Gateway One ZX4300
- Category: Desktop Computers
December 13, 2010
Editor's Rating
- Sleek design
- Responsive touch screen
- Speedy performance
- Resolution isn't true 1080p HD
- Limited port selection
- No Blu-ray or TV tuner
The Gateway One ZX4300 is a touch screen all-in-one PC that has a 20-inch widescreen display. It has a AMD Athlon II X2 235e CPU with 4GB of RAM. It has some great performance, but has a limited port selection.
In total, the Gateway One ZX4300 measures 3.1 x 20.3 x 16.6-inches (wdh) and weighs 19 pounds. The body is made of a black plastic with some chrome accents that make it look quite sleek. It definitely could fit into any home decor without any trouble.
The display is a 20-inch widescreen display that has a resolution of 1600 x 900-pixels, which is not 1080p high-definition. Despite the lesser resolution display, the picture looks rather decent but it could be better with a true HD resolution display. The touch display works well too and is quite sensitive in a good way. Gateway also includes a wireless keyboard and mouse combo, which are both fairly comfortable to use.
On the unit, there's a rather limited set of inputs and outputs. There are, however, six USB 2.0 ports, a memory card reader, Ethernet and audio ports. There system does lack a TV tuner and an eSATA port. Because there's no TV tuner included, that means you can't use it in a kitchen setting, for example, and use it to watch TV. This leaves some of its potential usefulness aside, which is disappointing.
The unit has an AMD Athlon X2 235s CPU (2.8GHz) and 4GB of DDR RAM, which allow it to have very good performance ratings. There is also an ATI Radeon HD 4270 video processor, which isn't powerful enough to play today's 3D games, but it's more than enough for everything else. The optical drive is a standard dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive, which is also another disappointment because we would've liked to see a Blu-ray compatible optical drive for added multimedia functionality. There's a 640GB hard drive too, which gives you enough space for multimedia files. Built-in 802.11b/g/n wireless connectivity is also included too.
Gateway includes some specific touch-related features with the Gateway One ZX4300, including their Touch Portal. This portal is the gateway to the touch-enabled applications on the computer. These applications include some games as well as some productivity applications. Gateway customized the Windows 7 interface to allow for better touch interaction with the software. For example, they've increased the size of the window controls at the top right of the Windows 7 interface.
Unfortunately, there was no way to test the system's HD output since there's no HDMI in or Blu-ray drive. The screen's resolution is also sub-full HD, which also limits its multimedia abilities. Besides that, playing online videos looked well and played extremely well too. Performing more CPU-intensive computing tasks, like video encoding, worked very well and we didn't encounter any issues.
