Lenovo's C540 Touch is a little weird for a touchscreen computer.

Although Lenovo doesn’t have any big-name speaker manufacturers to boast of, the C540 Touch produces surprisingly good sound from its down-firing speakers. Lenovo is rather stingy with the USB 3.0 ports, providing just two on the left side of the display (along with mic and headphone jacks). Four USB 2.0 ports, hardwired gigabit ethernet, and an HDMI input are located in the back. You’ll use two of those rear USB ports to plug in Lenovo’s mouse and keyboard. The mouse is a two-button, bargain-basement cheapie; but the keyboard, while also exceedingly basic, delivers excellent tactile feedback.

It’s tough to say which all-in-one is best, the Toshiba TX35t-A2210 or the Lenovo C540 Touch. The Toshiba looks more attractive and performs better with games, but the Lenovo’s more-powerful CPU and additional memory delivers better performances on our audio-encoding, video-encoding, and image-editing benchmarks. Their Worldbench scores, meanwhile, leave them essentially tied.

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23-f260xt review: This clunky-looking budget all-in-one will save you money and space

HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23-f260xt $800.00 HP resurrected the all-in-one concept many years ago, but there's nothing particularly great about this model. Here's hoping the company shakes the industry up again soon.

I love the sturdy, rectangular stands on the Toshiba and Dell all-in-ones, but I must admit they’re not exactly space efficient. HP’s Pavilion TouchSmart 23, which costs $800 as of 8/29/13, might not be the most attractive AIO of the bunch, but its signature picture-frame design certainly helps it take up less desktop real estate, which is always a plus if you’re trying to fit a 23-inch TouchScreen AIO on a cramped dorm-room desk.

The HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23’s design is functional, if not very sexy. The system has a glossy 23-inch touchscreen, which is surrounded by a slim bezel under edge-to-edge glass. Around this bezel is another bezel that’s thicker and fabricated from matte-black plastic. A silver metal frame is wrapped around this, extending past the bottom of the screen (where the speakers are located) to rest on your desktop. The entire system is propped up via an easel-like stand, which is sturdy, space-efficient, and easy to adjust.

HP's Pavilion TouchSmart is a well-built all-in-one, but a middle-of-the-road performer.

The biggest issue with this design is that it’s just not very attractive. While the Toshiba and the Dell look like they’re floating in midair, the TouchSmart 23 just looks clunky. And don’t even get me started on the bezel-within-a-bezel look.

Design issues aside, the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 is a solidly average performer, with a Intel Core i3-3220T processor; 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory; and 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive working together to deliver a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 110. Like the other systems in this roundup, the TouchSmart 23 is good for schoolwork and basic entertainment, but not great for graphics-intensive editing or high-resolution gaming. In our Dirt Showdown graphics test (1024 by 768 pixels, image quality at Low), the TouchSmart 23 managed a barely playable 32.5 frames per second. Its BioShock Infinite performance, at the same settings, was worse: just 15.9 frames per second.

None of the all-in-ones delivered great gaming performances, but some machines were definitely better than others.

The TouchSmart 23 display resolution is the typical 1920 by 1080 resolution. It looks good: Images and text are crisp and colors are accurate, but I couldn’t shake the perception that video looked dull on this machine. Perhaps I’m used to looking at oversaturated, strangely vibrant screens, but the TouchSmart 23 just seemed to lack oomph. It is, on the other hand, a very good touchscreen, with smooth, accurate touch and a slick, sensitive surface.

The system also boasts a very usable wired USB keyboard, with flat, island-style keys, excellent feedback, and a comfortable feel. It’s a bit loud, but had no problem typing quickly and accurately on it. The mouse, which is also a wired USB model, felt just a little less comfortable. Its shiny, curved form factor isn’t very ergonomically designed, and it felt a bit awkward in my hand.

