The Pavilion MS214 not only has Windows 7 Home Premium preinstalled, it has the classy one-piece design of a more costly Apple iMac or HP TouchSmart (though it doesn't have the latter's touch screen). Its 18.5-inch LCD is bigger than the old 15- or 17-inch CRT it'll likely replace. Its setup is as simple as plugging in the mouse, keyboard, and power cord. It comes with HP's slick MediaSmart software for managing photos, videos, and music, as well as a webcam and WiFi. And while $600 isn't exactly an impulse buy, it's only a couple of hundred bucks more than a cheap conventional PC -- one that doesn't offer the "simple, elegant, and tower-free desktop" touted by the advertising sticker on the HP's front bezel.
On the other hand, HP is gambling that smart shoppers (or shoppers helped by smart salesclerks) won't mistake the MS214 for a mere nettop like the Asus Eee Top 1602 or eMachines EZ1601. Instead of a nettop's humble, one-core Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM, the Pavilion boasts an AMD Athlon X2 3250e -- a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU with two times 512K of Level 2 cache -- and 2GB of DDR2 memory, as well as a 320GB hard disk and a DVD±RW burner. And while it's no fire-breathing gamer, the HP's ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics easily outshine the ignominious Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics of nettops and netbooks.
No Obvious Omissions
The all-in-one would be a natural fit for a cordless keyboard and mouse, but economy apparently dictated a keyboard and mouse that take two of the four USB 2.0 ports at the machine's rear. The two input devices are generic pieces, an optical mouse with scroll wheel and a keyboard with audio volume controls and a medium-firm, moderately rattly typing feel. The four USB ports occupy the rear panel alongside the socket for the HP's laptop-style AC adapter and audio and Ethernet ports. Families with a WiFi router at home can ignore the Ethernet port and hook up to the Internet via 802.11b/g wireless.
Two more USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks and a six-in-one (SD/SDHC/MMC/xD/MS/MS Pro) flash-card reader are accessibly located on the left side of the display; the right side holds up and down buttons for screen brightness and the eject button for the DVD±RW drive. The power button is at bottom right of the front bezel.
The system stands about 15.5 by 18.5 by 8 inches. There's no height adjustment for the display, but a good range of tilt, and it's easy to swivel the unit from side to side. The display follows today's 16:9 HD-screen-ratio fashion, albeit at a lowish resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels; it's enough for 720p videos, however. More important, the screen is bright and sharp, with vivid colors and crisp text and icons. The built-in speakers are no threat to Bose or Bang & Olufsen, but perfectly fine for enjoying online audio and CDs or DVDs.
We've already mentioned MediaSmart, which offers a friendly mini-menu of music, photo, video, webcam, and DVD tools adapted from HP's swanky TouchSmart desktop software. These top Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center by providing a variety of ways to browse, organize, and enjoy CDs, MP3s, images, and videos. Other bundled software includes CyberLink's suite of CD and DVD burning and backup tools, Microsoft Works, and a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security.
Ambling Right Along
The HP isn't built for benchmark speed tests (its Windows Experience Index, dragged down by sub-Aero-worthy graphics, is a wimpy 2.9 on the operating system's 7.9-point scale). But we were curious, so we can report that the MS214 rendered Cinebench R10's sample scene in five and a half minutes. That's slow compared to the minute or two required by a deluxe quad-core desktop, but it's like lightning next to the 17 minutes taken by a nettop such as the eMachines EZ1601 -- whose SysMark 2007 Preview score and Quake III Arena game frames per second the HP nearly doubled at 63 and 103, respectively.
Of course, Quake III is 10 years old; cutting-edge modern games like Crysis won't run on the MS214, but its 3DMark06 score of 1,021 (versus the eMachines' 83) shows it's viable as a puzzle- or strategy-gaming platform if not a first-person shooter. Performance in everyday applications is perky enough; some dialog boxes take a moment to appear instead of popping up instantly, but we never felt we were being kept waiting.
We like the idea of the Pavilion All-in-One very much. There's no reason that the majority of PC users who don't care about expansion slots and vacant drive bays can't be satisfied with a stylish one-piece desktop (although speaking of drive bays reminds us to ask for an eSATA port next time). And there's no reason for one-piece desktops to bear hefty price premiums. Three or four gigabytes of memory would be better than two, but the MS214 avoids the weaknesses of nettops and delivers a solid computing experience.
We don't give it higher praise because it has competition: When we reviewed the Lenovo C300, we noted the availability of a $549 configuration with a dual-core Atom CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 20-inch LCD. That's more memory and a bigger screen for $50 less. HP must be hoping that shoppers don't stray into the Lenovo aisle.
HardwareCentral Intelligence
HP Pavilion All-in-One MS214
HP
Available at Amazon: $559.95
On a 5-star scale:
Features: 
Performance: 
Value:
Total: 11 out of 15
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