Dell’s Big-Screen, All-in-One Beauty

This computer got a lot of “oohs” and “ahhs” during the week it sat on my desk in the Wired office. And for good reason: Dell’s flagship all-in-one desktop, the brightest star in its XPS line of performance-minded machines, has got to be one of the nicest-looking Windows PCs currently on the market.
As with any large-screen all-in-one, the display is the centerpiece — in this case, a giant, bright 27-inch display encased in edge-to-edge glass above a subtle, black chin.
The rest of the XPS One 2710 exhibits the same minimal design. The silver case instantly reminds one of the iMac (actually, the look of almost every all-in-one PC looks like the iMac), but the finish is not quite as high-end. Rather than use aluminum, Dell opted for a plastic body with a silver-colored coating. It looks nice from afar, but when you actually touch it, it feels cheap.

Unless you plan to caress your all-in-one regularly, this isn’t a huge drawback. The screen is what really matters. At 2560×1440 pixels with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the XPS One’s WLED-backlit screen is the best I’ve seen on an all-in-one Windows computer. It’s definitely up there with Apple’s 27-inch iMac, which sports the same screen resolution and pixel density. It’s not as advanced as the new MacBook Pro’s display, of course, but colors appear vibrant and blacks are rich. I was never disappointed with the way an image or video looked on the screen.
The screen’s quality can be attributed to the fact that the XPS One 2710 uses a Samsung PLS (plane-to-line switching) display. It’s a technology that Samsung touts as giving screens a wider viewing angle, increased brightness, and better image quality than the standard IPS (in-plane switching) displays. I did notice that the display never appeared washed-out, even at extreme angles.