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

HP’s Pavilion TouchSmart 23 is a sturdy-looking computer with a slim, space-saving design. Although it lacks the minimalist sexiness that many other AIOs boast, it’s a solid performer with decent peripherals, a good port selection (including two USB 3.0 ports), and acceptable performance.

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch review: A 15.6-inch budget laptop that's strong on performance and can survive some rugged handling

This solidly built notebook features a great touchscreen display, an even better keyboard, and a huge and fast hard drive. But Lenovo’s networking component choices are a bit disappointing.

Lenovo laptops are the models of choice for many corporate IT departments, and the company manufactures some very good consumer-oriented machines, too. The IdeaPad Z400 Touch is a case in point. You wouldn’t mistake it for a sleek Ultrabook—it’s thick and heavy, and its battery life is wretched—but the Z400 did finish second on Notebook WorldBench 8.1 in our five-laptop competition. And despite Lenovo’s copious use of plastic, the Z400 is built like a brick outhouse.

LenovoLenovo's IdeaPad Z400 Touch is a strong contender.

Lenovo stuck with Intel’s third-generation Core processor for this budget-priced machine, pairing a 1.6GHz Core i5-3230M with 6GB of DDR/1600 memory. At 14.0 inches, its 1366-by-768-pixel display is much smaller than the Acer Aspire E1-572-6870’s 15.6-inch display; but the IdeaPad Z400 boasts a ten-point touchscreen, whereas the Acer does not.

The Z400 is an attractive PC, with charcoal-colored soft-touch paint on the outside and a pretty carbon-fiber look on the inside. Lenovo’s computer feels as rugged as Acer’s feels fragile. Though the display exhibits a little flex, the lower chassis is as rigid as some all-metal bodies I’ve tried to bend. The downside to the solid construction is weight gain: Despite its smaller display, the Z400 outweighs the Acer by 0.7 pound. Still, it comes by most of that weight honestly. Lenovo provides 6GB of memory (as against Acer’s 4GB); packs a 1TB, 7200-rpm hard drive (versus the Aspire’s 500GB drive); and includes a DVD burner (Acer provides no optical drive at all).

The tests in this suite evaluate how well a system handles editing digital media files and encoding them to different formats.

The IdeaPad Z400 comes with the type of top-notch keyboard that Lenovo is famous for building. The island-style keyboard is fully backlit and feels great under the fingers. It lacks a dedicated numeric keypad, and there’s no provision for temporarily assigning letter keys on the right side an alternative function to serve as one, but I was happy to see the full-size arrow keys in the familiar inverted-T formation at the far edge.

Augmenting the touchscreen is a responsive trackpad that supports most Windows 8 gestures, including two-finger scrolling, swipe, zoom, and rotate. The trackpad doesn’t have distinct right and left mouse buttons, but clicking in the lower right and left areas of the pad perform the same function. Unlike Lenovo’s higher-end notebooks, the Z400 does not embed a trackpoint in its keyboard; however, I found that the trackpad and the touchscreen were all I really needed.

Benchmark performance

The IdeaPad Z400 took a solid second place in our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 benchmark competition (behind the Acer Aspire E1-572-6870), with a score of 132, marking it as 1.3 times faster than our reference Asus VivoBook S550CA, which comes outfitted with a 24GB SSD cache for its hard drive.

None of these inexpensive laptops delivered especially good performance on high-level games such as BioShock Infinite.

The Lenovo placed third in the PCMark 7 Productivity, despite having a 7200-rpm hard drive (both the Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 and the Toshiba Satellite L55Dt-A5253 were much faster). But the IdeaPad captured first place on our media editing and encoding tests. It finished in the middle of the pack on our gaming tests, delivering a leisurely frame rate on BioShock Infinite of 18.4 frames per second, even with resolution set to just 1024 by 768 and visual quality set to Low.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

Connectivity and conclusion

The IdeaPad Z400’s networking capabilities are a bit disappointing. Though Lenovo selected a high-quality Wi-Fi adapter—Intel’s Centrino Wireless-N 2230—it’s a single-band adapter that doesn’t give you any choice but to connect to crowded 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks. On the bright side, it’s a 2x2 adapter, meaning that it supports a maximum physical link rate of 300 mbps. It also provides Bluetooth 4.0 support, and is compatible with Intel’s WiDi video-streaming technology. The wired ethernet adapter, meanwhile, is limited to 100 mbps—I thought those adapters had gone the way of the PS/2 port.

LenovoAll of the touchscreen notebooks had highly reflective displays.

In addition to WiDi, you have your choice of HDMI or VGA video outputs for connecting to external displays. And like the Acer Aspire, the IdeaPad has three USB ports, but only one of them is the speedy USB 3.0. Lenovo does provide a memory card reader that supports both SD and MMC media, and the company includes Dolby Home Theater technology and a set of decent speakers, so you won’t have to rely on headphones for an enjoyable audio experience.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch is a heavy computer for its size, its network connectivity is weak, and its battery life is very poor. But this laptop is a very good performer, with a great keyboard, an optical drive, and the largest, fastest hard drive in this group. It’s also the machine I’d recommend if you need a computer in this price range that’s rugged enough to tolerate a little rough handling. Overall it finishes a solid second in our roundup.

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
More by Michael Brown

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 review: A budget 11.6-inch touchscreen laptop that runs at a snail's pace

HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 $430.00 If you must have a notebook with a touchscreen, HP delivers a lot of computer for very little money. But you’ll need to be patient with this one’s performance.

HP’s Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 is one the smallest, lightest, and least expensive notebooks we’ve ever reviewed. It’s also one of the slowest, finishing dead last on nearly every criterion in our five-system roundup except two important ones: weight and battery life.

Despite carrying a price tag of just $410, this Pavilion has a touchscreen. It measures just 11.6 inches, but delivers ten-point touch and the same 1366-by-768-pixel resolution as the other budget notebooks we looked at. Once you get over its diminutive size, you realize that the display is actually pretty good. Though it has a minor issue with vertical off-axis viewing, it’s much better than the screen on the Toshiba T Satellite L55Dt-A5253. Augmenting the Pavilion’s touchscreen is a trackpad that supports Windows 8 gestures such as two-finger scrolling, zoom, and rotate. Mechanical right and left mouse buttons are situated beneath the pad.

HPThe HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 is a very inexpensive touchscreen laptop.

Apart from its small size, the Pavilion doesn’t look like a cheap PC. Though its case is composed almost entirely of plastic, the finishes on the lid and chassis are dead ringers for brushed aluminum, and the computer feels very sturdy despite being just 0.86 inch thick. Although this laptop was one of the lightest we considered for our roundup, its 3.4-pound heft is not especially impressive for its overall size.

As you might expect, the most powerful notebooks also had the shortest battery life.

If you have large fingers, you won’t like the reduced size of the Pavilion’s non-backlit keyboard. The keys are only slightly smaller than average, but the difference drove me crazy during touch-typing sessions. The laptop is too small to accommodate a numeric keypad, too—and I loathe its arrow keys’ design. Rather than laying them out in the familiar inverted T formation, HP made the right and left keys oversize, and the up and down keys half-size—and bookended by the other two.

The Fn keys have common tasks (such as volume and media player control) assigned to them by default, so you don’t have to hold down a second key to use them for those purposes. Speaking of media, the Pavilion has surprisingly good speakers, augmented by DTS Sound+ audio-processing software.

