Acer Aspire Z5771-UR31P

Acer's  Aspire Z5571 comes across like the perfect commodity all-in-one. Its plastic case and clunky touch software won't win any design awards, but it has a 23-inch display, and just enough performance and overall capability to justify its cost. And on close comparison with its competitors, you'll find this all-in-one actually has a few notable advantages. I can't recommend the Aspire Z5571 if you shop based on a PC's looks, but it's worth considering for its workaday performance and solid core feature set.

As with most of Acer's other desktops, the Aspire Z5571's thick bezel is mostly inoffensive. The white trim around the black body has a retro-modern vibe to it that, if not original, shouldn't prove overly controversial. The enclosed foot on the front of the system acts as keyboard storage, which is fine, but also unnecessary, and makes the system appear chunky.

As the Aspire Z5571 has a touch screen, it also comes with a suite of touch-based software applications, none of which stand out. You're free to ignore them, as always, though you might entertain yourself for a few minutes with the various Microsoft Surface apps.

Acer's Clear.fi software is the other prominent application included with the Aspire Z5571. Designed to enable you stream media across your home network, Clear.fi emulates much of the networking functionality found in basic DLNA-capable PCs and consumer electronic devices, as well as streaming functionality from any of the various cloud services. Like touch software, Clear.fi does no real harm, and you might find it useful if you have other Acer products, but it's mostly redundant.

The Acer's core components look unremarkable, and for the most part they do little to make the system stand out from others in its class. The fast clock speed of its Core i3 CPU pays off compared with the slower Core i5 chip in the comparable Toshiba DX735-D3201 all-in-one. And while Hewlett-Packard offers a much more robust configuration in its Omni 220-1080qd for just $100 more than the Acer system, the Acer has an important feature that HP lacks: an HDMI input.

The Aspire Z5571 actually has both HDMI input and output. That means you can connect a laptop or a second display to the system easily, and also that you can input an external video component like a game console or a cable box. That turns the Aspire into a home media hub, which makes this system much more appealing in a dorm or another setting where you might have many media devices, but not enough room for more than one screen.

Finishing in the middle of the pack on our performance charts wouldn't normally be notable, but in this Acer system it signals that you can feel confident using this desktop for day-to-day computing. It's not meant for gaming, and you will hit the limit of its performance if you engage in any difficult multitasking or content creation, but in conjunction with its HDMI ports, this system would be perfect as an e-mail, word processing, and Web browsing hub that also serves as a display for connected devices. HP's Omni 220, while faster, can't offer the same versatility.

The Acer's other ports are two USB 3.0 jacks, four USB 2.0 inputs, an Ethernet input, S/PDIF output, and standard analog audio jacks. The USB 3.0 and S/PDIF jacks are the standout features on that list, and while they're not all that exotic, they at least argue that Acer put some thought into the other connectivity options on this PC.

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Acer Aspire X1920-UR20P - P E6700 3.2GHz

Usually we can reconcile a budget desktop with less than exciting features because of its low price and its equally boring competition. In the case of the $499 Acer X1920-UR20P, we can think of no one for whom this would make an appropriate desktop. As has often plagued Acer, subsidiary Gateway offers more-competitive features in similar systems for less. Its updated chassis is inoffensive, but we have little else to say about the Acer X1920-UR20P that isn't negative, and we suggest you avoid it.

Before we dive into this PC's shortcomings, we can at least say that we don't mind the X1920's slim-tower case. The matte black is par for the industry, but the design is tidy enough, with the DVD burner and lower I/O segment hidden away behind two simple plastic doors.

Our comparison chart makes a fairly clear argument against the Acer system. You can find it for less than its $499 listed price, but even at $389, the lowest we've seen the Aspire X1920, the Gateway SX2803-US20P is still a better computer for the price. For one, the Gateway offers wireless networking, where the Acer only features a wired Ethernet jack. That alone makes up the $10 difference on the Acer's lowest available price. Then consider that the Gateway has both HDMI and VGA outputs, an eSATA jack, and nine USB 2.0 ports. The Acer has only four USB 2.0 jacks, a single VGA output for video, and no alternative data outputs.

In short, the X1920 costs roughly the same as the comparable Gateway, but offers fewer features. The only difference between the similar CPUs comes down to the front side bus, where the Acer's Pentium E6700 has a 1,066MHz bus, to the Gateway's 800MHz rating. That performance difference would barely register for most users, and given both the cost of these two PCs, as well as the living-room-friendly slim-tower design, the value of the Gateway's other features--particularly its HDMI output and its wireless networking--far outweigh any performance boost you might see from the Acer's faster data bus.

 We have not reviewed the Gateway SX2803-US20P, so we cannot compare its performance directly with this Acer. Instead, the closest comparison we have is the slightly higher-end Gateway SX2851-41 from earlier this year. That PC uses a first-generation Core i3 550 processor, so its large performance advantage over the Acer isn't so surprising. Note that the SX2851-41, which launched at $549, now sells for $449 from Amazon. That's quite a performance drop-off for the Acer, considering it costs only $50 less.

We've mentioned the Acer's external connectivity shortcomings already, but its interior expandability also fails to impress. Its expansion card slots are all open, providing you options for both 1x and 16x half-height PCI Express cards. That's reasonable for this price range, and we also don't expect to find room for a second hard drive in a slim tower. What we do expect is room for four memory sticks, like you'll find with the Gateway models. Instead, Acer only provides two memory slots in this system, which means you'll need to throw out the included RAM if you want to upgrade.

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Acer Aspire AM3970-U5022

The Aspire AM3970-U5022 comes with a new case design with more personality than previous mainstream Acer desktops. The gently concave face of the system has a rounded edge on top, with the media card slot thrust forward slightly. Minimal gray plastic accents interrupt the black plastic, and while it's not fundamentally different from most other Windows desktops, the design is clean and has a certain friendliness to it.

 The Acer trails the Gateway in most of our tests, the exception being our iTunes audio file conversion test where they're statistically tied. As the second-generation Core i3 CPU in the Acer is only a dual-core chip with two additional processing threads via Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, it's also not as fast in terms of pure multithreaded performance as the HP and Gateway systems, which have true quad-core CPUs. As long as your expectations for this system take its budget price tag into account, you shouldn't be disappointed in its performance; just understand that for $50 more the Gateway is at times noticeably faster.

With no dedicated graphics card, the Aspire AM3970 will provide only a basic gaming experience. You can add a 3D card to its spare 16x PCI Express slot, but the 300-watt power supply and an absence of Molex power connectors will limit you to lower midrange graphics-card options. Two free 1x PCI Express slots round out the card expansion options, and you also get room to add an extra hard drive, as well as one additional stick of memory.

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Acer Aspire Revo AR1600-U910H

Acer's Aspire Revo 1600 might be the first Nettop we don't actively dislike. We'd rather have an Xbox 360 in the living room, but the Aspire Revo 1600 would be suitable as a PC for young kids or as a low-profile cloud kiosk.

As a traditional computer, the Aspire Revo 1600 is worth considering for use as a cloud-computing terminal or a PC for the kids to bang around on. Acer and Nvidia also want you to think of this system as a living-room PC, but that's a harder sell.

Due to its low price, the Aspire Revo 1600 is easier to describe by the features it lacks. With no wireless networking adapter, you have to add one via a USB 2.0 port, or hard wire the system to your home network. The Revo also has no optical drive. The roadblock to disc-based software installation probably isn't the worst decision Acer could have made. Full-sized applications like games and digital-media-editing programs would quickly overwhelm the Revo's 160GB hard drive and its 1.6GHz Intel Atom N230 CPU.

The lack of wireless networking also ruins the illusion that this compact desktop will somehow improve the aesthetics of your home because of its size. You still need to connect at least a wireless networking adapter, and the bundled wired mouse and keyboard add further tethered clutter. Acer has made the Revo 1600 VESA-mount compatible, which means that you can mount in on the back of any VESA-compatible LCD, effectively hiding the system out of sight. We suspect few of you will go to that trouble, but the option may have some appeal for those looking to maximize desk space.

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