The TouchSmart IQ 508 D is priced at Rs 87,990. Essentially it is meant for home entertainment combining computing with entertainment and a new concept of having everything on a big touch sensitive screen but is it really worth spending that much? Our take is that the TouchSmart PC comes as a nice innovation from HP and makes computing more interactive and interesting. More importantly, it’s more fun to have varied functionality, all built into a sleek and stylish body, without a cabinet. However, its high price tag might prevent most of us from considering this as a viable purchase. As with everything else tech, prices are bound to go down, so maybe it’s best you wait for that.
A Touch Is All I Need
With a glossy black body that is not more than 3 three inches thick and a small footprint, the HP Touchsmart PC IQ508D looks stylish and greatly economises on space by incorporating the traditional cabinet behind the monitor itself. The optical drive and ports are placed on the sides; neat design. Overall a very classy looking desktop.
The display on the Touchsmart is a 22- inch LCD panel having a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels. The display is touch sensitive (hence the name TouchSmart) and supports Multi-Touch. If you are a big fan of Apple’s multi- touch interface made famous by their iPod Touch PMPs you are definitely going to like it. But though quite big and responsive, the touch screen lacks precision, so it’s bit difficult to work on smaller things like pop-up messages and notifications. Be prepared to clean it regularly though, as the screen picks up smudges.
Multimedia becomes serious fun with the ability to play videos, skip through movie clips and zoom in and out of photos or even watch TV; all with finger gestures on-screen.
Setting up monitor and other peripherals for this PC is extremely simple.
Apart from being a space saver, this PC features onboard Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; something most desktops lack (if it is fair to call this a desktop!) for greater wire-free experience. However HP spoils the whole wire- free design by bundling a big and bulky power adapter with it throwing in a huge power adapter. We would have loved to see an onboard power supply considering heavy weight of this computer and also this would have significantly enhanced its space saver design.
For input devices other than the touch screen, this PC comes with a bundled wireless mouse and keyboard combo for smooth and comfortable operation. The keyboard and mouse are not very good in terms of ergonomics but are quite responsive otherwise, and if you love games and chatting then you will not be disappointed by the performance of the mouse and the keyboard’s tactile feedback.
This PC has 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, which allows it to handle several applications at the same time without affecting performance. It comes with a 7200 rpm, 500GB HDD to store all your favourite music, videos or anything you wish tothis should keep you satisfied for awhile.
Down to performance; PC Mark 05 score of 5189 is low for a Media Centre PC, but it is understandable given the fact that it has a Mobile processor in place of a Desktop processor for keeping its power consumption and heat output levels low.
As far as 3D performance is concerned, it may not be the best in league for a Media Centre PC, but still it performed quite well on our benchmarks scoring a total of 3342 in 3DMark 05 (Graphic intensive benchmark) and a maximum frame rate of 147 in Far Cry at 800 x 600 resolution, Medium with medium settings. Although this machine is not meant for gaming but it will not disappoint the occasional urge for some frags, or a few circuit laps.
Its onboard 4 watt speakers performed better than we thought they would, and are loud and clear. Although a little low on bass, the speakers performed well at different volume levels. Onboard audio is handled by Sound Max HD integrated Digital audio controller that supports 5.1 channel sound output. This machine can also be connected to a home theatre system but only via SPDIF or optical connector as it does not have multichannel 3.5 mm connectors.