Benchmark performance

Egad, is this computer ever slow! Much of the blame can be laid at the 1GHz AMD A4-1250 processor that runs the show. This is paired with 4GB of DDR3/1333 memory, which HP says is upgradeable to 8GB. But since the machine has only one DIMM slot, you’ll need to toss the existing 4GB DIMM to do so (unless you buy the 8GB version at the outset). Our review model came with a 500GB hard-drive upgrade (the stock machine packs a 320GB hard drive), but both drives spin their platters at an unhurried 5400 rpm. There is no SSD option available, and the only optical drive option is external.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

The Pavilion TouchSmart’s pitiful Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 64 matches that of the $539 Dell Latitude 3330, but its scores on most of the other benchmarks are significantly worse than the Dell’s. For example, the Latitude earned a PCMark 7 Productivity score of 932, versus the Pavilion’s mark of 348. And the HP’s scores on our media editing and encoding tests were off-the-chart bad. On the plus side, the superior graphics processor integrated into the AMD A4 processor helped level the playing field in at least some of our gaming benchmarks.

Connectivity and conclusion

One of the ways that HP kept this computer’s price so slow was by provisioning it with cheap networking capabilities. The Realtek RTL8188EE Wi-Fi adapter is a single-band 802.11n model that supports a maximum physical link rate of just 150 mbps, and its hardwired ethernet adapter maxes out at 100 mbps.

HPHP's Pavilion TouchSmart is less than 1 inch thick, but it's rather heavy for its size.

For better wireless networking performance, you can plug an adapter into one of the Pavilion’s USB ports. It has two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, plus a multiformat media card reader. HP provides both HDMI and VGA video outputs.

The HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 is tough to beat on price—you get a lot of computer for the money. Its closest rival in price—Dell’s Latitude 3330—costs $100 more, doesn’t have a touchscreen, and carries a smaller hard drive. The Dell is slightly faster and has a larger display, but I think the TouchSmart 11z is a better value in the long run.

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Acer Aspire E1-572-680 review: This budget 15.6-inch laptop is an outstanding value

Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 $580.00 You’re not going to get everything in a 15.6-inch notebook priced less than $600. Acer made nearly all the right compromises to get to that price point.

For general use, Acer’s Aspire E1 is the clear winner in this roundup. Acer crams a lot of value into this laptop’s $580 price tag, including a Haswell-class CPU (Intel’s 1.6GHz Core i5-4200U) and a 15.6-inch LED-backlit display with native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels.

Though Acer uses quite a bit of plastic in the Aspire E1’s design, you won’t be ashamed to pull the notebook out of your bag. A smooth finish and rich color—Acer calls it Clarinet Black—make the 1-inch-thick machine very attractive.

The Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 is the easy winner of this roundup.

The chassis and lid, on the other hand, exhibit quite a bit of flex, so you won’t want to subject this machine to rough handling. The upside to all the plastic is low weight: At 4.6 pounds, this laptop has an advantage of more than 1 pound over the other 15.6-inch models I looked at, and it weighs just over a pound more than the ones with smaller displays.

Capitalizing on the display’s generous size, Acer includes a full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad on the Aspire E1’s deck. I expected the island-style keyboard to be somewhat flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised by its solid tactile feedback. It’s not backlit and it’s a trifle noisy, but I have no complaints about how it felt under my fingertips.

The Aspire E1’s display is plenty bright, producing vivid photos and videos, but off-axis viewing is merely adequate. Acer also shaved a few bucks off the Aspire E1’s asking price by not including a touchscreen, but its highly responsive trackpad supports several Windows 8 gestures, including two-finger scrolling, zoom, rotate, and flip. You can also slide in from the right to open the charm bar, and slide in from the left to switch between applications.

The trackpad, which has a wide bar at its base that provides both right and left mouse-button functions, is off center in relation to the display, but dead center to the keyboard. It looks a little odd until you lay your hands on the keyboard’s home row.

The Aspire E1 has only 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, but you can open it up and pop in a second module to double that amount to 8GB. Storage takes the form of a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. There’s no SSD, to handle cache or anything else, and I noticed what appears to be an empty bay where an optical drive might go.

