Toshiba LX830-10F review

As we've seen with the bevy of media connections around the back of the Toshiba LX830-10F, this is an all-in-one PC that strives to be a TV-replacing media centre. If you've gone for the model with just a DVD player, then for high-definition content you'll need to stream from services such as iPlayer or Netflix, or view high definition files.

It's well worth getting high definition content up on the Toshiba LX830-10F's screen, since it's Full HD 1080p as well as bright and vibrant.

Playback is smooth and viewing angles are good enough that you can sit on a sofa with the rest of the family to watch your movies without anyone missing out. The LED backlighting technology is particularly good with contrasts, so dark colours remain dark without dimming the surrounding lighter colours.

The screen also handles touch inputs, and though it's not quite a zippy as some of the other touch-enabled devices we've had our hands on, but it does the job.

What does let the touchscreen down, however, is Windows 7. Having got used to how well Windows 8 works with touchscreens, even on the traditional desktop, it came as a bit of a jolt when using the touchscreen in Windows 7.

More often than not when attempting to select a program from the Start menu, or an option from a menu, Windows 7 isn't quite precise enough to detect where you've pressed, resulting in the wrong selection. It's pretty frustrating, and made us miss Windows 8.

Of course, there are alternatives, with the included wireless mouse and keyboard standing in for complicated tasks. Toshiba is also offering a Windows 8 Pro upgrade on any Windows 7 PC you buy for an extra £14.99 (around AU$23/US$24) until the end of January 2013. If you're going to use the touchscreen a lot, then we really recommend taking this offer up.

A Toshiba-branded remote control is also included, which makes navigating Windows Media Centre much more pleasant. Like the keyboard and mouse, it's pretty no-frills, and not the most attractively designed remote we've seen, but it does the job.

While media playback was good, the Toshiba LX830-10F wasn't able to handle graphic-intensive games very well. During our tests, frame rates dropped to a very choppy 10fps, making the latest games all but unplayable.

Dialling down the graphic settings on the games may help, and casual gamers won't be too badly affected, but the ageing processor and integrated graphics for the Toshiba LX830-10F will be limiting.

Our 3DMark benchmark test returned a score of 3173. Windows 7 performance was good, but not stellar, and was held back a bit by the amount of software Toshiba has deemed to pre-install on the machine. Most of the software you won't want, and it helps slow down Windows.