With the growing power requirements of GPUs, and the thinner bodies and higher screen resolutions of all-in-one PCs, it’s getting harder to recommend any such PC for gaming, but here is one we can definitely recommend for GPU-accelerated graphical work.
The new HP Envy 34 offers an ultrawide 5K IPS display and 98% NTSC color coverage. For $1,900 you can get it with Intel’s desktop-oriented Core i7-12700 processor, the laptop version of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060, 2 x 8GB of DDR5-4000 memory, and 1TB of NVMe storage. The memory and storage are easy to upgrade with two M.2 slots and four RAM slots.
The 16MP camera is magnetically detachable to remove privacy concerns, and can be attached to any point of the bezel.
Connectors include two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SD card reader, and seven more USB ports, including another Type-C. The price includes Windows 11 Home, HP’s 915 wireless keyboard and mouse combo, 30-day trial periods for several apps, and 25GB of Dropbox storage for a year.
The Apple Alternative
Released in 2021, the 24″ iMac featured unprecedented efficiency and design for a device of its kind. The AIO’s monitor is just 11.5mm thick. With the release of the M3 chip, the same iMac has been upgraded to Apple’s latest and greatest tech.
The iMac starts at $1,300 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and you’ll need to add $200 if you want 16GB of RAM. You may want to add another $200 for the model with 10 active graphics units, not just for the 25% difference in graphics performance. That version has two USB 3.0 Type-C ports in addition to the two Thunderbolt/USB4 and headphone jack found in the base version. It also comes with a Touch ID sensor on the Magic Keyboard and Ethernet on the power brick for no extra cost, and has more color and storage options.
The iMac still puts up a fight thanks to its screen, with a 4.5K resolution, and support for true 8-bit (16.7 million) colors, and 10-bit (1 billion) colors with FRC. Similar to most of the company’s iPad lineup, it also has an anti-reflective coating and uses True Tone to automatically adjust brightness and color temperature.
Another standout comes in the sound department, as the iMac has six speakers: four woofers and two tweeters. It also has three microphones to complement the 1080p camera.
On both versions, you can expand storage although upgrades are very expensive: $200 for 512GB, or $400 for 1TB. Unless you need all of your storage to be as fast as possible or have an extremely limited desk space, external drives will be a much better value.
By default, the iMac comes with the Magic Mouse, which you can replace with the Magic Trackpad for $50. We wish there was a larger iMac with the same M3 internals, but the closest thing to that now would be using the Mac Mini M2 (see below) with the 27″ Apple Studio Display, which starts at $1,350.
