Hard drive retention: Hard drive retention is not available on models with a soldered hard drive, including XPS 9315 2in1, Chromebooks or Venue tablets, except the Venue 11 Pro. The Inspiron 27 coasted to an easy victory in PCMark 10, although pitting its premium Core i7 against the Lenovo's unthreaded, entry-level AMD Ryzen 3 isn't exactly a fair fight. Still, the results show the gains you get going from a 10th or 11th Generation Intel chip to a 12th Gen, though all the Windows systems cleared the 4,000 points in PCMark 10 that indicate excellent productivity for Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.

That's the good news as far as the display goes. The bad news is that 1080p resolution isn't quite enough to produce a sufficiently sharp picture across the 27-inch panel—when you're seated in front of the screen, the edges of application windows and text characters appear blurry. The resolution is adequate if you're buying the Inspiron 27 as an entertainment system—1080p videos look crisp—but I wouldn't want to spend a full day doing productivity work in front of the display. It's a shame that Dell doesn't offer a display upgrade in the form of a 1440p or other higher-resolution panel; the old iMac's 5K pixel array isn't necessary, but something between full HD and 4K would be a good fit for this screen size. Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).The keyboards and mice bundled with AIOs are too often afterthoughts, but my review unit came with a comfortable wired keyboard with number pad and a sturdy albeit smallish wired mouse, both coordinated with the system's white color scheme. You can also opt for a cordless keyboard and mouse, using the USB 2.0 port as a receptacle for their receiver. From the PCMark 10 scores, it's immediately clear that the Inspiron 27 7000 has a slight performance deficiency compared to the better-equipped Surface Studio 2, even on basic tasks. By contrast, the system's SSD boot drive kept up with its peers in PCMark 8's storage test. The Dell didn't enjoy as much of an advantage in our CPU and multimedia tests, though it routinely topped the Aspire and IdeaCentre. The Dell OptiPlex 5490 led the way largely because of its eight-core, 16-thread Core i7 desktop processor, while the 24-inch M1 iMac took top honors in the cross-platform HandBrake, Cinebench, and Geekbench tests. Graphics Tests For our performance charts, we compared the Inspiron 27 All-in-One to another 27-inch AIO based on a previous-generation mobile Core i7, the Acer Aspire C27, as well as three 24-inch all-in-ones: the business-focused Dell OptiPlex 5490; the low-priced, AMD-powered Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 3; and the M1-based Apple iMac.

The Inspiron 27 7000 configuration I'm reviewing features an Intel Core i5-10210U processor typically found in laptops, which means it's not only less powerful than the Core i9-based iMac but also than a Core i5-class tower desktop. That's fine for basic productivity and web browsing, but it means the Dell can't serve as a multimedia content creation platform the way the iMac can.The Inspiron 27 is not slow in day-to-day tasks but is not suited to more demanding applications like photo or video editing. It’s also a terrible choice for games. This will limit its appeal to those who only use a computer for document editing, web browsing, and retro gaming.

Also handy is an HDMI input port, which gives you the flexibility to use the AIO as a discrete display for a separate PC, a game console, or another video source. It also gives an AIO with a sharp display some potential utility years down the road as a stand-alone monitor, when the PC portion inside becomes obsolete. When looking at and comparing CPUs in AIO PCs, a key distinction to work out is whether the AIO uses a full-desktop CPU or a mobile one. All else being equal, a full-desktop chip is preferable. How to tell: Mobile chips from the likes of Intel will have "U," "Gx" (where "x" is a number), "H," or "HQ" appended to the end of the chip model number. A desktop CPU will have no letter at the end, or perhaps "K" or "T." (As mentioned, most desktop AIOs will use Intel chips, as opposed to ones from rival AMD.) (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Complete with a wireless mouse and keyboard, a crisp 5-megapixel webcam, and surprisingly effective stereo speakers, the Chromebase 22 is a splendid home PC if you can do your computing in the cloud and don't need high-end apps, like Adobe Photoshop. It's especially suited for students who use school-supplied Chromebooks during the day, and so they'll already be used to the interface. It makes a good first impression. The screen looks vivid at first glance and the glossy coat provides a sense of depth and drama that’s hard to replicate on a matte screen. The gloss creates glare, however, so the Inspiron 27 can be difficult to view in a bright, sunlit room. Regardless, towers are still better than all-in-one PCs when you need to do intensive work like CAD/CAM or scientific data processing, and most of them are expandable in ways far beyond even the most upgrade-generous AIO on the market. PC gamers, especially, will get much more value out of a stand-alone tower in which they can swap out a graphics card than in a fixed-config AIO PC. Above the display, you'll find a retractable webcam. When it's not in use, you can push it down into the chassis, thwarting online snoops and preventing physical damage. The version I tested featured IR sensors for logging into Windows Hello using face recognition, which necessitates leaving the camera exposed most of the time. Our Windows-only 3DMark and Unigine Superposition gaming simulations show what a difference a high-powered graphics processor makes when it comes to rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.