Reviews

Compared to the original A500, Acer’s second attempt at a 10.1in Android tablet gets a couple of key things right straight off the bat, including a decent price cut and a slimmer design. The Iconia Tab A200 is now the cheapest 10.1in tablet on the market, with a recommended retail price of $349 — the same as Toshiba’s 7in AT1S0. It comes with the same basic hardware inside, too: 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 T250 chip, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard memory.

Toshiba's AT1S0 Android tablet doesn’t have the sharpest name, but it does buck current trends in some interesting ways. First, it comes with a recommended retail price of $349, making it one of the cheapest dual-core Tegra 2 tablets available. Second, while it uses a 7in touchscreen it still features 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution; typically, you’ll see 1,024 x 600 pixels (at best) at this size. What’s also impressive about the screen is the vibrant colours that really stand out, making gaming and videos more enjoyable.

The "new iPad" may be hogging the headines, but it's not the only new tablet that has hit the streets recently. There's no denying Apple's tablet is a worthy market leader, but if you're on a tighter budget or prefer the Android operating system, here we review two new affordable tablets that may be worth considering – a 7in model from Toshiba and Acer's latest 10.1in tablet.

Samsung's Galaxy Note defies easy categorisation and really begs the question: just how big is too big? This Android 2.3-powered device packs a 5.3in screen, but it’s a little too large to really be called a phone and a little too small to be called a tablet. Samsung itself describes it using the slightly cringeworthy moniker of ‘phablet’. It’s not all bad, however, and in both design and use the Note actually fills its unusual niche quite effectively.

HTC's Sensation XE is an upgrade to the original dual-core Sensation that was originally a Telstra exclusive. In the case of the Beats-branded XE, it’s switched camps to Vodafone, bumped up the processor to a dual-core 1.5GHz and marginally increased the battery capacity to 1,730mAh. The Beats branding extends to including a set of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, as with the larger Sensation XL, but in the XE’s case it’s a smaller set of Ur-Beats buds.

There’s something to be said for the increasing commoditisation of PC products. It seems like only yesterday that good-quality 27in LCD screens were a rare luxury, but now practically every vendor has a big monitor going cheap. That said, with prices plummeting all over, quality can be a bit hit and miss. The AOC E2752PHZ, however, is a 1080p 27in screen selling for around $400, though you’d be hard pressed to tell it's price, with even LED backlighting, bright colours and plenty of detail evident across our test gamut of games, media and productivity.

Performance is a word that appears to have a different meaning depending on who you buy from. As you’d expect, it’s something many local PC makers offer in spades, while big brands often seem to have a different interpretation. However, if you need a desktop PC with the backing of a big brand and an onsite warranty, there are still plenty of alternatives to look at. The question usually comes down to how much performance and/or features you’re willing to compromise to get that extra support.

Dell's Inspiron One 2320 was the third, but also the slowest, all-in-one PC we reviewed here, with a 2.5GHz Core i5-2400S processor. It’s basically half the speed of the Lenovo Edge 91Z, but is only $250 cheaper. It’s a mix of desktop and notebook tech with a 3.5in 500GB hard drive (our review unit came with a 1TB model) and Nvidia’s GeForce GT 525M graphics chip. Frankly, we don’t understand why vendors bother with some of these budget graphics chips as they’re just not fast enough to game with — DiRT 2 at 13.81fps at 1,024 x 768 pixels isn’t our idea of fun.

A business-focused all-in-one PC, the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z’s application speed puts it on top of the all-in-ones we’ve seen so far. Thanks to Intel’s 2.8GHz Core i7-2600S processor, it cranked our UserBench Encode test to just over 95, beating the Apple iMac and delivering the highest all-in-one score to date. Throwing in the Windows 7 Professional operating system also helps. It has a Radeon HD 6650A graphics chip, which has the capability of offering accelerated computing on supported applications.

HP's Pavilion h8-1130a is the fastest name-brand PC we’ve ever tested in PC User, managing to top 100 on our tough UserBench Encode media encoding benchmark. However, to get that speed you have to spend $1,799 and that’s without a monitor. It’s built around Intel’s Core i7-2600 processor, 8GB of RAM and a Pegatron H67-chipset motherboard. Storage features include a 1TB Hitachi hard drive and HP-branded Blu-ray/DVD combo drive. Wireless networking is included, but no digital TV tuner.