The subwoofer is a small, brushed-metal unit that's partnered by two 3.5W speakers built into the all-in-one. In our tests, this setup proved disappointing; the sub delivered thunderous bass but overpowered the rest of the range.
Thankfully, the integrated speakers deliver just enough bass by themselves, but mid-range sounds lacked nuance, and higher tones were simply too quiet for our liking. The Dell XPS One 27, which has two 20W speakers and a 12W internal subwoofer, produced far better sound.
The ET2701's 27in, 1920 x 1080 screen also looks good initially, with an average Delta E of 4.6 matching the Dell for colour accuracy. The top brightness level of 290cd/m2 is also up with its rival's 297cd/m2 figure. However, smearing and blurring induced by the VA panel's slow response times ruin the experience. The panel simply can't cope with moving images as well as Dell's IPS screen.
Under the hood, the Asus improves. It uses the same Core i7-3770S processor and Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics core as the Dell, and it returns similar benchmark results. Its 0.99 score in our test is just ahead of the 0.98 scored by the Dell, and the two are almost inseparable in our Medium settings Crysis test.
The Asus has a 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard disk – a 3.5in desktop model instead of the smaller mobile drives used in other systems – that posted the month's quickest benchmark results, with sequential read and writes of 175MB/sec and 171MB/sec. It has this month's only Blu-ray writer, plus 8GB of RAM and a good selection of peripherals. The Scrabble-tile keyboard has a firm key action, and the mouse is small but serviceable. The only major omission is a TV tuner.
The ET2701 mixes a glossy screen bezel with a striking, angled stand, but it can't compete with its rivals for flexibility or build quality. The rear panel behind the screen feels plasticky, and lacks the solidity of the Dell and Lenovo systems. The plastic doors used to cover the ports on the left and the optical drive on the right feel flimsy. Also, the stand offers very little range of tilt.
We've had issues with the size of 27in touchscreens, and the Asus suffers from the same awkward touch operation.
#2 The sound from the separate subwofer is overwhelming.
Asus ET2701
The separate subwoofer adds nothing to a run-of-the-mill all in one that is bettered by cheaper rivals this month.
ASUS ET2701INKI-B029K 27-Inch All-in-One Desktop
Intel Core i7 3770S 3.1 GHz
8 GB DDR3 RAM
2 TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
27-Inch Screen; NVIDIA GT 640M Graphics
Windows 8
View Technical Details
