Picture, if you will, an all-in-one desktop, with a 23-inch monitor. It looks a bit like an iMac. Now, add a horizontal touchscreen to the base of the device, where you might otherwise put a keyboard. To top it all off, stick a 3D scanner in a unit that hangs over the computer’s monitor, centered over a touchscreen.
That’s Sprout, HP’s new all-in-one PC. It’s a bit…unconventional.
HP is calling it a part of its new “blended reality” push, which is designed to combine computers and 3D printers into one big creation ecosystem. Thanks to the 3D scanning unit, Sprout users will be able to take a physical object and turn it into digital bits. The touchscreen will allow people to manipulate objects, draw, and perform other tasks that aren’t as well-suited to a keyboard and mouse. Here’s a video that shows it off:
It’s all tied together by a new “Workspace” experience that’s built on top of Windows 8.1. The interface has been given Microsoft’s blessing, which is the first time that the Redmond-based company has officially approved of a third party building on top of its OS, according to a report by ZDNet. HP has already partnered with a handful of app developers including Crayola and Martha Stewart to create software that takes advantage of the new hardware capabilities.
On the technical side, the Sprout features a 3.2 GHz Intel Core i7-4790S processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1TB solid state drive. The computer has both an Intel HD Graphics 4600 integrated GPU as well as a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 745A, which sports 2 GB of VRAM.
That combines with HP’s new push into the 3D printing market. The company also revealed today that it will be producing its own line of object-creation machines for consumer use, though they’re not here yet. People who want to put Sprout together with a HP-branded Multi-Jet Fusion printer will have to wait, since that hardware won’t be ready until 2016.
Sprout is shipping this month, but isn’t cheap: people who want to pick one up will pay $1899 for the privilege of owning a taste of HP’s 3D scanning future.
Overall, this seems ambitious, in a so-crazy-it-just-might-work kind of way. It’s clear that the company thinks it’s the future of computing, but this is HP, which brought Minority Report-esque controls to PCs and watched as consumers collectively yawned. There’s no question that Sprout’s features are cool. But will anybody want one?
