The HP All-in-One 24 is an all-in-one desktop that occupies a middle rung on the AIO ladder, above 24-inch budget models like the Acer Aspire C24-1700 and below larger, higher-end models such as the 27-inch Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i. Its 24-inch, 250-nit display with full HD resolution is no better than a budget all-in-one's, but instead of a wimpy Celeron or Pentium processor, it's powered by a mainstream AMD Ryzen 5 5625U. And instead of the basic 8GB of memory and 256GB solid-state drive common to entry-level AIOs, our test model offers an more-than-adequate 16GB of RAM and dual storage drives (a 512GB SSD, and a 1TB hard drive). At this model's list price of $949.99 at HP.com, though, a brighter, sharper screen is in order. (Models start at $750, sometimes discounted; our kicked-up unit is model number 24-cb1144z.) If you can catch it on sale, this HP All-in-One 24 configuration offers solid value as a secondary home entertainment station. For a few hundred more, though, the IdeaCentre AIO 5i is a better, bigger-screen buy.
The Design: A Workable Chassis, a Memorable Stand
The HP All-in-One 24 boasts an attractive, compact design. The company often defaults to white and chrome accents for its computers, but this PC comes dressed in black. Thin bezels frame three sides of the screen, with a wider speaker bar running the width of the system below it. The back panel is black textured plastic. Despite being made of plastic, the chassis feels firm and rigid.
The funky metal-wire stand adds a dash of personality to the All-in-One 24. It looks like a giant paper clip that was bent into a monitor base. The stand is a tripod with two front feet and a wide rear foot. It's both sturdy and compact, and the single back foot lets you position the system on a corner of a desk. The stand allows for tilt but lacks height and swivel adjustments.
There's a shocking omission in the HP's list of ports and connectors. While nearly all desktop PCs released in the past few years offer both USB Type-A and Type-C ports, you'll find only USB-A ports here. This means you'll need an adapter to connect any USB-C devices, and you'll also miss out on the latter's potentially faster transfer rate. You get three Type-A ports on the back, two of them antique USB 2.0 connectors, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps). You get another USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port on the left side of the display next to an audio jack. In addition to the USB ports on the back panel are HDMI and Ethernet ports.
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The bundled keyboard and mouse are disappointing in that they're a cheap wired set instead of a more convenient wireless pair. The tangled cords of the mouse and keyboard detract from the otherwise clean design of the all-in-one.
A Subpar Centerpiece: The Dim Display
The 23.8-inch screen (measured diagonally) is about as basic as it gets, with 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution and a minimal 250 nits of rated brightness. The 1080p resolution is sufficient for casual web browsing and watching videos, but text looks fuzzy; I'd advise against trying to use the HP All-in-One 24 as a cheap, convenient work PC if your job requires reading documents or spreadsheets for long stretches. Its poor color reproduction also makes the panel a bad choice for detailed graphics work.
I would also caution against choosing the HP if you plan on placing it in a bright, sunny room. Our display tests confirmed the display's weak 250 nits of brightness. Even in my north-facing home office, which receives little direct natural light, I often wanted to turn the screen brightness up past its maximum.
The webcam, at least, is solid stuff, offering crisp 1080p resolution and IR face recognition to let you log in securely without needing to type a password. Its images showed some noise but not nearly as much as you'd get with a 720p camera, and the pop-up webcam hides behind the display when not in use to protect your privacy.
The 2-watt stereo speakers proved underwhelming, giving the All-in-One 24 audio output that's no better than the average laptop. It's tinny and muddy and not suitable for music playback. Other all-in-ones and even some notebooks find room for quad speakers, so it's disappointing to receive the bare minimum here.
One area where the HP goes beyond the usual all-in-one fare is its storage capacity: You get not only a speedy 512GB solid-state drive but a spacious 1TB hard drive. The pair provides quick access to Windows 11 Home and applications while providing a slower but spacious filing cabinet for documents, photos, and videos.
Testing the HP All-in-One 24: AIOs Hit the Test Bench
As we noted up top, our HP All-in-One 24 review unit (model 24-cb1144z) features a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 5625U processor, 16GB of RAM, and AMD Radeon integrated graphics. The Ryzen 5 5000 series CPU is a little long in the tooth—AMD's current generation is the Ryzen 7000 series—but it remains a very capable processor and allowed the HP to stay competitive and in some cases outpace rival systems with fresher Intel Core i5 CPUs. The Ryzen 5 5625U is also an energy-efficient part that lets the HP operate quietly with little or no fan noise.
To put the HP All-in-One 24's performance in perspective, we matched its benchmark results against other midrange AIOs, including 24- and 27-inch Dell Inspirons, as well as the lower-end Acer Aspire C24. Note: The Lenovo AIO cited here is the 24-inch Core i5 version of the IdeaCentre AIO 5i, not the recommended 27-incher mentioned in our introduction. The 24-inch model is a closer analogue to the HP tested here.
Productivity Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The HP All-in-One 24 got its testing off on the right foot, finishing first in PCMark 10. The 24-inch Lenovo IdeaCenter AIO 5i was next best, thanks to a Core i5-12500H chip that prioritizes performance over efficiency. The latter flexed its muscles in our multimedia tests but the HP still acquitted itself well by edging the two Core i5 U-series Dell machines. It's a well-rounded performer for productivity and light creative tasks.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
For gaming laptops and other mobile gaming hardware, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also in the mix is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance. Two GFXBench tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.
Integrated graphics always eat dust compared to the discrete GPUs of gaming laptops and high-end desktops. The HP 24 balked at one of our GFXBench subtests and again trailed the IdeaCenter AIO 5i 24, though none of these all-in-ones is a good fit for demanding games or workstation-style visual applications.
Display Tests
Finally, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The HP lived up to its rated 250 nits of brightness, but that was about it. The competing Dell Inspiron 24 5420 All-in-One offers a slightly brighter panel with superior color reproduction. The HP's screen is best suited for limited casual use in a room without a lot of sunlight.
Verdict: Caught in the Middle With a Mix of Parts
The HP All-in-One 24 straddles the line between budget and midrange, and you can find better options on either side of it. While we like its peppy AMD Ryzen 5 performance and the ample capacity of its dual drives, its dim, unremarkable 1080p display makes it more of a secondary computer than a primary PC. The panel grounds it in the budget-AIO zone, but for an above-budget price. Lenovo's IdeaCentre AIO 3i will suffice for occasional use while saving you money, while the 27-inch IdeaCentre AIO 5i costs a few hundred dollars more but offers a bigger, brighter, and sharper screen that's better suited for everyday use.
HP's All-in-One 24-cb1144z packs a likeable-enough loadout of a Ryzen CPU, twin drives, and plenty of RAM, but it needs a better, possibly bigger display to play in the near-$1,000 zone.
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