PCMag recently declared the 27-inch Apple iMac the best large-screen all-in-one desktop you can buy. It better be: Our test unit rings up at $4,499. If you're looking for an all-in-one for the rest of us, the HP Pavilion 24 All-in-One (model 24-k0220z, as tested) combines AMD's overachieving Ryzen 5 4600H processor with plenty of memory and storage for $799.99. The Pavilion 24 doesn't pretend to compete with the loaded iMac—it has a 23.8-inch instead of 27-inch display, for starters—but it's a peppy, well-equipped rig for a family room or den and our new Editors' Choice for a budget all-in-one.
The Price Is White
Pavilion is HP's mainstream consumer brand, positioned above nameless HP systems ("HP All-in-One 20") and below its Envy machines. The 24-k0220z is an HP.com configuration that's a better buy than most of the Pavilions sold at retail with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 and older AMD chips. It teams a six-core, 3GHz CPU with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe solid-state drive, and a 1TB, 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive.
Visuals aren't the PC's strongest suit—the IPS touch screen offers full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) instead of 1440p or 4K resolution, and the processor's AMD Radeon integrated graphics, while they outshine their Intel competitors, are more suited to casual games than demanding 3D titles. (More on graphical and productivity performance in a minute.) But the 17.1-by-21.3-by-6.5-inch (HWD) Pavilion is an attractive overall package, a svelte screen in what the company calls Snowflake White with thin bezels on top and sides and a fabric-covered speaker grille below the display. A small tag on the right of the grille boasts that the speakers are tuned by B&O, the consumer-electronics rather than audiophile label of Bang & Olufsen.
A plain rectangular base and slim stand support the display, which has tilt but no height adjustment. The stand doesn't swivel, but it's not difficult to move the 14.8-pound computer around your desk. Videoconferencing and online chat are prime home PC applications these days, and the HP is ready with a 5-megapixel webcam with quad-array digital microphone. The camera pops up from the top edge when you want it and snaps down flush to block Peeping Toms when you don't.
Similar Products
Apple iMac 27-Inch (2020)
Dell Inspiron 27 7000 (7790)
Dell OptiPlex 7070 Ultra
Acer Aspire Z 24
Like most all-in-ones, the Pavilion puts most of its ports, in a slightly inconvenient move, around back. A headphone jack and one USB Type-A port are on the right edge of the display. (The power button is at bottom left.) Three more USB-A ports and one USB Type-C port are at the rear, along with an SD card slot, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, an HDMI-out port for connecting a second display, and HDMI-in for connecting a cable box or game console to the HP's screen.
All five USB ports follow the USB 3.1 5Gbps spec instead of the faster USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Gen 2x2, but HP still earns a point for not wasting space with slow, retro USB 2.0 ports. Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi handle wireless communications. A laptop-style 120-watt power brick plugs into the rear; the HP doesn't have an internal power supply like an iMac.
Ample Audio, Vivid Viewing
B&O may be the lowered-expectations way to say Bang & Olufsen, but the Pavilion's sound isn't bad at all. It cranks up surprisingly loud. (I found 40 percent volume too loud for YouTube.) The front-mounted soundbar pushes in-your-face bass and drums. Highs and midtones soar, and it's easy to distinguish overlapping tracks. My MP3s and streaming video sounded great.
The retractable webcam is also way above average, producing 1440p stills and videos that are slightly soft-focus but clearly showing the flyaway strands of a bad hair day. Colors are accurate, and contrast is good. It's not an infrared camera, though, so the HP offers neither face recognition nor a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello logins.
The Pavilion comes with a color-coordinated white keyboard and mouse whose cables take two of the rear USB ports. The keyboard is a bit narrower than most. (There's no extra space separating the main area, the cursor keys, and the numeric keypad.) The Escape key is small because it's part of a top row of function keys for such things as adjusting volume and brightness and launching Windows' settings or the print dialog. It has a comfortable, slightly rattly typing feel; the space bar required a firmer rap than I'm used to. The optical mouse is a generic, ambidextrous design.
The 23.8-inch touch screen provides wide viewing angles and crisp contrast. You can make out pixels if you stare at the edges of letters, as with any screen of this size and resolution, but details are generally sharp, and brightness is good. Colors aren't pop-off-the-screen vibrant, but they do look rich and well-saturated. A four-way button or joystick nubbin on the back of the display lets you adjust brightness and contrast, toggle between PC and HDMI input, and choose among color temperature presets (also available by right-clicking the desktop and choosing HP Display Control). The presets include modes for Vivid, Gaming, Movie, and Low Blue Light.
The Windows 10 Home software preload provides a McAfee LiveSafe trial and just a bit of bloatware (WildTangent games and a Dropbox promo). HP backs the all-in-one with a one-year warranty with phone support during the first 90 days.
Testing the Pavilion 24: Racy 'Renoir'
We haven't reviewed many consumer-minded, budget-priced all-in-ones of late, so in addition to the Acer Aspire Z 24 and Dell Inspiron 27 7000, I compared the Pavilion's benchmark performance to that of the business-oriented Dell OptiPlex 7070 Ultra. I rounded out the benchmark charts with the Acer Aspire TC-885-UA92, which is not an all-in-one but our budget desktop Editors' Choice. You can see the contenders' basic specs in the table below.
The six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 4600H is one of AMD's new "Renoir" mobile processors. While this CPU is mobile- and not desktop-grade, the H series is no slouch, designed for thicker-design power laptops and gaming machines, as opposed to the Ryzen U processors meant for mainstream and thin notebooks. While its name makes you think it's a Core i5 competitor, it goes toe to toe with many Core i7 chips, making the HP a winner in several of our benchmark tests. (See how we test desktops.)
Productivity and Media Tests
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 jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
We consider 4,000 points an excellent result in PCMark 10; the Pavilion was the only entry to hurdle past 5,000. As a typical web-surfing and homework station, it'll be idling. The four PCs with SSDs breezed through PCMark 8's storage test ahead of the hard-drive-based Aspire Z 24.
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.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The HP's Ryzen 5 processor cruised through these two tests, posting results almost in line with those we see from powerful basic workstations. This is outstanding performance for an economical PC.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The OptiPlex won this contest, but the Pavilion turned in a fast, highly respectable time. Except for its SD card slot being located in back, it's a fine choice for managing a photo collection.
Graphics Tests
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. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and lets high-end PCs and gaming rigs strut their stuff.
The Inspiron's GeForce MX110 is a head above Intel integrated graphics. The HP's AMD Radeon graphics are a head higher still, though far short of most discrete GPUs.
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, this one rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
The Pavilion won handily, but came nowhere near a playable 30fps at its native 1080p resolution. As I said, it's suitable for casual rather than hardcore gamers.
A Keen Home Kiosk
It's hard to beat this all-in-one's value, though some come close. (Costco offers a Dell Inspiron 24 5000 that undercuts Dell's own site, though it's still $50 more than the HP with a slower Core i5 chip and less RAM.) A 512GB rather than 256GB SSD would be nice, but then so would a 27-inch display. You have to remind yourself that the PC is only $799.99.
HP.com's order processing and shipping during the pandemic may prove leisurely. (We bought this Pavilion ourselves, and our test unit took nine days to arrive.). But the Pavilion 24-k0220z is worth waiting for. It's an attractive, perky performer with no obvious flaws—especially given the price—and an easy Editors' Choice pick.
This direct-to-consumer configuration of HP's 23.8-inch touch-screen Pavilion 24 all-in-one desktop delivers potent performance for a low $799.99.
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