Dell's new 27-inch all-in-one is great for music lovers
LAS VEGAS — With Apple's current unwillingness to upgrade pretty much any of its desktop products, the PC competitors are looking more and more interesting.
Dell's latest all-in-one, the Dell XPS 27, is an obvious iMac competitor, and while its specs aren't all better than the iMac's, it does bring a few very interesting features to the table.
The obvious one is sound. The XPS 27 comes with six built-in speakers — two tweeters and four mid-range/bass units — and can be configured to work with two additional passive radiators and two down-firing speakers (sold separately) for an ever richer sound. Dell worked with Grammy-winning producer Jack Joseph Puig on the audio for the XPS 27, and promises the "best sound" ever seen on an all-in-one PC.
And while the screen resolution is a bit lower than the 27-inch iMac's 5K — 3,840 x 2,160 pixels — it's a touch screen that can be tilted 60-degrees back, similar to Microsoft's Surface Studio.
The configurations it offers will be flexible enough to turn the XPS 27 into a real powerhouse — if you don't mind having a 6th generation Intel Core processor, as the 7th generation processors aren't included for some reason. RAM memory ranges from 8-32GB, storage ranges from 1/2TB hard drive to a 512GB/1TB SSD, and graphics options include Intel's HD Graphics 530 chip at the low-end and an AMD R9 M485X chip as the top option.
The entire device is encased in aluminum, and has a wide assortment of side and back ports — five USB 3.0 ports, HDMI-out, two DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, audio jack and an SD card reader.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