Benchmark performance

Acer’s machine delivered a Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 177, the best of the group by a wide margin. It also outperformed our reference platform, an Asus VivoBook S550CA, which has both an SSD and a touchscreen (but costs more than any of the systems reviewed here). Diving into the individual components in our test suite, the Acer performed better than the rest of the field in the PCMark Productivity suite, but Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z400, which has a larger and faster hard drive, handled our collection of media editing and encoding tasks better.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

All work and no play makes for a boring lifestyle, but you’ll want to stick with casual games on this computer. We dialed BioShock Infinite’s resolution down to 1024 by 768 and its image quality to Low, and Acer’s laptop still managed to render the game at no better than a sluggish 25 frames per second. Intel has made strides with its integrated graphics, but its Intel HD Graphics 4400 still isn’t up to snuff for hardcore gaming. Even so, its gaming score beat everything else in the field (aside from our reference notebook).

Connectivity and conclusion

The Aspire E1-572-6870 offers a gigabit ethernet connection for occasions when you can plug into a network, and a Qualcomm Atheros AR956x dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter for times when you can’t. The laptop also has a Bluetooth 4.0 + HS adapter to support theoretical data-transfer speeds of up to 24 mbps, though the only good application I’ve ever found for Bluetooth is streaming audio).

Acer provides an HDMI-out for connecting the computer to digital displays and TVs, and a VGA output for older monitors and video projectors (the latter could come in very handy in classrooms and conference rooms, which tend to have vintage equipment). The system also has three USB ports, but only one of them is USB 3.0. The included memory card reader supports only SD Card.

i enjoyed using Acer’s Aspire E1-572-6870. The machine is blessedly quiet, and it delivered a respectable 4 hours of battery life (middle-of-the-pack performance in this roundup).

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

5 budget all-in-one PCs for college students: We name the best values

Laptops are awesome. They’re convenient, portable, and relatively powerful: the perfect combination for college. But sometimes you just want the comfort of a display, a full-sized keyboard and mouse, and speakers that don’t make every singer sound like a screaming banshee.

Well, you have two choices: You can get a traditional desktop computer and a stand-alone display and speakers, or you can buy an all-in-one that integrates the computer, display, and speakers into a single chassis. A desktop might cost a little less (don’t forget to factor in the price of a display and speakers), but it won’t move well. All those internal components can be jarred loose in transit, creating major troubleshooting headaches every time you set it up in your next domicile. And if you’re a typical college kid, you’ll be moving—again and again—for the next several years.

Do you really have room for a box this size, plus a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a pair of speakers? If the answer is yes, do you want to cart all that stuff with you every time you move?

Fortunately, all-in-ones have become more powerful and dropped in price over the past several years. The five all-in-ones we’ve gathered here are perfect for college students: They have large touchscreens, good speakers, solid media editing and encoding capabilities, and big hard drives. Those are features you’ll be thankful for when finals—and parties—come around.

All-in-one PCs just make more sense—even if your dorm room will never ever be featured in an issue of Architectural Digest.

Each of these computers can easily handle productivity tasks—word processing, number crunching, and Web surfing—without breaking a sweat, but they can also deliver excellent audio and video experiences when you’re ready to relax. Yes, there are more powerful AIOs on the market, and the ones we’ve picked might not be the best choice for graphic design or media-production majors, but any one of them will help you manage your school work and watch Netflix.

Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13
(Reference)HP Pavilion TouchSmart
23-f260xt

I used several criteria to evaluate these all-in-ones, including benchmark performance, multimedia experience, storage capacity, touchscreen quality, overall attractiveness, and price. Each model is based on a third-generation Intel Core processor, but no two have the same CPU. PCWorld uses a Core i5-powered Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13 as its desktop PC performance baseline.

It’s true that the cloud offers almost limitless storage, but wouldn’t you feel more comfortable keeping your school projects, photos, and videos close at hand, just in case? Keep a backup in the cloud, by all means, but all of these machines provide plenty of local storage. Each of the computers I evaluated came with a 1TB, 7200 rpm hard drive. An SSD—or at least an SSD cache—would deliver even better performance, but that’s a feature you won’t find in this price range.

Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13
(Reference)HP Pavilion TouchSmart
23-f260xt

As with budget notebooks, budget all-in-ones have limited graphics capabilities. None of the AIOs in this roundup, for instance, has a discrete video card, which means none of them excel at graphics-heavy tasks such as video editing and hard-core gaming. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to play any games, but you will need to make some resolution and image-quality concessions.

All five of these computers have big, bright, 20- to 23-inch touchscreens. Some are better than others, but none of them are poor. You’ll have no problem watching movies, juggling multiple windows, and tapping your way through Windows 8 on any of them.

Your computer will inevitably become the focal point of your dorm room, so industrial design is an important consideration. Unfortunately, some PC-makers have become so obsessed with looks that they’ve sacrificed usability. The sleek, ultra-modern keyboards and mice that come with some of these systems are beautiful to look at, but not all that comfortable to use. I also encountered I/O ports in locations that were difficult to access.

Each of these all-in-ones has its strengths and weaknesses. Some are prettier, some are more powerful, but each has something unique to offer. Once you’ve decided where your priorities lie, you’ll have a gorgeous AIO sitting on your desk in no time.

If you like HP’s picture frame design, but you’d prefer something a bit more polished, the Acer Aspire Z3-605-UR22 ($900 as of 8/29/13) is another AIO with a space-saving chassis. The Z3-605 sports an Intel i3-3227U processor; 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and a 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive. It has integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, a 23-inch touchscreen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and a wireless mouse and keyboard.

Acer had the best budget notebook in our earlier roundup, but its inexpensive all-in-one offering leaves us cold.

The Aspire Z3-605-UR22 has a frame design similar to the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23, with a glossy edge-to-edge glass display surrounded by a frame that extends past the bottom of the screen to rest on your desktop. The screen is propped up by an easel-like stand that’s very easy to adjust thanks to a spring-loaded hinge.

Unlike the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23, the Aspire only has one slim bezel under glass. This gives the machine a much more minimalist and streamlined look, though it is slightly disrupted by the system’s convenience ports. Instead of being located neatly on the side of the machine or out of sight on the rear panel, the Z3-605’s convenience ports—a card reader, a USB 3.0 port, and headphone and microphone jacks—are located right up front, just below the display. The placement sounds convenient, until you plug in an external drive or a headset and end up with cables draped over your keyboard.

Performance-wise, the Aspire is the weakest AIO of this bunch. It scored just 89 in our Desktop WorldBench 8.1 test, which means it’s 11 percent slower than our baseline (which happens to be its sibling, Acer’s Aspire A5600U-UB13). That also puts it 20 points behind the second-to-last contender, Dell’s Inspiron One 20. The Aspire won’t have any problem with basic productivity apps, and it will stream HD video, but you might have trouble when you try to multitask.

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

The Aspire Z3-605-UR22 also delivered an appallingly low score with our suite of media editing and encoding tests (it finished last, and by a very wide margin), so we were surprised that it performed as well as it did in our gaming tests. This AIO managed to produce Dirt Showdown at 33.2 frames per second, and BioShock Infinite at 21.0 frames per second (both games set to a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels, with visual quality set to Low). It’s no gaming powerhouse, but it performed better than most of the PCs in this roundup.

The Aspire Z3-605 does have one of the better-looking touchscreens in our roundup. Its glossy 23-inch touchscreen offers 10-finger multitouch with smooth, accurate gestures; bright, vibrant colors; and crisp, clear text. The only minor issues I saw during my testing was some minor artifacting—even in still or nearly-still images—and softening of details in photos and film. In some shots, people looked a bit featureless and oversaturated.

The Z3-605 has very nice wireless peripherals. Its keyboard is soft and noiseless but still comfortable and easy to type on, and its mouse is just the right size and ergonomically curved to fit your hand. While these peripherals aren’t as striking as the Toshiba’s silver-accented ones, they are far more usable and comfortable.

