Review: Toshiba's LX835-D3230 is a compact all-in-one with strong media capability

All-in-one computers are popular due to their simplicity, low profile, and media capabilities. They have increasingly become more powerful, too, offering features and performance closer to what a power user desires. The LX835-D3230, Toshiba’s latest all-in-one model, offers good performance for the price, but some users may find the screen size constraining.

Priced competitively at $999, the LX835-D3230 comes with an Intel Core i7-3610QM processor that runs at 2.3GHz, plus 6GB of RAM for speedy multitasking. It managed a score of 103 on our strenuous WorldBench 7 benchmark suite, so it's about 3 percent faster than our baseline system.

Unfortunately, the LX835-D3230 has only Intel's integrated HD 4000 graphics technology. In our graphics tests, it barely ran Dirt 3 and Crysis 2 on high settings at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, achieving an average of just 15.0 frames per second and 9.2 fps respectively. When we lowered the graphics settings and dropped the resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels, the system ran Dirt 3 at 52.0 fps and Crysis 2 at 31.4 fps. In any case, you won't want to try playing any graphically intensive games on the LX835-D3230, though it should manage casual, low-end games fairly well.

Despite the LX835-D3230's inability to play games, you shouldn't count it out as a media maven. The 23-inch high-definition screen sports a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and is great for watching movies and television. It may be a little tough to watch from the couch, but it's ideal for a small room or dorm. It also comes with a remote that allows you to sit back and enjoy media from a comfortable distance. Unfortunately, since the system lacks a touchscreen, it can't take full advantage of the impending Windows 8 features. Most people won’t mind, though, and the absence of touch support will help you keep the screen clean.

The LX835-D3230 boasts a plethora of ports for the media aficionado, including a TV tuner and an HDMI-in port for connecting video game consoles or Blu-ray players. If you have a superb DVD collection, you’re in luck with the included DVD drive. You'll also find four USB 2.0 ports and a gigabit ethernet port on the back, plus two USB 3.0 ports, a memory card reader, a headphone jack, and a microphone jack on the left side.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the LX835-D3230 covers all the bases with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. With both kinds of wireless tech available for staying connected or syncing devices, you'll get to keep the area around the system free of cable clutter.

A standard wireless mouse and keyboard accompany the system. Both are a comfortable size, and easy to use. The keyboard isn’t particularly useful for media capabilities, but it does offer the standard pause/play, skip, and back controls when you use the function key.

The screen leans on a small stand that allows a little room for adjustment. It isn’t the most elegant setup that we have seen on an all-in-one, but it works. The speakers are located on the front, and the sound quality is reasonably good with the installed SRS Premium Sound 3D software.

The LX835-D3230 has your storage needs covered for the foreseeable future, as it comes with 1TB of 7200-rpm storage for all of your programs, files, and media. A terabyte should last most people (even media collectors) a long while before they start looking to expand. Of course, this all-in-one's lack of easy internal accessibility means that any expansion will have to take the form of an external drive.

If you’re looking for an AIO, and you want to get a bit more power without killing your wallet, the Vizio CA27-A1—that company's first all-in-one—may be an alternative to keep an eye on. The $1250 (as of September 5, 2012) CA27-A1 managed a score of 122 on our WorldBench 7 benchmark, and has a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card. It still isn’t a gaming machine by any means, but you will certainly get your money’s worth from it. The Vizio is also larger, with a 27-inch display and 1920-by-1080-pixel high-definition resolution. Its startup times are faster since it uses a small solid-state drive to cache the larger, slower 5400-rpm hard drive.

Overall, though, the Toshiba LX835-D3230 is a great all-in-one system for a great price. It is encouraging to see how affordable AIO systems have become without sacrificing a lot of power and usability. In an age where media consumption is a centerpiece for most people, options such as the LX835-D3230 are key to staying on a budget and still enjoying everything that modern entertainment has to offer.

