HP Omni 200 5380qd review: HP Omni 200 5380qd

All-in-one desktops may often boast touch screens these days, but we're glad to see HP offer a competitive alternative for those content with a traditional mouse-and-keyboard interface. The unflashy $949 HP Omni 200 5380qd might lack a touch screen, but it makes up for it with fast application performance and competent home entertainment capabilities. We might like to see a larger display for this price, but even with only a 21.5-inch LCD, this all-in-one will meet the needs of most mainstream home users content to ignore the touch-screen bandwagon.

7.7

HP Omni 200 5380qd

The Good

The <b>HP Omni 200 5380qd</b> boasts fast application and gaming performance at a competitive price.

The Bad

We don't mind the absent touch screen, but we wish the Omni 200 offered a few more inputs, as well as a larger display.

The Bottom Line

The HP Omni 200 5380qd lacks some of the flashier features of other all-in-one PCs, but it makes up the difference with surprisingly fast performance, making it easy to recommend to anyone in need of a reasonably priced home desktop.

The overall design of the Omni 200 suggests inviting simplicity. The matte black plastic chassis features rounded edges and a sturdy-feeling heft. It's not as elegant as an iMac, but the Omni also doesn't feel fragile. Even though you won't be touching the screen directly, the Omni still gives the impression that it can withstand the occasional bumps and general rigors of service in a multiperson usage environment.

While HP isn't the only vendor to stick with a 21.5-inch screen in a midrange all-in-one desktop, the list is certainly smaller than those that offer 23-inch displays in the same price range. Acer, Dell, Gateway, and Lenovo, among other vendors, all have 23-inch touch-screen all-in-ones starting at $800 or so, which leaves HP with only Apple and Sony in the 21.5-inch minority. The smaller screens match the 23-inchers in offering 1,920 x 1,080 display resolution, but if we were shopping for an all-in-one to serve as a den or dorm room entertainment device, we'd still prefer the larger display for better viewing at a distance.

We don't have a perfect direct comparison for the Omni 200 5380qd among our previously reviewed all-in-ones, but we can take a look at a few near-recent models to see how the HP's value proposition matches up with those of a few older PCs.

The HP's screen might be the smallest of three systems, but its graphics card is the fastest. It also boasts a fast Intel Core i5 CPU, which translates in our benchmark charts below to some of the best all-in-one performance we've ever seen. The 1TB hard drive seems to the de facto universal standard for now, and while we might also like to see a Blu-ray drive in the HP for this price, the Omni's smaller screen would make it hard to distinguish Blu-ray quality over that of standard definition DVDs. HP certainly saves costs with the small, non-touch display, but also seems able to pass those savings on to customers by way of faster computing components.

Cinebench (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Rendering Multiple CPUs

Rendering Single CPU

HP Omni 200 5380qd

3.93 

1.11 

Acer Aspire Z5700-U3112

2.77 

1.13 

Dell Inspiron One 2305

2.71 

0.69 

Gateway One ZX6951-53

2.65 

1.07 

Apple iMac 21.5-inch

2.59 

1 

Sony Vaio J114FX

1.17 

0.61 

The HP Omni 200 demonstrated stellar performance across our application tests. The Acer Aspire Z5700-U3112 might have a CPU with a faster core clock speed, but the combination of the HP's discrete graphics card, 6GB of RAM, and a CPU with twice the cache as that of the Acer pushed the Omni ahead of its older competition on ever test. The only exception came with our multimedia multitasking test, in which Apple's iMac ) (rumored to be replaced soon), continues to lead. Among Windows 7 PCs, the HP comes in second on our multitasking test, and overall it will provide sufficient performance to handle any mainstream task you throw its way.

Given the better-than-average AMD Radeon HD 5570 graphics card in the Omni, we also tried a few recent games on the HP, with great success. We tried Crysis 2 and Metro 2033, two demanding first-person shooters, and both games were quite playable at full resolution and better-than-minimum graphics quality settings. This PC's gaming prowess has its limits, and if you push the graphics quality too high, you will run into choppy frame rates, but we expect that for at least the foreseeable future, the HP Omni 200 will run any game you care to play with acceptable smoothness and image quality.

With no Blu-ray drive, no TV tuner, and no HDMI video input, the HP's other multimedia capabilities aren't much to speak of. You don't even get a secondary display jack or digital audio outputs. It will play HD video from the Web with no problem, but otherwise, this is not the best PC if you're looking to integrate it with other computing or home entertainment hardware. You don't even get digital audio outputs. The only connectivity options include a smattering of USB ports, and a set of 5.1 analog audio jacks. We like to see a bit more connection variety in our all-in-one PCs, but given its under-the-hood capabilities, we're willing to let slide the absence of eSATA, FireWire, or other ports.

Juice box
HP Omni 200 5380qd	Average watts per hour
Off (60 percent)	0.59
Sleep (10 percent)	2.20
Idle (25 percent)	35.98
Load (5 percent)	124.78
Raw kWh	168.77
EnergyStar compliant	Yes
Annual energy cost	$19.16

With the HP's fast performance comes predictably elevated power consumption for its class. It's certainly not as bad as that of the AMD CPU-based Dell Inspiron One, and on balance, paying $19.16 a year to operate this PC is tolerable.

HP includes a standard one-year parts and labor warranty with the Pavilion p6720f. You also get 24-7 toll-free phone support and a variety of support resources available on HP's Web site, as well as on the system itself.

Conclusion
Touch screens may be all the rage these days, but HP's Omni 200 shows that if you're willing to forgo what's arguably a novelty interface design, you can come away with an impressively fast computer. We wish it had a bit more connectivity to truly shine as a home entertainment device, as well as perhaps a larger screen, but overall the Omni 200 5380qd will serve the day-to-day computing needs of any mainstream user.

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:
Acer Aspire Z5700-U3112
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 3.2GHz Intel Core i5 650; 4GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 64MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 1TB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

Apple iMac 21.5-inch (Spring 2010)
Apple OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4; 3.06GHz Intel Core i3; 4GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 256MB ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card; 500GB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive

Dell Inspiron One Z2305
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.4GHz AMD Phenom II X4 610e; 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5470 graphics card; 1TB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

Gateway One ZX6951-53
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 3.2GHz Intel Core i5 550; 4GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 128MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 640GB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

HP Omni 200 5380qd
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 760; 6GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1GB AMD Radeon HD 5570; 1TB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

Sony Vaio J114FX
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Pentium P6000; 4GB 1,066MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 128MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 HD integrated graphics chip; 500GB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive