When we reviewed the $799.99 HP Pavilion 24 All-in-One last year, we declared it the all-in-one PC for the rest of us, for whom a spendy Apple iMac is out of reach. If a 24-inch model at $800 is for the rest of us, then the HP All-in-One 22 is the all-in-one PC for all of us. (Models start at $399.99, with our 22-dd0010 test configuration coming in at $429.99.) This entry-level all-in-one offers a leaner price and a smaller display than its 24-inch sibling. The low price levies its own cost, though: You get an underpowered mobile-grade AMD Athlon processor and just 4GB of RAM behind its 21.5-inch display. Its low-end components make the HP 22-dd0010 a better fit for consuming media than creating or editing it, but this undersize all-in-one boasts an attractive, modern design that belies its very entry-level status. It's satisfactory as a second PC, a kitchen info-station, or a school companion for a younger student.
Thin Bezels on a Wiry Stand
The HP 22-dd0010 borrows the cloud-white color scheme from the Pavilion 24 All-in-One, but it’s not simply a smaller replica. This 22-inch model lacks the diamond-shaped pattern across the speaker bar below the display, and the stands are different. Thankfully, the HP 22-dd0010 offers the same slim bezels as its pricier sibling. Many budget models saddle you with thick bezels that add to a system’s footprint while giving it the opposite of a sleek, modern appearance.
With thin bezels on the top and sides, the HP 22-dd0010 measures 19.3 inches wide by 15 inches high and weighs only a hair over 16 pounds. Still, for such a small system, the HP 22-dd0010 takes up a lot of space. Unlike the rectangle base and simple neck of the Pavilion 24 All-in-One, the HP 22-dd0010 uses a wire-frame stand that touches down in four corners, covering a rectangle that’s 14.2 inches wide by 8 inches deep. That’s a large footprint for a 22-inch all-in-one. Worse, the stand doesn’t provide any room to stow the keyboard under the display when it’s not in use.
Plus, with the bundled, wired pair of peripherals, your options are limited in terms of where you can stash the keyboard when you aren’t using it and want to move it out of the way. A wireless keyboard and mouse combo is greatly preferred for any all-in-one, but you rarely get one on a budget model, and never on an entry-level model.
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A 1080p Panel Bolstered by Big Sound
At the center of the HP 22-dd0010 is a 21.5-inch display with a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution. The display is a bit dull (rated for only 250 nits at max brightness), and its off-axis viewing angles are poor. For watching Netflix, YouTube, or a DVD—yes, you read that right, a DVD—when you are seated squarely in front of the system, the display is more than adequate. HD videos looked crisp and exhibited fairly accurate colors, with decent contrast.
It’s only when you are seated closer and viewing text can you begin to see the individual pixels of the display. This screen-door effect isn’t as evident on this 21.5-inch display as it would be stretched across a 24- or 27-inch 1080p panel. For a 27-inch display and up, I’d look for a 2K or 4K resolution, but 1080p suffices here, especially since the HP 22-dd0010 doesn’t have the muscle for any creative work.
Behind the display, the HP 22-dd0010 pairs a low-end mobile CPU with a meager 4GB of RAM. The processor is the AMD Athlon Silver 3050U, which is a dual-core chip that operates at a base frequency of 2.3GHz and a max of 3.2GHz. (It doesn't support multi-threading, so two threads on two cores is all the muscle you get.) For storage, it offers a 256GB SSD, of which 207GB was free out of the box on our test system.
Most laptops and PCs offer more capable quad-core CPUs, at a minimum, with eight processing threads, along with 8GB of RAM. At the bottom rung of the all-in-one ladder, however, you are forced to make do with fewer cores and the bare minimum of RAM. As you’ll see in the next section, the HP 22-dd0010’s performance failed to set our labs aflame.
The system’s stereo speakers are a pleasant surprise. They emit powerful sound that’s much bigger than a laptop’s audio output. They’ll fill a small room, and I found I needed to keep the volume at the 50 percent level or lower when seated in front of the system. The speakers deliver more than enough oomph for Netflix movies and YouTube videos, but you’ll begin to hear the lack of a big bass response, and some muddied middle and high tones, during spirited music playback.
Hidden behind the display is a pop-up webcam that you will not want to use for business Zoom meetings, if you can help it—or even video calls with your family. It’s a low-quality camera that can capture only noisy 480p video, well short of anything approaching high definition.
All of the system’s ports are located, somewhat inconveniently, in the center of the back panel. You get no easy-access ports on the side, but the HP 22-dd0010 is small enough that it doesn't take too great an effort to get to the ports around back. (You do get a near-invisible SD-card slot on the bottom edge, though.)
In a single row on the back panel, you’ll find two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, headphone and Ethernet jacks, and the power connector. All four USB ports are of the Type-A variety, which means you’ll need an adapter to connect any of your USB-C devices. In addition to Ethernet, the system supplies 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which is a generation behind the current 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) specification.
While you won’t find any ports located on either side of the HP 22-dd0010, there is a surprise hiding on the system’s right edge. Like Taylor Swift singing, ”I come back stronger than a '90s trend,” in her song Willow, the HP 22-dd0010 offers a tray-loading DVD burner, the first such drive I’ve seen on an all-in-one PC in years. If you’ve got a DVD library collecting dust since you replaced the DVD player with a media streamer in your TV cabinet years ago, the HP 22-dd0010 gives you a small screen to get reacquainted with your DVDs. (It’s a DVD+/-RW drive, if you want to burn a disc or two for old times' sake.)
The Windows 10 Home software preload provides a McAfee LiveSafe trial and some bloatware that’s not uncommon on budget PCs, including promos for Dropbox, LastPass, Skype, WildTangent, and Utomik. HP backs the system with a one-year warranty with phone support during the first 90 days.
Testing the AIO 22: Athlon Silver, Barely Bronze Performance
Between the underpowered, unthreaded AMD Athlon CPU and meager 4GB allotment of RAM, the HP 22-dd0010 is limited in terms of what it can and cannot do. It couldn’t, for example, complete our Photoshop or one of our Superposition benchmark tests. The dearth of RAM was the culprit for the system failing to run our Photoshop test, and its mobile AMD Radeon integrated graphics lacked the muscle to power through the high-end Superposition test. (See more about how we test desktops.) What the HP 22-dd0010 can do, however, is juggle a dozen or so Chrome tabs at once, smoothly stream HD video, and run Word, Excel, and other basic office apps. And burn DVDs!
We have not reviewed an all-in-one as inexpensive as the HP 22-dd0010 for years, so we had to pit it against other budget all-in-ones that cost considerably more. The AMD Ryzen 5-based HP Pavilion 24-k0220z cost $799.99 when we reviewed it, and the Core i5-based MSI Pro 24X 10M AIO cost $899. Those are the closest in price we have to the $429.99 HP 22-dd0010. As a result, the charts below include a pair of budget desktops in the Dell Inspiron Small Desktop 3471 and the Acer Aspire TC-885-UA92, which is our current Editors' Choice award winner among budget-desktop small towers. You can see the systems' basic specs stacked up in the table below.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 (Productivity Test) and PCMark 8 (Storage Test)
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the storage subsystem. This score is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
The nearest competitor to the HP 22-dd0010 on PCMark 10 is the Core i3-based Dell Inspiron 3471, and even then, the Dell was more than 1,000 points better. A score that fails to surpass the 3,000 threshold indicates the HP 22-dd0010 is limited to the most basic tasks and minimal multitasking.
Cinebench R15
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
The HP 22-dd0010 finished dead last by a considerable margin on Cinebench, which is this first clue that this system is not intended for any task that multiple processing cores and threads would make easier.
Handbrake 1.1.1
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better.
Even versus the rest of this humble bunch, the HP 22-dd0010 took anywhere from twice as long to more than four times as long to get through our Handbrake test. Video editing on this system will require patience, and lots of it.
Graphics Tests
3DMark Sky Diver and Fire Strike
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
The HP 22-dd0010’s basement-dweller scores on 3DMark will vanquish any dreams you might harbor of playing 3D games on this all-in-one. The combination of Athlon Silver and AMD's integrated graphics even underperformed Intel's light-hitting UHD Graphics.
Unigine Superposition
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it’s rendered in the company’s eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess.
The HP 22-dd0010 eked out a measly 13 frames per second on the Low Preset test and was unable to complete the High Preset test, again lending proof that this system is not capable of running 3D games, particularly at its native 1080p resolution.
Sensible, Perhaps, as a Space-Saving Second PC
Having just read about the HP 22-dd0010’s showing in the labs—if you skipped past the performance section to the end of the review, I will summarize its benchmark results as "uninspiring"—you might be wondering what kind of user would purchase this undersize, underpowered all-in-one?
Well, obviously someone with a tight budget. But more than fitting just a cash-strapped buyer, the HP 22-dd0010 is a pick for someone looking for an inexpensive all-in-one as a second or third system in the home. It lacks the punch to act as your primary PC day in and day out, but its low-end mobile CPU and pittance of RAM will suffice for browsing the Web, working on the occasional office document, and watching Netflix, YouTube or—gasp!—a DVD.
The advantage the HP 22-dd0010 has over an entry-level laptop at or near its price is a roomier display and bigger audio. What you sacrifice in portability you gain in screen real estate and better sound for movies and videos—and maybe even music playback, as long as your tastes don’t tend toward bass-heavy genres. As long as you keep your expectations in check, the HP 22-dd0010 will make an easy addition to any room with its stylish, space-saving design and rock-bottom price.
The HP All-in-One 22 is a compact PC at a rock-bottom price that could make sense as a second system for YouTube watching and basic browsing.
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