Being assembled from off-the-shelf components, the Fusion Flex AIO from Chillblast represents a radically different approach to the ground-up design employed by Apple, Asus, HP, MSI, Lenovo and the rest. See all all-in-one PCs reviews.
Assembled using a Top Tech "Top 215W" barebones touch-screen based unit it exudes a distinctly do-it-yourself feel, dominated by plastic and with an obvious emphasis on low cost rather than classic design. See also: Group test: what's the best all-in-one PC?
Taking a look at the underside, we found a standard motherboard back plate into which video and USB cables had been connected which then disappeared back into the case to drive the display and ten-point touch interface.
This also means that most of the connectors including audio, ethernet and the pair of USB 3.0 ports are tucked away. Extra USB 2.0 ports are provided at the side of the case, as is a memory-card reader, a Blu-ray reader and a row of buttons for the display.
This DIY approach gives Chillblast the freedom to install standard PC components, creating a truly customised system. These include a Wi-Fi card with two rather large antennae and a Freeview TV tuner – the only one here to support two channels simultaneously.
Processing power comes from a quad-core Intel Core i5-3450 chip, which delivers reasonably speedy performance although in absolute terms its score of 161 points from WorldBench 6 is a little lower than most of the competition.
The biggest performance drift arises because the Chillblast Fusion Flex AIO has no discrete graphics, relying on the graphics capabilities of the Intel CPU. That results in half the performance of much of the competition. Many users will have no need for a graphics card as this has no trouble handing HD multimedia or even low-level gaming.
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