Medion AKOYA P4020 D all-in-one PC

The Medion AKOYA P4020 D is an all-in-one PC with a 21.5in Full HD 1080p touchscreen display. It will be sold in Aldi supermarkets from 10 June. Like the Dell Inspiron One 19 and HP TouchSmart 300-1060a, the AKOYA P4020 D has built-in wireless networking, stereo speakers and a side-mounted DVD burner. All you have to do to get it up and running is to plug in the power.

Medion AKOYA P4020 D: specifications

Medion's AKOYA P4020 D desktop PC uses similar components to those found in mid-range laptops. It has a 2.3GHz Intel Pentium T4500 CPU (the same as the Medion AKOYA E7212 notebook) and 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM. A 7200rpm, 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard drive means there is plenty of room for storing photos, downloading movies and storing music. A Nvidia Geforce 9100M graphics processor gives the Medion AKOYA P4020 D enough video grunt to play Full HD video and older 3D games. Integrated 802.11n networking means that it is easy to connect to a wireless home network.

The AKOYA P4020 D's internal stereo speakers perform well, with good treble and reasonable mid-range sound reproduction at low to moderate volume levels. Only if you push them to near-maximum power will distortion start to creep in, with treble becoming harsh and ragged and mid-bass starting to crackle.

We were disappointed to see that only 32-bit Windows 7 is installed by default — this means the Medion AKOYA P4020 D can only utilise around 3.2GB of RAM rather than the entire 4GB installed. A disc for installing 64-bit Windows 7 is included.

Medion AKOYA P4020 D: design and ergonomics

Essentially, the Medion AKOYA P4020 D looks like a slightly chunky PC monitor. The 21.5in, 16:9 screen has a native resolution of 1920x1080, and the PC is 45cm wide, 42cm tall and 7.5cm deep (excluding the stand). It takes up only slightly more room on a bench-top than a regular 22in or 24in PC monitor like the BenQ V2420H.

The two-tone silver and gloss black bezel is less attractive than the Dell Inspiron One's minimalism. Its glossy screen makes colours look vibrant, but the trade-off is a tendency to pick up reflections when used in a brightly lit room. The screen is sharp and has good brightness and colour saturation. We found our 1080p Full HD test movies to be clean and vibrant.

The bezel on the left of the Medion AKOYA P4020 D hides three easily accessible USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot and headphone/microphone jacks. On the right of the all-in-one PC is the side-loading DVD-RW drive, while the bezel has touch-sensitive controls for brightness and speaker volume. On the rear panel of the PC a range of ports can be found: four USB 2.0 ports, an audio line in and coaxial digital output, a Gigabit Ethernet socket and a TV antenna input. PS/2 ports are also available for connecting older keyboards and mice.

Medion AKOYA P4020 D all-in-one PC benchmarks and performance

When presented with regular PC duties such as word processing, Web browsing and video viewing, the Medion AKOYA P4020 D all-in-one PC handles itself well. The dual-core CPU can run several programs simultaneously; there was no perceivable slowdown when we switched from a full-screen instance of Windows Media Centre to a FireFox browser window playing Flash video on YouTube.

When we ran WorldBench 6 on the Medion AKOYA P4020 D it recorded a score of 112. This is a significant jump from Medion's older P4010 touchscreen PC as well as HP's and Dell's all-in-one PC offerings.

While the specifications of the Medion AKOYA P4020 D all-in-one PC aren't high-end by any means, it is powerful enough to handle regular computing tasks with ease. Its weakest point is its graphics processor, which would struggle with any modern video game — its saving grace is the ability to decode Full HD video with ease.

Medion AKOYA P4020 D touchscreen performance

For the most part, the touchscreen interface of Medion's software is easy to get to grips with (pardon the pun). Buttons are large and the touchscreen reacts well to inputs. It is a multitouch screen, so gestures like flicking and two-finger zooming are supported.

The Windows 7 interface also lent itself reasonably well to touchscreen usage in our tests. We wouldn't type anything longer than a Web address on it and double-tapping to open programs is occasionally a bit finicky, but at least the keyboard and mouse are available as a backup.

Medion AKOYA P4020 D: software and accessories

The Medion AKOYA P4020 D is preloaded with a 32-bit copy of the Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft Works 9.0 and an Office 2007 trial edition are also installed. The Medion Touch Centre software provides easy access to games, movie watching, paint and memo software, as well as access to the 1.3-megapixel camera in the AKOYA P4020 D's top bezel.

A wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and Windows Media Centre-compatible remote control are included with the Medion AKOYA P4020 D. We found these to be passable for general use, but we were annoyed that the wireless keyboard and mouse receiver wasn't built in — instead, you will need to plug in the supplied USB receiver.

The inbuilt combination digital/analog TV tuner works seamlessly with Windows Media Centre — all we needed to do was plug in an external antenna and click through a few menus to start watching live television.

Conclusion

The Medion AKOYA P4020 D all-in-one PC is a complete package, with plenty of technology inside an impressively compact form factor. As well as handling general computing tasks with ease, you can watch TV and high-definition movies. For $999 the Medion AKOYA P4020 D represents good value considering similar PCs can cost almost $2000.

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