Review: Dell Studio 19

Dell’s touchscreen gets rid of the all the clutter

Make: Dell
Model: Studio One 19

By Charlie Brown

Out of the box, I first notice it has very smooth lines, similar to an iMac, but the screen height is not that of most other PCs. At first I thought this would be detrimental to its functionality, but I quickly grew accustomed to the landscape-sized screen.

First, let’s talk about what it has as far as inbuilt systems etc. The hard drive is built into the screen, so there is no clunky drive to lug around or set up. This saves on space, as you only have the screen and wireless keyboard and mouse to find room for on your desk top. You have 500GB of storage, and 4MB of RAM, which isn’t huge. It also comes with the unpopular Windows Vista operating system, but this is is made up for by an Intel Core 2 Due processor, which gave quick response times when using different programs and the Internet.

Its touchscreen capabilities are not too bad, but could be better. A good starting point is the screen doesn’t smudge as much as other touchscreen devices (maybe they could sell the technology to the manufacturers of smartphones, who use touchscreen technology). When you use your hands to expand pictures on the screen, the technology seems to work fine. However, when using it to do things like click on a link to a website that you have Googled, it was temperamental and hovered around the link instead of over it. The wireless mouse was a better option. On a couple of the other options – such as the touchscreen qwerty keyboard – I found I had to push down on a letter a couple of times before it appeared on screen, even though the precursor said the letter had been entered into the text.

I do like the deep black the screen it offers when there is no wall paper. This makes the colours look brighter and sharper, and this gives clean pics, plus its tilt feature was handy when using the touchscreen qwerty keyboard.

There doesn’t appear to be too much new to the market in terms of its webcam, while there are a couple of interesting built-in programs.

Overall I liked the speed of the Dell, but there were a few niggly things that annoyed me, such as the aforementioned touchscreen sometimes not working.

I think it would make a good home PC for the right person, especially anyone that does not like cluttered desks. Its touchscreen and wireless keyboard and mouse will appeal to a lot of people, as will its all-in-one storage/screen configuration. The problem is, there are similar units out there with a little better functionality. Still, if the styling is to your liking, it’ll probably fit the bill.

Pros: Styliish, deep blacks, quick response time, hard drive built into screen.
Cons: Touchscreen could be better, a tad expensive, probably has limited appeal

RRP (touch)
For Touch $1,999 to 2,933.70
Non-touch
From $1,499


3 out of 5