Samsung's slick 24-inch touch screen all-in-one
The new Ativ One 7 has a sleek white, rounded-edge design inspired by Samsung's Galaxy line of products.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
If you're looking for a traditional tower desktop at CES 2014, you're not going to find many, outside of a handful of business boxes and the occasional custom gaming rig. What you will find for desktops, however, is a bunch of what we call all-in-one desktops, which combine a display, stand, and internal components into a single monolithic unit.
Samsung's entry is the Ativ One 7 (2014 Edition). That name doesn't give you much of a hint as to the system's specs, most importantly that it's a 24-inch touch screen system.
The look is a bit different from other Ativ PCs, with a white, rounded-edge design Samsung says is inspired by the popular Galaxy line of products (I'm not sure why they don't just call it the Galaxy PC or something). Like most current all-in-one systems, the chassis has an HDMI input, which allows you to use the 1080p display as a standalone screen for external sources, such as a cable box or game console, and the screen has an anti-reflective coating in addition to a very wide viewing angle.
Samsung has enabled a few recent systems, including this one, to interact seamlessly with other Samsung ecosystem devices, including phones and tablets. Using the Samsung Link software, the One 7 can be a cloud hub, streaming local content to other Samsung devices, and BT Music Play 2.0 allows you to use the speakers for music, even when the computer is powered off.
Internally, no surprises. Current-gen Intel Core i3/i5 processors, integrated Intel graphics, and a combo hard drive with a 1TB HDD and 128GB SSD.
We don't currently have a release date or price for the Ativ One 7, but will offer an update when that's available.