Monitor, tower PC, mouse, keyboard, wires, tangles and frustration. Having the perfect power PC doesn’t do much to keep your desktop tidy. Taking inspiration from Apple, many tech brands have decided to forgo clutter and offer all-in-one PCs instead. With impressive spec sheets and great performance on offer, here’s the line-up of the top 5 all-in-one’s on offer today.

Makes the cut

Acer Aspire Z5763

Acer has put together an impressive budget all-in-one here. The HD touchscreen isn’t glossy but colours are brilliant for movies and Acer has made it 120Hz, added

an IR port and thrown in a pair of Nvidia’s 3D glasses, so it’s 3D-ready. We could only run Crysis 2 in 3D on low settings at HD quality but it still looked pretty ace.

Cutting corners to keep the cost low, you only get 4GB of memory, a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT435M and a dual-core i3 at 3.1GHz but Acer throws in a 1TB hard drive, six USBs and a digital TV tuner, so it’s not too budgety.

Love: Cheap. Excellent 3D gubbins. Great colours

Hate: Non-gloss screen. Spec lacks oomph

Rs 62,000

Power games

Apple iMac 27-inch

An iMac so powerful it’s practically sentient, this runs OS X on Intel’s flagship 3.4GHz Core i7 Sandybridge dualcore, with AMD’s powerful 1GB Radeon HD 6970M handling HD video editing and the seven or so games currently available for Mac. Two Thunderbolt ports offer super-speed data and double-up as Display Ports. You get a respectable 1TB hard drive, but why will Apple not offer more than 4GB of RAM on base units? No clue about that. That said, this is very powerful, while the screen and overall aesthetics are still the best on the market.

Love: Powerful CPU and graphics. Beautiful screen. Superb looks

Hate: Very expensive

Rs 91,900

Basic bytes

Dell Inspiron One 2310

Dell’s machine is the cheapest on test – and it shows. While the brilliant, 23-inch HD LED-backlit screen gives a good first impression, and audio from the THX-certified speakers is also nifty, the touchscreen software bundle is limited, as is the spec. Getting 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and a 500GB wedge of storage is not to be sniffed at, but the 2.66GHz dualcore i5, and ATI’s entry-level, 1GB Mobility Radeon HD 5470 start wheezing if you ask them to play new games. Otherwise this spec is enough for multitasking apps.

Love: Great screen. Good audio. Low price

Hate: Most users would be better off paying more

Rs 52,065

Sleek sophistication

HP TouchSmart 610-1030UK

With a high-end spec and responsive touchscreen on a brilliantly vibrant, 23-inch, LED-backlit, HD display, this bad boy is worth its price. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium runs smoothly on the 3.2GHz dualcore i5 650 and 6GB of RAM. Connectivity is not lacking, with six USBs, and there’s a humongous 1.5TB hard drive. The sound is better than anything else on test, too. The only corner cut is a mid-range mobile 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card, which limps through Crysis 2.

Love: Excellent screen. Comprehensive and responsive touch experience. Groovy audio

Hate: Graphics aren’t quite gaming-ready

Rs 87,000

Cutting-edge innovation

Sony Vaio VPCL21S1E/B L-SERIES

Sony’s Edge Access technology makes this touchscreen PC great to play with. It involves using a touch interface on the side, so you don’t have to slide your fingers over the whole screen for navigation. It’s a unique feature that works well. With a 2GHz dualcore i7 and 8GB of RAM, this is speedy indeed. The 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 540M isn’t amazing, but it will manage Crysis 2 on mid-range settings. Factor in a brilliant, 24-inch, 1080p, LED-backlit screen connectivity including HDMI and 1TB of storage and you have a very fine PC.

Love: Edge Access touch interface. Excellent multi-media. Great HD screen

Hate: Expensive. Graphics are sub-par for gaming

Rs 1,08,000

Or how about this?

Lenovo Ideacentre A320

The Lenovo didn’t quite make it for the review, but it’ still a rather sexy-looking piece of kit. The iMac-aping 21.5-inch, 1080p all-in-one gives you a 2.27GHz Core i3, 4GB of memory, up to 750GB hard drive space, HDMI in/out ports and a TV tuner. No dedicated graphics card, though.

Rs 50,990

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