Dell XPS One Review

I am not being compensated for this review in any way, shape or form. Dell sent me a loaner XPS One that I will be (sadly) returning to them now that this review is published.

So, @RichardAtDell reached out to me a few weeks ago and asked if I would be interested in reviewing their new machine, the XPS One. Never one to turn away a chance to play with new gadgets, I said yes immediately. Had I known what I was getting into, I’m not so sure I would have said yes anymore – because I’ve completely fallen in love with this thing and I do. not. want. to. send. it. back.

Dell XPS One 24″

First of all, this has got to be the sexiest looking machine I have ever laid eyes upon. I guess I really didn’t realize just how big a 24″ monitor is – it’s BIG. Big and SEXY. (I am going to use that word a lot in this post. Just warning you now). But it’s not just a big flat screen monitor – it IS the computer. That’s it – all of it – right there.

What’s funny is that Richard had asked me to review this machine from the perspective of a mom with kids, and talk about how we use it as a family.

I have a confession to make.

My kids haven’t gotten a whole heck of a lot of time to use it. We seriously fight over who gets to use it next.

I do think it’s mostly because it’s so big, the monitor is so bright and the colors are so saturated, it’s kind of hard to look at any other computer in our house and be happy about having to be stuck with it.

But this thing has capabilities we haven’t even been able to use yet because of wiring issues in my office. The XPS One is also capable of being a HD TV. If I could let this go, it would be a brilliant addition to my kitchen so that I could keep my kids entertained during snack time and I could use it to find recipes right there instead of printing them out (my *dream kitchen!*). For now, we’ve been at least using it as a DVD player and MP3 player – thanks to Dell I’m a new Amazon MP3 store addict.

So besides being sexy, looking great, being sexy, and us fighting over who gets to use it, what’s so great about it? In the end, isn’t it just another computer? Well, kindofbutnotreally – it’s one freaking fast computer that can handle pretty much anything I can throw at it – I always have 5-10 Firefox windows open, am playing music on iTunes, using Skype or AIM to chat or make VOIP phone calls, and always have Word, Excel, and either Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop open all at once. Plus it’s WIFI ready and Bluetooth enabled.

Ginsu Knives

On my old laptop, it can handle all of this with my 2 GHz processor and 2GB RAM – but it slows things down a bit. On the XPS One, with a 2.33 GHz Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8200 processor and 4 GB RAM, having all these programs open at once is like slicing through butter with a Ginsu. I think I could be doing serious multimedia development and this machine wouldn’t bat an eye.

So, normally in a review I try to find something that the company should improve upon – as far as the machine is concerned, I honestly couldn’t ask for anything else. I probably wouldn’t normally buy something so big, as it seems like more machine than I would need. But now I’m hooked. I guess at a price tag of $1599, if I were actually going out to purchase a desktop computer, I’d probably try talk myself down to a lower priced machine because I’m cheap and it’s the holidays. If you wanted to add a Blue Ray DVD player, tricked out video card and triple the size of your hard drive to 750 GB, it would set you back $1899. But considering this thing is cable-tv ready, it’s like you’re getting a TV, sound system and computer all in “One” (OMG – I didn’t even plan that pun).

If you’re interested in the machine, be sure to check out the 3D view and the photo gallery. It comes in a few colors (wishing they sent me the Product RED version, personally). And I am seriously considering just sending Richard a check and keeping the darn thing…

So this is how they pump up holiday sales – tell us to just “try” it knowing they will never see the thing returned again.