Advertisement

Dell's new XPS 27 is an all-in-one with ten speakers and a lot of power

Finally, a PC with decent built-in speakers.

On a good day, the average all-in-one or laptop computer's built-in speakers are "okay," at best. Someone at Dell must have grown tired of mediocrity -- the company's new XPS 27 all-in-one refresh takes its audio setup very seriously. In all, the new machine features ten speakers, including four full-range drivers, two tweeters for high notes, a couple of passive radiators for deeper bass and two down-firing speakers for fill-sound. With those audio chops, it's probably safe to assume the XPS 27 sounds better than your average machine.

That audio will accompany a bright, 17-inch 3,840 x 2,160 display with 100-percent Adobe RGB colorspace, available in both touch and non-touch configurations -- and that display will be powered by a 6th generation Intel core i7-6700 or i5-6400 CPU and optional AMD R9 M470X and M485X GRAPHICS. Paired with up to 32GB of RAM and as much as 2TB of HDD storage (or 1TB if you prefer solid state drives), the XPS 27 has plenty of power. It has quite a lot of ports too, including five USB plugs, HDMI out, USB type-C and an ethernet port.

The only thing that seems to be missing from the machine is stylus support -- the XPS 27's articulating arm allows its screen to lay as flat as Microsoft's Surface Studio, but gives artists now to draw on it. If you can live without that, however, it could be a good Surface competitor. The Dell XPS 27 is available now, and starts at $1,499.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.