Look out for 3D hitting the mainstream in a big way in the near future. Not 3D displays, which have been around for a few years, but 3D everything else. As 3D printing promises to open up new opportunities in inexpensive manufacturing, and new vistas of tinkering and invention, the need to work with real objects and capture 3D information will become a more important part of computing for everyone from designers and engineers to everyday users. To get out ahead of this three-dimensional future, HP has developed the Sprout ($1,899.99 as tested), a bold new take on the all-in-one desktop PC that incorporates new display technology, new interface tools, and the latest developments in 3D data capture. It's a funky, forward-thinking PC, and while it's an impressive showpiece for HP, right now, it's probably too far on the fringe for the average shopper.
Design and Features
The Sprout is undoubtedly one of the more unusual desktops we've seen in the PC Labs, but the design isn't too complicated. The foundation is an all-in-one desktop—much like the Editors' Choice Apple iMac With Retina 5K Display or the MSI AG270 Gaming All-in-One (2PC-006US)—with a 23-inch touch-screen display, and all the hardware you expect in a high-end desktop, like an Intel Core i7 processor, an Nvidia graphics card, and a 1TB hard drive. There's a standard 1-megapixel webcam and four built-in stereo speakers with DTS Sound providing decent audio quality. The display itself offers 1,920-by-1,080 resolution and 10-point touch tracking. All in all, it's a well-appointed all-in-one PC.
But there's more to this system than the foundation, and that's evident from the first time you see it. On the back of the Sprout is a column that serves as a stand for the display—with no angle or height adjustment—but extends up and over the display. The column is called the Sprout Illuminator, and it contains several technologies. First, it's a projector, with a DLP projector built into the rear column that projects up, onto a mirror that puts the displayed image squarely onto the touch mat (more on the touch mat below). It serves as a second display for the device, essentially giving you two monitors for the desktop.
Built into the overhanging arm are several other features. First, there's a high-resolution, 14.6-megapixel camera, which captures images clearly enough to use as a document scanner. Next, there's an Intel RealSense camera, which can capture 2D and 3D images. Finally, the Illuminator includes a bright LED lamp.
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Where a keyboard would normally go, you'll find a large flat pad that looks quite a bit like a large mouse pad, called the touch mat. The 20-inch touch mat does double duty as a display and a touch interface. The surface of the mat is essentially a projection screen, serving as a second display for the desktop, but it also has capacitive touch-sensing and is capable of tracking 20 points at once, letting two people use the mat simultaneously. The touch mat connects to the Sprout with a magnetic docking connector that simply and easily snaps into place. On the mat there are also three touch-sensitive buttons, one to turn the projected screen and mat on and off, another to project a virtual keyboard on the mat, and a Home button that brings up HPs Sprout Workspace, the default screen for the horizontal touch screen that's projected on the mat.
The combination of projector, cameras, 3D scanning, dual display, and touch input make for a very different user experience than you would have with a typical all-in-one. First, there's the abundance of touch. The primary display has 10-point touch already, but the secondary display on the touch mat is positioned much more like a keyboard for more comfortable and intuitive interaction. HP has also included a number of apps and tools that take advantage of this extra touch capability, using it for everything from laying out documents to making image collages. It can also be turned into a touch keyboard, letting you type on the touch mat, or play music with a projected piano keyboard.
All those extra parts make the Sprout a pretty bulky system, measuring 16 by 30.1 by 30.3 inches (HWD) and weighing a mighty 33.7 pounds. Now, desktops aren't usually known for being sleek and lightweight, but my primary concern is its prodigious footprint, which was too big for our usual test bench countertops, and required an extra table. As it is, the Sprout will definitely monopolize a lot of space on your desk, and might require a new desk altogether.
Included for use with the mat is an Adonit Jot Pro stylus, a ballpoint-pen-like stylus that features a swiveling flat disk on the tip, a quirk that might bother some people. The stylus comes with a screw-on cap to protect the tip and can be stored on the desktop itself, thanks to a magnetic stylus holder on the right-hand edge of the system. Additionally, HP includes a wireless keyboard and mouse, letting you use the Sprout like a standard all-in-one for all of your day-to-day tasks. The wireless devices aren't bad for bundled items, and they pair with a single press of a button, without the need for a USB dongle or the hassle of connecting over Bluetooth.
On the right side of the chassis, you'll find a pair of USB 3.0 ports. On the left is an SD card slot. On the back, at the base of the Illuminator column, you'll find the power connection, two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and one audio line-out port. For wireless connectivity, the Sprout is outfitted with dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. For storage, it has a 1TB, 5,400rpm hard drive with 8GB of solid-state memory to boost performance and for quick bootup.
Preinstalled on the system, but separate from the several Sprout-specific apps and tools, are several apps and programs, such as 30-day trials of McAfee LiveSafe and Microsoft Office 365 Personal, and common apps like Netflix, Evernote, and The Weather Channel. HP covers the Sprout with a one-year hardware warranty, as well as one year of software support, and free 24/7 technical assistance (online or toll-free by phone).
Sprout Software and Apps
The desktop at the heart of the Sprout runs Windows 8.1, the same operating system you'll find on regular systems like the MSI AG270 and the Lenovo ThinkCentre E93z. For your usual PC tasks, like typing up documents, browsing online, and the like, you can use Windows just as you would any other PC. But in order to make the projector, cameras, and touch mat all work in concert, HP has added its own interface, with a home screen skin (in addition to the usual Windows 8 Start Screen), a Sprout Marketplace for Sprout-optimized apps, and tools for creative collage making and scrapbooking, scanning documents and objects, and other apps. Additionally, the software allow images scanned by the Sprout or saved in Windows 8 to be transferred back and forth between standard Windows and the HP Sprout environment.
In order to show off some of the unique aspects of the Sprout, HP has also included several apps with the system. HP Create is one part photo editor and one part scrapbooking and design tool, letting you snag images from other sources (scanned documents, websites, etc.) and arrange them on a page to make posters, documents, scrapbooks, etc. Another similar tool is Martha Stewart CraftStudio, which is geared more toward craft projects, like making holiday cards.
Other apps seem to be geared toward kids. HP has collaborated with Dreamworks to make an app called StoryProducer, which lets you use characters and simple environments from movies like "How to Train Your Dragon" and play with them in a virtual playset that feels like a cross between playing at animator and playing with dolls. Another is PianoTime, which turns the touch mat into a piano keyboard, or two piano keyboards for a two-player "dueling pianos" mode. A third kid-friendly app, Crayola Color Draw & Sing, lets kids (or adults, I won't judge) play in a digital coloring book with a wide palette of colors, with effects for crayon, marker, and other Crayola products, and it makes music when you color and draw.
Perhaps the coolest app is HP's 3D Snapshot, which is presently in beta, but will be getting an update to the final version within the next two weeks. It uses the RealSense 3D capture and Structured Light 3D scanning—a process that projects a series of patterns onto an object to map its surface as a cloud of data points—to capture 3D scans of objects placed onto the touch mat. Doing a single scan will capture an object in 3D, but only from one side—manipulate the scan of the object, and it looks like an empty shell. This is one of the most compelling features of the Sprout, putting 3D scanning and manipulation into an affordable desktop-style device. It's exponentially more affordable and more approachable than the likes of the industrial-grade Ortery 3D MFP, but compared with smaller devices like the Matter and Form 3D Scanner($864.50 at Amazon) or the Occipital Structure Sensor, it's not as big a leap.
Finally, there's HP Collaboration Tool, which I was shown when HP first demoed the product back in October, which lets one Sprout user connect with another. Using HP's MyRoom screen and file-sharing service, the collaboration tool lets users connect, working on images and layouts together in real time, while each using the dual-display and touch mat on their respective Sprout PCs.
Using the Sprout
HP has heralded the Sprout as "blending the physical and digital worlds," largely in reference to its scanning capabilities, but this is a little overblown. More importantly, it seems like a lot of effort was spent to make this concept of immersive computing come together, but as it stands, there's little to recommend it over the plain old regular computing we're already using every day.
While the numerous touch-centric apps benefit from the flat position of the touch mat—a significant ergonomic improvement over upright touch screens—it doesn't necessarily provide a substantial difference in actually using most apps. While there may be some extra utility in using the touch mat or the dual-display setup for arranging text and graphics on a document or putting together a presentation, these are still the same basic tools we've had for years, similar to Photoshop or PowerPoint, and while the touch aspects may be a little more intuitive, they also seem to be dumbed down from the rich, multifaceted software that's already available.
As an interface, the touch mat is actually at its best when used in conjunction with 3D Snapshot and when manipulating the object scans that result. Touch is immediately more useful than a mouse when trying to look at an object from different angles, and the ability to keep your hands in a neutral position and not have them up blocking the display is an improvement over the basic touch screen in that regard.
The more compelling aspects of the Sprout aren't about the apps or input tools at all, but the image and object scanning hardware built into the Sprout Illuminator. The integrated RealSense cameras and the high-resolution scanning camera make capturing images extremely easy, and the touch mat works best not as a second display, but as a scanning bed, fixed in position below the cameras. By putting this capability into a usable desktop that can be purchased for less than $2,000, HP is doing a lot to put this technology into the hands of everyday users, but it's still very clunky, and 3D Snapshot feels unpolished, despite the fact that the Sprout has been on store shelves for more than a month.
Performance
As mentioned before, the heart of the Sprout is a pretty decent all-in-one PC, with a solid selection of components and features outside of the more unusual aspects of the device. With a 3.2 GHz Intel Core i7-4790S processor and 8GB of RAM, it's a decent desktop in its own right, not terribly different from the Lenovo E93z we reviewed last spring. The Sprout plowed through PCMark 8 Work Conventional with 3,588 points, slightly ahead of the MSI AG270 Gaming All-in-One (2PC-006US), which scored 3,476 points, and finished Photoshop CS6 in 3 minutes 18 seconds, falling behind both the Apple iMac (3:08) and the MSI Gaming AG270 (3:09), but pulling well ahead of the Lenovo E93z (5:24).
The system is also outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce GT 745A graphics card, giving it the graphics oomph to handle tasks like mapping data point clouds for rendering 3D scans. While the GeForce GT series isn't meant to provide gaming support, the overall performance isn't bad, completing 3DMark Cloud Gate with a score of 9,390 points, and Fire Strike Extreme with 732 points. Obviously, gaming-oriented machines like the MSI Gaming AG270 will offer more gaming-grade performance—it finished 3DMark with 16,612 points (Cloud Gate) and 2,139 points (Fire Strike Extreme)—but the Sprout has all the graphics muscle it needs.
Conclusion
There's no doubt that underneath the Illuminator arm and behind the giant touch mat, the HP Sprout is a well-made all-in-one PC, and one that we could easily recommend to most shoppers. But the Sprout can't be separated from the unique features of the projector, the 3D camera and scanning, or the touch mat. It's a complete package, designed to integrate several new technologies into a single system, and that it does in an undeniably cool way. It's innovative and interesting, but can I recommend anyone go out and buy it? Not quite yet.
In my mind, the biggest problem with the Sprout, is that it tries to be so many things all at once. If all you need is a document scanner, well that's probably already built into your printer. The touch mat is an interesting input tool and an alright secondary display, but you'll still default to keyboard and mouse 90 percent of the time, and the regular touch screen takes care of most of the other 10 percent all on its own. The most compelling feature, the 3D scanning function, is just alright, and those who need this functionality will be better served by a separate purpose-built device.
Ultimately, this is a product that won't really fit in at the office or in the home, but it is an intriguing peek at what may be coming in the next few years as 3D scanning and printing become more mainstream. The only group I can imagine needing this combination of features now might be designers, but even then, it's a flawed mishmash of old and new tools, a Swiss Army Knife when what you really need is a well-stocked tool box. In a few years, and with a great deal of refinement, I can certainly see something like the Sprout being widely used, but right now, it's an impressive showpiece that most users should pass on. Compared with the Editors' Choice Apple iMac With Retina 5K Display, it falls short, offering gee-whiz gimmicks instead of truly useful new features, such as the 5K display offered on the iMac.
The HP Sprout combines an all-in-one desktop with a built-in projector, a touch-mat display, and advanced 3D-scanning hardware. It's an innovative concept, though the execution needs some tweaking to make it into the mainstream.
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