Investing in an all in one PC makes good sense because not only it saves you a lot of desk and under the desk space, but also uses less power to operate. Asus has been in the AIO arena since long now and they sent us the ET2040 AIO to get evaluated and here is what we could make of it.
Design
We have seen some good and some really good designs from Asus. Sadly this one falls in the average design category. The ET2040 is aimed at budget buyers. Hence you do not get over the top design features. All you get is a plain black exterior, which houses a brilliant 19.5-inch display. On the top of the panel you get a webcam, with the speakers hidden at the back.
The rear kick stand is sturdy and gives the user a good viewing angle. There are 3 USB 3.0 ports located on the left side and 2 USB 2.0 ports on the right side. The volume key, LAN port, card reader and HDMI port are also located on the left side of the panel. In the age of wireless keyboards and mice, Asus is giving a wired keyboard and mouse. Not that these two wired devices don’t work well, but for today’s home use wireless devices have the edge.
The keyboard is fairly large with decent sized keys. We didn’t face any issue while typing with it. The mouse on the other hand could be an issue for people with large hands. It is made well, but not for all palm types.
Performance
The Asus ET2040 has decent machinery on the inside. They have tried to give as much as possible to the customer in the budget section, but certain things fail to excite. To start with the ET2040 AIO has an Intel Pentium dual-core processor with 2.4 GHz speed, 4 GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 820M graphics unit. This is coupled with 500 GB hard drive.
If you look at the specs on paper, they seem very good, however when we used it for a while we found the performance to be mediocre, mainly because of the under powered CPU. The system is able to run games like DOTA 2 and CS: GO at mid-level graphics settings, if you go full steam then the frames per second drop considerably.
On to the display pleasure, the Asus ET2040 AIO has a fabulous screen. Although it does not support full HD resolution, the blacks and colours vividness is quite nice at 1,366 x 768 pixels resolution. We enjoyed every bit of the movie and YouTube experience on the Asus ET2040 AIO. The sound is also fine for an AIO. A tad bit more bass and it would have been perfect. The power supply is pretty small and neatly packaged and does not consume a lot of power.
Verdict
At a price of Rs 24,999 the ASUS ET2040 AIO is not a bad device for daily home use. 500 GB hard drive is good to store almost everything. Screen is bright and nice too. Keyboard is good to work with and you get good machinery under the hood. If only it had a better CPU (maybe an iCore) and a wireless mouse, it would have been a super buy.
Pros
Good screen
Good price
Large hard drive
Cons
CPU not great
Wired mouse
Audio could have been better
- Operating System Windows 8.1
- Display 5″(49.5cm), Wide Screen, LED-backlight
- Touch Screen Non-touch
- Processor Intel® Pentium® J2900 Processor
- Graphic NVIDIA® GeForce 820M 1GB
- Memory 4 GB
- Storage 5″ 500GB Hard Drive
- Wireless Data Network 11 b/g/n
- LAN 10/100/1000/Gigabits Mbps
- Camera 1 M
- Speaker 2 x 2 W
- Built-in Mic Yes
- Side I/O Ports
1 x DC in
3 x USB 3.0
2 x USB 2.0
1 x 3 -in-1 Card Reader
1 x Headphone
1 x Microphone
1 x HDMI-out
1 x Kensington Lock
- Card Reader 3-in-1: SD/SDHC/MMC
- Power Supply 65 W Power adaptor
- Accessories
Keyboard
Mouse
AC Adaptor
Power Cord
Quick Start Guide
Price: Rs 24,999