WorldBench 7 results Gaming test results

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Nikon Coolpix P310 Review: Premium Compact Camera at a Bargain Price

The Nikon Coolpix P310 is without peer at its price ($300 as of August 15, 2012). It's a premium compact camera priced more like your average point-and-shoot, with a fast F1.8 lens, manual exposure controls, very good image quality, and a pocket-size body. The Coolpix P310 offers the best bang for the buck you'll find in the premium-compact class, just as long as you don't need a long-zoom lens or a RAW mode.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

In PCWorld Labs jury evaluations for image quality, the Nikon Coolpix P310 largely lived up to its "premium compact" branding. It may not have the best overall image quality in the premium point-and-shoot realm, but it is among the best cameras we've tested this year.

The P310 earned scores of Very Good in three of the four testing categories (exposure quality, sharpness, and lack of distortion), and a Good score for color accuracy. Unlike most other cameras these days, the Coolpix P310 takes an understated approach to color reproduction; you don't see the punchy, oversaturated colors that you do in other cameras' pictures. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though skin tones do look a bit on the pale side.

You can see the larger-size images we used for our subjective tests by clicking the thumbnails to the left.

The Coolpix P310's scores in our video tests weren't as impressive. In our bright-light tests it produced noticeably less contrast, sharpness, and detail than some of the better video-capable point-and-shoot cameras. In our low-light tests, the P310's 1080p/30-fps test clips looked so dark that we had a hard time picking up what was happening in front of the lens. Overall, the Coolpix P310 earned a score of Fair for video capture; we rated its audio pickup as Good.

Here are the test videos we used for our subjective evaluations. Select 1080p from the menu in each player to see the highest-definition footage.

With a rating of 230 shots per charge in CIPA's standardized tests, the Coolpix P310's rechargeable lithium ion battery ranked at the high end of our Fair range for battery life.

Shooting Modes and Features

Macro modeEasy Panorama modeSelective Color filterThese days most cameras in this price range are loaded with bells and whistles such as in-camera GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities. Instead, the Nikon Coolpix P310 is somewhat refreshing in its straightforward features, which Nikon is aiming solely at traditional photography.

The Coolpix P310 is a very good performer in macro mode, with the ability to get within an inch of the subject and capture a crisp shot—at least in well-lit situations. I also found that the camera's close-up focusing capabilities are even better if you switch to manual focus; in Auto mode, the camera's minimum focus distance is about an inch, but if you jump into aperture-priority mode and use manual focus, you can get within half an inch. In either case, the depth of field is impressively shallow for a camera with a relatively small 1/2.3-inch-type sensor.

As you'd expect in a premium compact camera, the Coolpix P310 goes beyond Auto mode and Program Auto mode and offers manual exposure controls, aperture-priority mode, and shutter-priority mode. One notable omission is a RAW-shooting mode. In addition to those manual controls, you'll find a custom entry on the mode dial labeled with a "U" for "user." When you set the camera to User mode, diving into the menus allows you to pick your own default settings.

Another entry on the mode dial gives you quick access to the camera's Night Landscape mode, which employs exposure bracketing and image stacking to produce crisp, clear photos in low-light settings without using a flash. The results are outstanding, but the camera takes about 8 seconds to process your photo in this mode. It's great for one-off photos in low light, but your shot-to-shot times will suffer as you wait for your images to write to your storage card; you can't use the camera while it processes the photos. You'll encounter the same slow save speeds while shooting video, but at least you can use the camera while you're waiting for a video to save to your card.

For high-speed shooting, you have other options. A Function button on the front of the camera provides access to burst-shooting settings: a 5-frames-per-second burst mode at full 16-megapixel resolution, a 120-fps high-speed mode at 640-by-480-pixel resolution, and a 60-fps mode at 1-megapixel resolution. The front-mounted Function button also provides access to a precapture buffer that starts taking 3-megapixel images once you half-press the shutter button, an interval timer that you can use for time-lapse photography, and a unique "Multi-shot 16" mode that creates a single mosaic of shots captured at high speed.

Since all of those options are available at the touch of the Function button, the rest of the settings menus stay clean, but there's a catch: Because the button is on the front of the camera, you sometimes forget it's there.

You access the camera's extensive array of scene modes in a more traditional way, via the mode dial; you'll find a single Scene position that brings up a menu of 20 scene-mode options. Along with mainstays such as portrait, fireworks, landscape, and sunset mode, the P310 has newfangled options such as a 3D capture mode (which records images as .MPO files) and two options for panoramic images: a motion-controlled panorama mode and a stitch-assist panorama mode that helps you compose up to six successive shots.

Some of the Coolpix P310's best features come into play after you take a picture. Like many of Nikon's cameras, the Coolpix P310 has excellent post-shot editing tools that you can apply to a copy of an original photo during playback. A few highlights among the post-shot tools are a Quick Retouch feature that brightens up colors and contrast in your images, a D-Lighting (dynamic lighting) option that brings out details in darker areas of a scene, a Miniature Effect filter that mimics a tilt-shift lens, and a Selective Color feature that lets you pick a single color to highlight in an otherwise black-and-white shot.

Although the P310 doesn't provide full manual exposure controls in video mode, it does put a couple of semimanual video options at your disposal. By pressing the left and right directions on the camera's control pad while capturing video, you can force the camera's autofocus system to readjust or lock the exposure settings for a particular scene. You can also trim down clips inside the camera.

Hardware and Design

Don't expect to find a long-zoom lens here; the Coolpix P310's 4.2X-optical-zoom lens reaches from 24mm to 100mm, making it a good option for wide-angle landscape shots, macro photography, and portraits. Its F1.8 maximum aperture at wide angle is the marquee feature of the lens; at full telephoto, that aperture stops down to a less-impressive maximum setting of F4.9.

The Coolpix P310 is a little black box that should fit in anyone's pocket, as its compact body measures 1.3 inches deep, 4.1 inches wide, and 2.3 inches tall. On the front of the camera is a small raised lip that acts more like a fingergrip than a handgrip. However, the camera has so many controls at its top-right corner that you'll probably be better off shooting with two hands; bracing the camera with your left hand gives your thumb more freedom to operate the camera's zoom, shutter-release, and shutter-speed controls in manual mode. Near the raised fingergrip is the aforementioned Function button.

The top of the P310 hosts a mechanical pop-up flash on the left side. You operate it by using a switch on the left side of the camera, and you can put the flash back into the body by pressing down on it with your finger. The top of the camera also has stereo microphones, as well as several controls over on the top right side. You'll find a traditional mode dial with eight options (auto, program auto, manual, aperture priority, shutter-priority, scene modes, Night Landscape, and the user-defined mode), the shutter/zoom control, the on/off button, and an unlabeled dial that you use to adjust shutter-speed settings in manual mode.

That unlabeled dial is a bit underutilized. For example, you can't use it to adjust manual focus or ISO settings in other shooting modes. It's functional only in manual mode, and it merely lets you adjust your shutter speed.

To the right of the 3-inch, 921,000-dot LCD on the back of the camera are four dedicated buttons and a scrolling directional pad. A dedicated record button and a playback button sit near the top of the camera, and a menu button and delete button reside near the bottom. In addition to menu navigation and one-touch access to flash settings, exposure compensation, macro mode, and the self-timer, the directional pad controls the P310's manual focus settings (when you press up and down), aperture values (when you scroll), and other in-camera settings depending on the mode the camera is in. A Mini HDMI port on the side and a Micro-USB port on the bottom round out the camera's hardware features.

Bottom Line

Other pocketable premium cameras are out there, but most of them cost at least $400. If you're looking for a pocketable point-and-shoot camera with manual controls and good low-light performance, you won't find a lower-priced option than the Nikon Coolpix P310. It requires you to make some compromises: You have to do without a RAW-shooting mode, a big sensor, and a long-zoom lens, and you'll have to wait for Night Landscape shots and high-definition videos to save. Nevertheless, the Coolpix P310 gives budget-minded photographers a nice F1.8 lens and manual exposure controls to work with, and it takes great-looking photos in most lighting conditions. In fact, even if you ignore its bargain price, this is one of the best pocket cameras available right now.

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Nikon Coolpix P310 Review: Premium Compact Camera at a Bargain Price

The Nikon Coolpix P310 is without peer at its price ($300 as of August 15, 2012). It's a premium compact camera priced more like your average point-and-shoot, with a fast F1.8 lens, manual exposure controls, very good image quality, and a pocket-size body. The Coolpix P310 offers the best bang for the buck you'll find in the premium-compact class, just as long as you don't need a long-zoom lens or a RAW mode.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

In PCWorld Labs jury evaluations for image quality, the Nikon Coolpix P310 largely lived up to its "premium compact" branding. It may not have the best overall image quality in the premium point-and-shoot realm, but it is among the best cameras we've tested this year.

The P310 earned scores of Very Good in three of the four testing categories (exposure quality, sharpness, and lack of distortion), and a Good score for color accuracy. Unlike most other cameras these days, the Coolpix P310 takes an understated approach to color reproduction; you don't see the punchy, oversaturated colors that you do in other cameras' pictures. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though skin tones do look a bit on the pale side.

You can see the larger-size images we used for our subjective tests by clicking the thumbnails to the left.

The Coolpix P310's scores in our video tests weren't as impressive. In our bright-light tests it produced noticeably less contrast, sharpness, and detail than some of the better video-capable point-and-shoot cameras. In our low-light tests, the P310's 1080p/30-fps test clips looked so dark that we had a hard time picking up what was happening in front of the lens. Overall, the Coolpix P310 earned a score of Fair for video capture; we rated its audio pickup as Good.

Here are the test videos we used for our subjective evaluations. Select 1080p from the menu in each player to see the highest-definition footage.

With a rating of 230 shots per charge in CIPA's standardized tests, the Coolpix P310's rechargeable lithium ion battery ranked at the high end of our Fair range for battery life.

Shooting Modes and Features

Macro modeEasy Panorama modeSelective Color filterThese days most cameras in this price range are loaded with bells and whistles such as in-camera GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities. Instead, the Nikon Coolpix P310 is somewhat refreshing in its straightforward features, which Nikon is aiming solely at traditional photography.

The Coolpix P310 is a very good performer in macro mode, with the ability to get within an inch of the subject and capture a crisp shot—at least in well-lit situations. I also found that the camera's close-up focusing capabilities are even better if you switch to manual focus; in Auto mode, the camera's minimum focus distance is about an inch, but if you jump into aperture-priority mode and use manual focus, you can get within half an inch. In either case, the depth of field is impressively shallow for a camera with a relatively small 1/2.3-inch-type sensor.

As you'd expect in a premium compact camera, the Coolpix P310 goes beyond Auto mode and Program Auto mode and offers manual exposure controls, aperture-priority mode, and shutter-priority mode. One notable omission is a RAW-shooting mode. In addition to those manual controls, you'll find a custom entry on the mode dial labeled with a "U" for "user." When you set the camera to User mode, diving into the menus allows you to pick your own default settings.

Another entry on the mode dial gives you quick access to the camera's Night Landscape mode, which employs exposure bracketing and image stacking to produce crisp, clear photos in low-light settings without using a flash. The results are outstanding, but the camera takes about 8 seconds to process your photo in this mode. It's great for one-off photos in low light, but your shot-to-shot times will suffer as you wait for your images to write to your storage card; you can't use the camera while it processes the photos. You'll encounter the same slow save speeds while shooting video, but at least you can use the camera while you're waiting for a video to save to your card.

For high-speed shooting, you have other options. A Function button on the front of the camera provides access to burst-shooting settings: a 5-frames-per-second burst mode at full 16-megapixel resolution, a 120-fps high-speed mode at 640-by-480-pixel resolution, and a 60-fps mode at 1-megapixel resolution. The front-mounted Function button also provides access to a precapture buffer that starts taking 3-megapixel images once you half-press the shutter button, an interval timer that you can use for time-lapse photography, and a unique "Multi-shot 16" mode that creates a single mosaic of shots captured at high speed.

Since all of those options are available at the touch of the Function button, the rest of the settings menus stay clean, but there's a catch: Because the button is on the front of the camera, you sometimes forget it's there.

You access the camera's extensive array of scene modes in a more traditional way, via the mode dial; you'll find a single Scene position that brings up a menu of 20 scene-mode options. Along with mainstays such as portrait, fireworks, landscape, and sunset mode, the P310 has newfangled options such as a 3D capture mode (which records images as .MPO files) and two options for panoramic images: a motion-controlled panorama mode and a stitch-assist panorama mode that helps you compose up to six successive shots.

Some of the Coolpix P310's best features come into play after you take a picture. Like many of Nikon's cameras, the Coolpix P310 has excellent post-shot editing tools that you can apply to a copy of an original photo during playback. A few highlights among the post-shot tools are a Quick Retouch feature that brightens up colors and contrast in your images, a D-Lighting (dynamic lighting) option that brings out details in darker areas of a scene, a Miniature Effect filter that mimics a tilt-shift lens, and a Selective Color feature that lets you pick a single color to highlight in an otherwise black-and-white shot.

Although the P310 doesn't provide full manual exposure controls in video mode, it does put a couple of semimanual video options at your disposal. By pressing the left and right directions on the camera's control pad while capturing video, you can force the camera's autofocus system to readjust or lock the exposure settings for a particular scene. You can also trim down clips inside the camera.

Hardware and Design

Don't expect to find a long-zoom lens here; the Coolpix P310's 4.2X-optical-zoom lens reaches from 24mm to 100mm, making it a good option for wide-angle landscape shots, macro photography, and portraits. Its F1.8 maximum aperture at wide angle is the marquee feature of the lens; at full telephoto, that aperture stops down to a less-impressive maximum setting of F4.9.

The Coolpix P310 is a little black box that should fit in anyone's pocket, as its compact body measures 1.3 inches deep, 4.1 inches wide, and 2.3 inches tall. On the front of the camera is a small raised lip that acts more like a fingergrip than a handgrip. However, the camera has so many controls at its top-right corner that you'll probably be better off shooting with two hands; bracing the camera with your left hand gives your thumb more freedom to operate the camera's zoom, shutter-release, and shutter-speed controls in manual mode. Near the raised fingergrip is the aforementioned Function button.

The top of the P310 hosts a mechanical pop-up flash on the left side. You operate it by using a switch on the left side of the camera, and you can put the flash back into the body by pressing down on it with your finger. The top of the camera also has stereo microphones, as well as several controls over on the top right side. You'll find a traditional mode dial with eight options (auto, program auto, manual, aperture priority, shutter-priority, scene modes, Night Landscape, and the user-defined mode), the shutter/zoom control, the on/off button, and an unlabeled dial that you use to adjust shutter-speed settings in manual mode.

That unlabeled dial is a bit underutilized. For example, you can't use it to adjust manual focus or ISO settings in other shooting modes. It's functional only in manual mode, and it merely lets you adjust your shutter speed.

To the right of the 3-inch, 921,000-dot LCD on the back of the camera are four dedicated buttons and a scrolling directional pad. A dedicated record button and a playback button sit near the top of the camera, and a menu button and delete button reside near the bottom. In addition to menu navigation and one-touch access to flash settings, exposure compensation, macro mode, and the self-timer, the directional pad controls the P310's manual focus settings (when you press up and down), aperture values (when you scroll), and other in-camera settings depending on the mode the camera is in. A Mini HDMI port on the side and a Micro-USB port on the bottom round out the camera's hardware features.

Bottom Line

Other pocketable premium cameras are out there, but most of them cost at least $400. If you're looking for a pocketable point-and-shoot camera with manual controls and good low-light performance, you won't find a lower-priced option than the Nikon Coolpix P310. It requires you to make some compromises: You have to do without a RAW-shooting mode, a big sensor, and a long-zoom lens, and you'll have to wait for Night Landscape shots and high-definition videos to save. Nevertheless, the Coolpix P310 gives budget-minded photographers a nice F1.8 lens and manual exposure controls to work with, and it takes great-looking photos in most lighting conditions. In fact, even if you ignore its bargain price, this is one of the best pocket cameras available right now.

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Serif CraftArtist Compact Makes Digital Scrapbooking Addictive

To call CraftArtist a digital scrapbook tool is like calling Martha Stewart a scrapbooker: Both the queen of crafts and this free program are so much more. Yes, you can create digital art akin to scrapbook pages, but also cards, certificates, posters, even place setting cards--all with drag-and-drop simplicity.

The key to using CraftArtist is in choosing the digikits of content---templates, clipart, backgrounds, brushes---you'll use again and again, or buying a dedicated hard drive to store it all. The digikit content can add up quickly.CraftArtist Compact is free, but doesn't include templates and is lean on tools. Templates and content reside in downloadable "digikits," vendor Serif's assortments of themed backgrounds, embellishments (think photo-realistic clipart), and spray-on clipart "brushes," You can download various digikits from one of Serif's websites, Daisy Trail. Although they range in price from free to $20, most are under $10, and they include everything from kitschy to cute to vintage designs.

With a digikit theme in hand, you can upload common image files (JPEG, PNG, or TIFF), choose a template, and easily put together professional-looking designs with drag-and-drop ease. CraftArtist automatically adds a layer for each digikit item you add, and you can easily resize or move each item.

CraftArtist Compact uses tools familiar to both Serif PhotoPlus X5 and DrawPlus X5, and it's just as detailed a program. If you are a practiced digital artist, even with the Compact version of CraftArtist, you can achieve some pretty stunning results in minutes, with a few exceptions.

There's no photo editor in CraftArtist Compact (for access to the Photolab you'll need to upgrade to the not free version), so if you need to fix color or exposure, you'll need to use a photo editor. A good Photoshop-like option (without the Photoshop pricetag) is Serif PhotoPlus X5 ($90), which uses the same organizing system as CraftArtist, making your images easy to sort and find. If you're looking for an easy way to instill a vintage feel to your pix, CameraBag 2 ($29) is a great way to create a nostalgic look (the CraftArtist screenshot was created using contemporary images made to look old using CameraBag 2). For a more artistic feel, but less control, FotoSketcher (free) creates very elegant and realistic fine art from your photographs. For folks with more time than money to invest, photo editors Paint.NET or GIMP hold appeal: Although they require a lot of time and dedication to use effectively, they're free,

If you use CraftArtist a lot, you may end up with literally Gigabytes of digikits. If you expect to arrive at this point, you may want to consider buying CraftArtist Platinum. It comes bundled with more than 4GB of digikit content for baby photos, wedding days, and more, and costs $70 directly from Serif. However, you can sometimes find the boxed version at big-box and office supply stores for less (I recently saw it at Target for $30).

When you're happy with your creation, CraftArtist Compact will export to JPEG, PNG, Windows Bitmap or HD Photo. For the PDF export option, again you'll need to upgrade to CraftArtist Professional. Other benefits of CraftArtist's Professional version include blend modes, cutout studio, cutting machine support, mask layers, punches, and scissors; in addition to being able to create your own digikits, brushes, filters, and stencils.

CraftArtist is an easy way to create unique designs with themed clipart, backgrounds, and brushes. If you love the free digikits available it's a great deal, but can get pricey very quickly when you start buying other digikits. That said, CraftArtist is an easy-to-start program that grows alongside your skill level, plus it's tremendous fun … and a little addictive.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you must register to download the free software.

--Clare Brandt

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