Full Review

Joining the race of affordable lifestyle all-in-one desktop PCs, the Benq's nScreen i91, is a sleek, compact 19-inch nettop.

The nScreen i91 is built like an Apple iMac, and extremely compact compared to the likes of the MSI Wind Top AE1900 or the Lenovo IdeaCentre C300. Whereas the MSI Wind Top has a glossy screen, the Benq includes an 18.5-inch non-glossy screen with a 1366x768 resolution, and it doesn't support touch input. The screen is without a doubt the centerpiece of this Benq all-in-one. It is nice and evenly lit, has average viewing angles, but has good brightness and contrast levels. The unit has a two-toned black-on-white color scheme with a glossy finish all along the bezel, back panel, and screen stand.

The Benq nScreen i91 has a rotating plastic dial on the bottom right corner of the bezel used for adjusting volume, very cool and retro.

The onboard speakers are situated below the bottom screen edge. A 1.3MP webcam and microphone is grooved into the top screen bezel. The whole unit is sturdy and well built, no complaints here. There's a rotating plastic dial on the bottom right corner of the bezel used for adjusting volume, very cool and retro.

The Benq nScreen i91 is an entry level all-in-one PC, and the fact is apparent from its internal hardware. An AMD Sempron 210U 1.5-GHz processor ticks at its heart, and its performance isn't very different from the Intel Atom processors. Coupled with the AMD Sempron is 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It deploys ATI Radeon X1200 onboard graphics, which is marginally better than Intel GMA 500 graphics found on Atom-based netbooks. It doesn't come with Gigabit Ethernet, nor Wi-Fi Draft-N connectivity—support limited to slower 100Mbit LAN and 802.11 b/g standards. The most obvious omission is an optical drive, which we think is essential for any sort of primary computer in a household—you'll have to buy an external drive, unfortunately.

Two USB ports, audio jacks and a card reader are recessed on the left edge of the screen, whereas four USB ports and the ethernet port are placed on the back panel. But accessing the back ports isn't exactly easy. However, the Benq nScreen bundles a reasonable pair of keyboard and mouse which are pretty good to work with—the mouse, especially, is nice and ergonomic.

The Benq nScreen i91 performed as per our expectations from a basic entry-level all-in-one PC. WorldBench 6 score was marginally better than the MSI Wind Top AE1900 and the Asus Eee Top ET1602, and so was PC Mark 05 score. However, 3D Mark 06 score was much better than Atom-based all-in-ones we've seen in the past—261 compared to scores of below 100. All it allows the Benq nScreen is to play 720p HD videos without a hitch, and multitask while browsing the Web and work on office productivity suites. Onboard audio isn't the greatest but still pretty good for an all-in-one PC of such slim form factor.

Bottom Line

For a price tag of Rs. 27,000, the Benq nScreen i91's the most inexpensive all-in-one PC we've reviewed till now, and offers good price-to-performance value. If all you do on your PC is watch movies, surf the Web, and work on Office apps, then this is a nice, good-looking PC for you to consider.