Pros

Comfortable mouse and keyboardSlim, space-saving designQuick startup time

Cons

Weak performanceOversaturated displayPoor price/performance ratio  

Bottom line

Acer's Aspire Z3-605-UR22 is an attractive machine, but its performance leaves us wanting.

Rating

2 stars

I’m a big fan of Dell’s Inspiron One lineup of all-in-one PCs. These computers manage to be gorgeous, sturdy, and versatile while remaining relatively budget friendly. The Inspiron One 20 reviewed here has a smaller display than the Toshiba, but it costs more than $300 cheaper ($699 as of 8/29/13). It’s equipped with an Intel Core i3-3240T processor; 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory; and a 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive. It also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, and a 20-inch capacitive touchscreen.

Design-wise, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is tough to beat, though the Toshiba PX35t-A2210 has a slightly more premium look. This all-black AIO features an edge-to-edge glass screen, which gives it a bezel-less appearance and also makes for easy swiping when performing common Windows 8 gestures (such as swiping from the side to pull up the charms bar). The minimalist bezel sports a small, mirrored Dell logo at the bottom and a built-in webcam at the top. The system’s speakers are just below the screen. There are no buttons or ports on the front of the One 20 Touch, these are all relegated to the system’s sides and back.

Dell's Inspiron One 20 Touch boasts a great design, but its performance leaves a bit to be desired.

The One 20 Touch’s great-looking design is slightly marred by its below-average peripherals. The system comes with a wired mouse and keyboard, both of which are utterly basic (though mostly comfortable to use). The keyboard offers very light tactile feedback, which can make accurate typing difficult. The mouse is large but comfortable, and offers an average input experience.

As for performance, the Inspiron One 20 Touch is good, but not great. It will get you through schoolwork and basic entertainment, such as streaming HD movies and playing music, but it won’t handle PC games or media-editing software very well. This Inspiron scores a very average 109 on WorldBench 8.1, which means it’s just nine percent faster than our Acer baseline model . Compared with the other AIOs in this roundup, the One 20 Touch is solidly in the middle – it comes in fourth, but it’s just one point below our third-ranked HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 (110).

In our graphics tests, the One 20 Touch performed as expected: It managed a playable, if far from excellent, 30.7 frames per second on our Dirt Showdown test, and but only 14.8 fps with the more demanding BioShock Infinite (with both games, resolution was set to 1024 by 768 pixels, and image quality was set to Low). In other words, it can handle low-end PC games at an acceptable frame rate, but it’s about as far from a gaming powerhouse as a Commodore 64. HD video looks just okay—there’s quite a bit of artifacting and foreign objects in scenes with a medium amount of motion—and skin tones have a tendency to look burnt and oversaturated. Audio is also somewhat disappointing: The speakers aren’t very loud, and music lacks depth, even when all the software enhancements are turned on.

This chart indicates how well each all-in-one PC performed with a variety of media editing and encoding tasks. If this is an important consideration for your,the PCs with the shorter bars are your best choices. 

The Dell Inspiron One 20 Touch is a nice starter machine for those who like the Inspiron One look and feel. The touchscreen remains one of the better touchscreens that I’ve used, with smooth, accurate touch and a nice glidey feel to the glossy display. I especially like the adjustable stand, the minimalist design, and the overall sturdiness of the chassis. But it has its issues, including cheap, basic peripherals; mediocre performance; and weak speakers.

Pros

Attractive, sturdy designAccurate, smooth touchscreenMinimalist bezel/face

Cons

Mediocre performanceLow-volume speakers with little depthVery basic, wired peripherals

Bottom line

The Dell Inspiron One is a sturdy, no-nonsense all-in-one. But Dell's ho-hum component choices deliver equally ho-hum benchmark performance.

Rating

3.5 stars

On the next page: Reviews of HP's Pavilion TouchSmart 23, Lenovo's C540 Touch, and Toshiba's PX35t-A2210

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference