Earlier this yr I had the opportunity to accept a look at HP'south TouchSmart 520 All-In-Ane, a 23-inch multi-touch organization powered by a 2nd-generation Intel Core i7 processor. The system was one of the all-time AIO solutions I reviewed to date, simply that was earlier the HP Omni 27 showed up at my front door.

The Omni 27 is another all-in-ane system that shares many artful characteristics of the TouchSmart 520 despite being in a different grade. Within we find a 3rd-generation Intel Core i5-3550S Ivy Bridge processor clocked at 3.0GHz, 8GB of DDR3 memory, a 2TB Hitachi difficult bulldoze spinning at vii,200 RPM, Radeon HD 6550A graphics and Beats Audio. There's besides an HDMI-in port so you could use this brandish equally an HDTV to watch cable programming from a set-top box or play console games.

As is standard exercise, HP includes a wireless keyboard and mouse although since this unit of measurement doesn't include a Tv set tuner, at that place's no media remote control. Buyers will besides receive a power cable and a big power brick similar to what yous'd find bundled with a notebook computer. Our cost every bit configured is $i,540.

Equally we alluded to earlier, the Omni 27 is very similar in pattern to the TouchSmart 520, using the same beefy aluminum base of operations that additionally serves as a keyboard shelf should you need more desk-bound space while watching a movie or playing a console game.

In that location's a 27-inch brandish tucked behind the edge-to-edge glass that absolutely looks much cleaner than what we saw on the 520. The difference here is that the Omni's 27-inch display isn't touch-sensitive, something a lot of people won't actually miss in a pre-Windows viii desktop system, or a desktop in general. The display operates at 1920x1080 which is considered the bare minimum for a screen this size. There are LCD monitors and all-in-i competitors in this size capable of 2560x1440.

The audio bar lines the bottom of the display and is accented with an HP logo on the left and the Omni 27 badge on the right. A Beats Audio badge is on the top left of the display while a webcam is centered at the top of the screen. The organization power push button can exist found on the top right of the system much like we take seen on HP monitors.

Many of the I/O ports tin exist found on the left side of the system in a recessed bay "backside" the screen. Hither nosotros accept the hard drive activity lite, an SD / MS / xD card reader, two USB three.0 ports, a microphone jack and a headphone jack sporting the Beats Sound logo. Only effectually the corner is the true rear panel which includes a power jack with an activity light, Ethernet jack, 4 USB ii.0 ports, a line out jack and a subwoofer out jack. On the right side of the system are a DVD RW drive, HDMI-in port and iv buttons.

These buttons are used to command the settings of a device plugged into the HDMI port; they don't do annihilation when the system is in "computer" style. Annotation that the book on the figurer is muted when a device is plugged into the HDMI port. There is besides a Kensington lock slot on the dorsum of the computer and we're told the system is wall-mountable.

Getting upwardly and running with an all-in-one is inappreciably any unlike than with a notebook. Plug in the power adapter, add batteries to your wireless mouse and keyboard so press the ability button. The internal Wi-Fi radio takes care of your Cyberspace connection then actually all you lot need is a single cable.

The Omni 27 was able to boot fully into Windows 7 64-flake in effectually 58 seconds, or almost 10 seconds faster than the TouchSmart 520. This can be credited to the faster 7,200 RPM hard bulldoze and mayhap the new Ivy Span CPU.

If yous call up from my 520 review, that organisation was loaded with bloatware and unfortunately, the Omni 27 isn't much unlike. I counted 21 programs in the Add/Remove listing that I considered a waste of infinite. Information technology doesn't take a lot of time to delete these applications just we would dear to encounter HP follow in the footsteps of some boutique builders and give the user a pure Windows install.


Back again is HP'south Magic Canvas software, an culling user interface for Windows vii. The problem here is that it's designed for a touch on interface, something the Omni 27 lacks. Without touch, it'due south pretty much worthless and I can't assist but become the feeling that this was an reconsideration.

The Omni 27 also ships with another familiar piece of software chosen HP LinkUp for accessing other computers on your home network even if they aren't from HP; essentially it's a remote desktop viewer. By using LinkUp, y'all tin can rapidly transfer information, run applications and work with files from another computer. All y'all demand is a home network and the HP LinkUp Sender software on the remote organisation. You lot will also demand access to a password-protected administrator account on the remote computer.