Averatec All-in-One review: Averatec All-in-One

Averatec's new, self-describing All-in-One offers yet another Windows-based take on the iMac. Compared with similar systems from Dell and Gateway, the $1,300 All-in-One actually has the most aggressive price, as well as the largest screen. In general, and as with those others, Averatec's new PC is less compelling than the iMac. As is typical of Windows-based all-in-ones, the Averatec offers the capability to upgrade that the iMac cannot. And either the larger screen or Windows Vista may be selling points or necessities for some of you, as well. Otherwise, there's very little this Averatec can do that the iMac doesn't do better.

If it can't overcome Apple's iMac juggernaut, the Averatec All-in-One does at least stake a claim as the best designed of the Windows all-in-ones. The glossy black frame features clean lines with no severe angles, protruding speakers, or wasted space. In addition to familiar design elements like a side-mounted slot-loading optical drive and a row of ports on the back, the Averatec also features hard buttons on the right edge that offer basic display controls, for brightness, display power (separate from system power, a nice touch), as well as volume and mute buttons. We admit we find those peripheral buttons useful, and the iMac doesn't have them, but they're probably not enough of a benefit to make up for the All-in-One's less-than-compelling performance.

We've only tested the pricier, 24-inch iMac since Apple updated the lineup a few months ago. It would hardly be fair to compare that model with the Averatec, so instead we looked back in our testing database and found the results for the 20-inch iMac from the previous generation. That old iMac that we reviewed cost $1,650 last September, counting the upgrade to 2GB of RAM. The newer 20-inch iMac, on sale now with a faster CPU and faster RAM, starts at $1,200, and would cost $1,300 for 2GB of RAM (as configured in the chart above). If we assume that a new $1,300 iMac would outperform the old $1,650 iMac, as seems reasonable, and since the old iMac is faster than the Averatec's performance today, it's a safe bet that the newer, less expensive iMac would expand the performance gap even further.

And unfortunately for Averatec, that is indeed the case.

On every single test, the old 20-inch iMac is faster than the Averatec. On some tests, for example dual-core video processing on Cinebench, the two are close. However, on others, such as Photoshop, the iMac outpaces the Averatec system, as well as the other Windows-based PCs, by a large margin.

What's perhaps worse, the $650 Gateway GT5674 is also faster than the $1,300 Averatec on all but our iTunes MP3 encoding test. In other words, you could buy that Gateway and an exceptional 24-inch LCD for the same price as the Averatec. That illustrates the biggest shortcoming of Windows-based all-in-ones, and it's not exclusive to this Averatec model. The performance gap between an Apple iMac and a standard desktop is much smaller than it is between a standard PC and a Windows-based all-in-one. Likely, this has to do with Vista and its more demanding performance overhead compared with Apple's OS X. However, for accomplishing actual computing tasks, the iMac is a far better deal.

From a features standpoint, the Averatec All-in-One fares a bit better, although it depends on what you need or want. The 22-inch display is probably its biggest selling point, although Hewlett-Packard will give it a run for its money with its forthcoming TouchSmart all-in-one, due out next week. For what's available right now, only Sony offers a 22-inch all-in-one, but its Vaio LT3 series starts at $2,000, pushing it into another price bracket. Avertec gets the nod then, at least for now, for the most affordable all-in-one with the largest LCD. We found the display bright and crisp, and it would be fine for watching movies.