Dell XPS One 24 in Desktop PCs

Of the growing number of companies producing all-in-one PCs today, few can claim to be doing it with true panache. Sony's silver Vaio VGC-JS1E/S has the value end of the market sewn up, but there remains a gaping hole at the top for something with a little more ambition.

Dell's XPS One 24 has that in spades. It's a revamp of last year's 20in XPS One, retains that system's gorgeous design and ups the specification stakes with a bigger, better screen and a great set of integrated speakers. Forget the bedroom or study - we're into living room territory here.

Heaving its 18kg bulk out of the box betrays it sheer size. The 24in display is flanked on either side by those speakers to give a span of close to 70cm. It sits on a crystal-clear acrylic base, while the entire front panel is a clean, glass-coated black; the controls only glow into cool, blue life when an approaching hand is sensed.

This coating is both a blessing and a curse, as the resulting reflections pretty much exclude the Dell from use under any sort of bright lighting. But in a home environment it does wonders for the quality of the panel. A great test of colour accuracy is a display's ability to reproduce red: most TN monitors veer towards orange, but the Dell shows its class with the blood red that only a superior panel can produce.

Greys are neutral and colours flow smoothly into one another, and we were extremely impressed by the deep black level, with no sign of any backlight bleeding through. This helps during movies, as the 1,920 x 1,200 panel will have thick black bars surrounding the action. We're not too perturbed by this though, as we far prefer the flexibility offered by the extra pixels for other activities (over the increasingly popular 1080p).

The pin-sharp picture is matched by some of the finest built-in speakers we've come across. Dell claims its Premium JBL Stereo Speakers offer total power output of 25W, and after cranking them up we wouldn't argue with that. There's a 'sub' which kicks in with surprisingly meaty bass but the detail at the top end remains, even at the highest volume; and this is very loud indeed.

Alas, if you were hoping for a Blu-ray drive to go with that fabulous panel, you'll have to get your wallet out. Two base models are available, and our review sample is the cheaper of the two, with just a DVD writer. An HD upgrade will lift the price to £1,849, which seems a little steep, even with a larger hard disk and quad-core CPU thrown in. But the base model is certainly no slouch. Its 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM achieved a more than capable 1.30 in our benchmarks, while the 320GB hard disk should be plenty for all but the keenest video-hoarder.

Both versions of the XPS One 24 come with the same discrete Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics, so it's not a hardcore gaming machine. In our Crysis test it just about managed a good result in medium settings, although an average of 23fps suggests you'll need to reduce the quality or stick to older games. That's no disgrace though ??" the majority of all-in-ones don't even look past integrated graphics.

And the rest of the system - all tucked into a few inches of depth behind the screen - is just as impressive. There's a hybrid analogue/digital TV tuner to convert the Dell into a fine TV, plus an input adapter for composite and S-Video devices such as set-top boxes. If only it accepted HDMI we'd thoroughly recommend it as a screen for your consoles too.