A fantastic workstation to have
Aside from offering notebooks and gaming desktops, Taiwanese company ASUS also offers an extensive suite of all-in-one PCs for people who can’t be arsed to put one together from scratch. Their new Zen AiO 27 offers a gorgeous 4K display encased in a beautiful, monolithic chassis, though its price is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
All about the screen
Let’s start this hands-on with the display on this thing. It’s a 27-inch, 4K full touch panel, and has insanely accurate colors out of the box, thanks to its factory-calibrated color accuracy.
And its color accuracy is good enough for designers and people who need accurate color profiles since the calibration is PANTONE Validated, with Delta E < 2 color accuracy.
With that kind of color accuracy, it’s obvious that the intended crowd for the Zen AiO 27 are designers, photographers, and videographers that need a color accurate display, though it’s also a great place to watch video.
The 27-inch wide display can be rotated and tilted up and down depending on your preference, and there’s four, Harman/Kardon certified 16w speakers on the back of it for audio.
The design of the Zen AiO 27 is pretty monolithic, and evokes many design components from the company’s other Zen-branded products, like their notebooks. The base of the chassis has that same golden chamfer that features prominently on their notebooks, and the overall color scheme has a lot in common with their premium ZenBook lineup.
The base of the all-in-one has all the ports and connectors you’ll need, located on the back and sides. There’s 3 USB 3.1 connectors on the rear, HDMI in and out ports and Ethernet port on the back. On the side sits a single USB Type-C port, USB port, audio jack and a 3-in-1 card reader. There’s also an SD card reader at the front.
ASUS also throws in an integrated Qi wireless charger on the base as well, which comes in pretty useful when you don’t want wires and other stuff cluttering your desk.
Speaking of wires, ASUS throws in a wireless mouse and keyboard in the package as well.
Inside the Zen AiO 27 is an Intel Core i7-8700T processor, with 16GB of DDR4 RAM, 512GB of M.2 SSD storage, 2TB HDD and disrete graphics via NVIDIA’s GTX 1050. The hardware combination in the Zen AiO 27 gives it a little bit of oomph when you’re running photo and video editing apps.
The GPU inside the Zen AiO 27 is good enough for light gaming, though keep in mind that the desktop isn’t a gaming machine per se – it’s just a productivity focused desktop that’s also capable of running light games.
With all the bells and whistles of the ASUS Zen AiO 27, it’s not surprising to learn that it has a pretty steep price tag attached to it. Coming in at Php 149,995 via Villman, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart or for the thin of wallet.
But if you’re someone that requires a color-accurate desktop out of the box that’s fairly powerful and has a pretty nice aesthetic, ASUS’ Zen AiO 27 might just be for you.
