Reviews - Asus ET2321INTH

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Hands-on with Asus's 23in touchscreen all-in-one PC.

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Read more.

How can you give this an 'Approved' award?

It's £1200 for a woeful CPU, a woeful GPU, only 8GB of RAM and NO SSD (!!!!).

I don't care how good the design is, at some point down the sliding scale of hardware power, there comes a point where the tradeoff between cost and performance tips far too far away from performance. This system can't even see that line, it's gone so far past it. £1200 for a PC with no SSD in is, quite frankly, beyond laughable.

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Originally Posted by Roobubba

How can you give this an 'Approved' award?

It's £1200 for a woeful CPU, a woeful GPU, only 8GB of RAM and NO SSD (!!!!).

I don't care how good the design is, at some point down the sliding scale of hardware power, there comes a point where the tradeoff between cost and performance tips far too far away from performance. This system can't even see that line, it's gone so far past it. £1200 for a PC with no SSD in is, quite frankly, beyond laughable.

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Agree way too expensive for what you get

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Originally Posted by jnutt

Agree way too expensive for what you get

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For a standalone PC, yes, for an iMac competitor? Absolutely not. Compare the nearest priced iMac with discrete graphics then your 1299 gets you a smaller screen (21.5" vs. 23") slightly worse (although probably not hugely) i5 3470 a 1TB 5.4k diskand no external speakers.

I think herulach has hit the nail on the head. It has to be reviewed in context, not in the I-can-build-a-PC-for-less viewpoint.

It's a stunning bit of kit that would grace any creative office. Sure, we delve deeper and make suggestions as to how it can be improved, but as a premium all-in-one, yes, I approve of it.

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Originally Posted by herulach

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Originally Posted by jnutt

Agree way too expensive for what you get

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For a standalone PC, yes, for an iMac competitor? Absolutely not. Compare the nearest priced iMac with discrete graphics then your 1299 gets you a smaller screen (21.5" vs. 23") slightly worse (although probably not hugely) i5 3470 a 1TB 5.4k diskand no external speakers.

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The i5 in the £1299 iMac absolutely trounces the one found in this Asus machine. Go to Passmark's benchmarking website for an example. The QUAD CORE i5-4570S in the base level, 21.5" iMac is almost double the speed of Asus' DUAL CORE with hyper threading i7-4500U. This isn’t a misunderstanding or an anomaly. The processor Asus chose is a low power processor meant for ultrabooks. The processor Apple chose is a much more powerful desktop class processor. Above and beyond the clock frequency and the number of cores, there’s a difference in architecture ( as well as the number of units of each necessary type and level 2 cache ) that allow the desktop CPU to far exceed the mobile CPU Asus chose.

Not to mention the iMac includes the GT750M which is worlds faster than the GT740M. There’s a good chance the GT750M is over clocked, too, as it’s probably the same chip used in the Macbook Pros, which are over clocked to the speed of a GTX 660M/760M. I use this chip, it’s more than capable of gaming at 1920x1080. The GT740M is not.

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Originally Posted by Tarinder

I think herulach has hit the nail on the head. It has to be reviewed in context, not in the I-can-build-a-PC-for-less viewpoint.

It's a stunning bit of kit that would grace any creative office. Sure, we delve deeper and make suggestions as to how it can be improved, but as a premium all-in-one, yes, I approve of it.

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It’s true, he has. There’s still something to it, though, and there’s the trade off. The Asus machine is far less powerful, but it offers a touch screen and some extra peripherals. It really depends what you’re looking for, but unless you’re doing extremely low power work at home where you want to basically browse media, the iMac is the WAY better deal.

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Originally Posted by DotFreelance

The i5 in the £1299 iMac absolutely trounces the one found in this Asus machine. Go to Passmark's benchmarking website for an example. The QUAD CORE i5-4570S in the base level, 21.5" iMac is almost double the speed of Asus' DUAL CORE with hyper threading i7-4500U. This isn’t a misunderstanding or an anomaly. The processor Asus chose is a low power processor meant for ultrabooks. The processor Apple chose is a much more powerful desktop class processor. Above and beyond the clock frequency and the number of cores, there’s a difference in architecture ( as well as the number of units of each necessary type and level 2 cache ) that allow the desktop CPU to far exceed the mobile CPU Asus chose.

Not to mention the iMac includes the GT750M which is worlds faster than the GT740M. There’s a good chance the GT750M is over clocked, too, as it’s probably the same chip used in the Macbook Pros, which are over clocked to the speed of a GTX 660M/760M. I use this chip, it’s more than capable of gaming at 1920x1080. The GT740M is not.



It’s true, he has. There’s still something to it, though, and there’s the trade off. The Asus machine is far less powerful, but it offers a touch screen and some extra peripherals. It really depends what you’re looking for, but unless you’re doing extremely low power work at home where you want to basically browse media, the iMac is the WAY better deal.

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Thats my mistake, but just being a dual core doesn't write it off to extremly low power work at home. I've seen offices of 30 + staff kitted out with iMacs in ad agencies and the like that are basically used for facebook, twitter and word. Even the cheap one of these would do that fine.

I would gladly sell 30+ of these to ad agency staff. I would push the wow factor and tell them anything but the truth until they bought the lot.

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Originally Posted by DotFreelance

It’s true, he has. There’s still something to it, though, and there’s the trade off. The Asus machine is far less powerful, but it offers a touch screen and some extra peripherals. It really depends what you’re looking for, but unless you’re doing extremely low power work at home where you want to basically browse media, the iMac is the WAY better deal.

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Oh give me a break, i largely agree with some of the points made on the "U" CPUs vs the ones Apple use, however a 4500U is still a great CPU capable of comfortably handing most things you could throw at it. You can run a couple of VMs doing relatively basic stuff, alongside office apps and a video streaming on the host. I know because i have done it on the Thinkpad Yoga i had before, and the 13" rMBP i have now. Just because the Apple CPU is a lot more powerful doesn't mean a 4500U is only useful if you want to 'browse the web'. Get some perspective guys seriously.