HP TouchSmart 610: For Business or Pleasure

Conclusion: Good Start, But Needs Refinement

HP's TouchSmart 610 is the first all-in-one I've personally reviewed, so bear with me here. The form factor makes this an unusual type of product that may force an individual to seriously think about how they use their computers. My frame of reference? My grandmother has an all-in-one (on my recommendation, actually), and my mother actually loves touch interfaces on her computers. It's not for me, but it's definitely for certain users, and I suspect they're people who just want a simple system they can set up and enjoy.

So how does the TouchSmart 610 fare in that regard? Simplicity is key and unfortunately it's a spectacular failure on HP's site in that regard. The configuration options on the hard drive are actually counterintuitive (why not just a 1.5TB or 2TB 7200-RPM hard drive?), and the graphics options are eye-crossingly convoluted. Offering last generation parts really doesn't help, in fact the only current generation parts are the Radeon HD 6450A and 6550A, the latter of which at least almost makes a case for rebranding since at least you have some idea of where it stands in relation to its peers.

Thankfully, all-in-ones are very simple to set up and use, but again I can see this hard drive just murdering the user experience and I'm beginning to seriously believe that for a touch interface to work and feel truly responsive in Windows 7, an SSD is that much more vital--SSD caching at the very least would be a great addition. There's space inside the TouchSmart 610 for an mSATA SSD, and at $1,399 that space really should be employed. Ignoring my gripes with touchscreen technology in general, I feel like HP's TouchSmart is a good start but again marred by both the storage bottleneck and by Microsoft's lackadaisical touch implementation. However you feel about Metro in Windows 8, touchscreen all-in-ones desperately need it.

For the asking price, the 610 feels unbalanced. I think in an enterprise market or deployed commercially, especially with that kiosk style slide, the price makes more sense (and you do get a two-year warranty standard as opposed to the usual one) and the 610 becomes compelling almost entirely by virtue of being the only touchscreen all-in-one that really does that. It doesn't exactly feel cheap physically, either, and it runs cool enough. Under those circumstances, I can definitely see someone picking it up.

On the other hand, John Q. Public is probably going to be better served somewhere south of the TouchSmart 610 in HP's line. The TouchSmart 520xt loses the cute hinge and a bit of CPU horsepower, but offers cleaner graphics options and better hard drive choices. Starting at $999 it may be a superior choice, but we don't know anything about the screen quality. If a good screen is important to you, there's the 610xt, which sports the hinge and thus likely the screen while being cheaper than the 610 Quad Edition we reviewed here (as it also starts at $999), but you have to field the confusing configuration options in the process.

I do sincerely think there's a future for all-in-ones, and the HP TouchSmart 610 is certainly a good one with some innovative thinking behind it. If that's the sort of thing you or someone you love is looking for, and you know the trade-offs, the 610 could be a good choice.