Dell's Studio One 19 has a 19in touchscreen with specially designed interface to match. It's an inclusion that dominates proceedings right from startup, with larger font sizes and a taskbar set up to make finger-prodding much easier.

The touch interface
The main touch interface is even more prominent. A row of quick-launch icons sweeps across the bottom half of the desktop at all times, and is easily navigated by flicking left and right, iPhone-style. As well as media settings and an Internet button, there's a touch-optimised paint tool with a child-friendly approach, plus a few attempts to use the touch interface in more entertaining ways.

A Guitar Hero-style rhythm game has you tapping onscreen speakers as notes cascade past, while a touch drum kit is fun for all of two minutes. Both are nice ideas, but they're little more than that.

A curved Apple-white rear gives way to a black two-piece front, with a wide glass bezel flanked by an unsightly charcoal fabric layer over the speakers. Dell sees it as a stylistic selling point; we're not convinced.

The screen works well. Light touches are sometimes missed and flicks can go unnoticed, but you'll soon be interacting with ease. Whether you'll want to is a different matter, though, as we still reverted to mouse and keyboard for tasks without a proper touch interface.

Screen
Touchscreen aside, the display is great for entertainment. The 1366 x 768 resolution is enough for 720p video, and the panel offers vivid colours and sharp detail. It's highly reflective, though, and you'll also have to keep a cloth handy to wipe away the regular build-up of fingerprints.

Design
It comes in a body that can hardly be called elegant. A curved Apple-white rear gives way to a black two-piece front, with a wide glass bezel flanked by an unsightly charcoal fabric layer over the speakers. Dell sees it as a stylistic selling point; we're not convinced. And it sits on a silver stand that matches neither the black nor white of the body.

Specs
It's a shame, because there's an impressive specification inside. It comes in three flavours, and Dell sent us the most expensive, which retails at $1999. A 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of DDR2 memory combine for a benchmark score of 1.43, so it won't struggle as a main PC.

There's a 500GB hard disk, and a decent range of connections: six USB ports, 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11abg WLAN. Surprisingly, though, there's no draft-n.

All but the dearest model come with a DVD writer, with a glowing touch-sensitive eject button beneath the screen. Although it still can't display Full HD, an additional $322 premium will add a Blu-ray drive.

This isn't a gaming system; it isn't even really an entertainment system, despite its living-room design. It shares more in common with cheaper devices such as Shuttle's X50.

Graphics performance
Whichever model you choose, gaming shouldn't be a priority. The top Studio One 19 model features Nvidia's GeForce 9200 graphics, which limped to a score of just 18fps in our least demanding Crysis test. You can upgrade that to a slightly faster GeForce 9400 for a minimal additional cost of $33, but it still won't make advanced games playable - our previous testing usually nets a 9400 a score of around 24fps on low settings.

But this isn't a gaming system; it isn't even really an entertainment system, despite its living-room design. It shares more in common with cheaper devices such as Shuttle's X50.

Value
Unfortunately, our review model does so at a price far in excess of the Shuttle's $880. It's a similar situation to that of the others in Dell's range: while the variety is welcome, only the cheapest model offers good value.

Conclusion
For a palatable $1499, the base Studio One 19 offers a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo E5200, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard disk. None of these downgrades will have any notable impact on everyday performance, but they bring down the price to a level at which the Dell appeals as a well-equipped touchscreen device. And with a huge power advantage over the Shuttle's Atom, it remains a fine main budget PC as well.