Acer Aspire AU5-620-U12 All-in-One PC review: Pretty, but ultimately underwhelming

Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB12 $1,020.00 Acer's Aspire AU5-620-U10 is a good-looking all-in-one PC. But at this price, gamers and anyone with serious computing needs should look elsewhere.

Acer seems to be putting a lot of resources into its industrial design team lately, perhaps at the expense of the folks who work on what's inside the box. Case in point: the Aspire AU5-620-U12, a sleek $1020 all-in-one that's better suited for a receptionist's desk than the workspace of someone who needs to crunch numbers or perform any other type of heavy-duty computing.

Image: Michael Homnick

The Aspire AU5-620-U12 may have a clunky name, but it's otherwise a slender, beautiful PC.

This latest Aspire AU5 certainly makes a good first impression. It's packed into a slim chassis attached to (and concealed by) a 23-inch, 1920-by-1080 widescreen touchscreen display covered by edge-to-edge glass. The whole shebang is less than an inch-and-a-half thick.

Edge-to-edge glass isn't unusual in an all-in-ones these days; what's less common is the absence of a base to distract from its clean lines. What Acer provides instead is a sturdy, spring-loaded, kickstand-like hinge that lets you easily adjust the screen anywhere between standing nearly perpendicular to lying nearly flat against your desktop. The way the hinge holds whichever angle you choose is particularly impressive: I detected no give as I used the touchscreen.

A robust hinge on the back of the Aspire AU5 allows it to stay at almost any angle. 

Acer ships the AU5-620-U12 with a wireless keyboard and mouse, so there are no unsightly desktop cables, either. But its design leaves no way to stash the mouse and keyboard underneath the display, which will annoy some users (it bugged me).

I also didn't care for Acer's decision to go with a keyboard that's smaller in both width and height than the ones you'd find on notebooks that are much more petite than this desktop. Keyboard action was also disappointingly mushy; touch typists will hate it. Acer might be imitating Apple here—iMacs come with small keyboards, too—but Acer’s lacks quality.

Image: Michael Homnick

The keyboard is as small as a laptop's—why?

The AU5’s AV components are more satisfactory. The display was bright, with brilliant colors, and the speakers embedded at the bottom emitted reasonably robust audio. The 2.0-megapixel integrated webcam captured decent images; Acer designed it with small conference rooms in mind, and the microphones performed well for video calls.

A slow hard drive contributed to the Aspire's disappointing WorldBench 9 score. 

Expansion and connectivity options are more or less in line with what you'd expect at this price point: The AU5-620-U12 has five USB ports (although only two are USB 3.0), gigabit ethernet, HDMI-in and -out, a media card reader, a headset jack, and audio line out. These are all located along the left side or the bottom edge of the slim chassis, where they’re concealed by the display. The Acer also supports the latest and fastest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac (which is backward-compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n).

The optical drive is accessible from the right edge of the chassis, but it can't play Blu-ray discs—it's a simple DVD player/burner. Acer does allow for expansion, however; you can take apart the chassis to access a couple of mini PCIe slots. That’s unusual for an all-in-one.

The Toshiba PX35t-A2210 delivered a higher PCMark 8: Office score despite having only an Intel Core i3 processor and 6GB of memory. The Acer has an Intel Core i5 and 8GB of RAM. 

But the real downside of this model is its performance. Acer’s component choices aren’t all bad. There’s an Intel Core i5-4200M (a Haswell-class mobile processor) and 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, but the system relies on an integrated Intel HD 4600 graphics processor and a 1TB mechanical hard drive that spins its platters at just 5400rpm. A hybrid drive or—better yet—a true SSD would open up the Aspire AU5-620-U12’s potential. As it stands, this all-in-one eked out a meager Desktop WorldBench 9 score of 51. That’s one of the lowest scores we've seen lately; in fact, it’s just two points ahead of Toshiba’s PX35t-A2210, which is powered by a lesser Intel Core i3 processor (the Toshiba’S 7200rpm hard drive is the key difference here).

The Acer was slow at almost every task we tested, but its performance was particularly poor with PCMark 8: Office, which evaluates performance with Microsoft Office applications. And while Intel has made great strides with its integrated video architecture, it still can’t deliver a satisfying experience with a game like BioShock Infinite—even with resolution dialed down to 1024x768.

Intel's integrated graphics are indeed getting better, but they remain no match for a discrete graphics processor. 

The Acer Aspire AU5-620-U12 shapes up as a tool for light use—Skype calls, YouTube videos, and routine business tasks—in an environment where looks matter and money isn't terribly tight. You can pay less for superior desktop performance these days, and even a starving student might want to sacrifice a bit of PC chic for at least minimal gaming chops.

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Acer Aspire M5 review: A big display, terrific battery life, and a moderate price tag

Acer Aspire M (model M5-583P-6428) $700.00 Fans of large laptop touchscreens will appreciate the Aspire M’s roomy display, slim profile, and excellent battery life. The price-to-performance isn't bad either.

Despite being just 0.7 inch thick, Acer’s Aspire M5 (model M5-583P-6428) weighs a hefty 4.9 pounds. So it’s fortunate for Acer that Intel’s Ultrabook definition includes only a height limit: 0.9 inch. More important, the Aspire M delivers a big display, great battery life, and good performance for a moderate $700.

Outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4200U (one of the lower-end entries in Intel’s current Haswell lineup of mobile CPUs), a generous 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, Intel’s integrated HD4400 graphics, and a 500GB hard disk that spins its platters at 5400 rpm, the Aspire M scored a respectable Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 143. That’s almost 50 percent better than our reference unit, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, but we’ve seen a few laptops in this price range perform even higher.

Acer's Aspire M performed well on our benchmarks, but it's not a barn-burner.

It’s easy to see where the Aspire M falls behind in performance: With any tasks involving storage retrieval, its slow hard drive can’t compete against solid-state drives (or SSD caches), which are becoming increasingly common. But its Haswell architecture clearly helped Acer's machine hold its own in tasks involving number crunching (image editing, for example), and contributed to its impressive battery life of more than 7 hours. That’s one of the best running times we’ve seen from any laptop this year.

ROBERT CARDINThe 15.6-inch display allowed Acer to fit a full-size keyboard, including a numeric keypad, into the Aspire M's chassis.

The Aspire M's design makes a good first impression, with its pewter-colored brushed metal lid and black soft-touch underbelly. The plastic interior matches the color of the lid, contrasting nicely with the black island-style keyboard—a standard-size backlit model that includes a numeric keypad. But good luck landing on the correct key if you’re a touch typist: They’re flat and slippery, and it can be difficult to find keys that are normally on or near the right edge (backspace and delete, for example). A little sculpting on the keys and perhaps some extra spacing between the standard keyboard and the keypad would have helped.

The touch controls—a multitouch touchpad (with mechanical corners for right and left mouse clicks) and the Aspire M's 10-point touchscreen display are responsive and fun to use. The display itself is bright and pleasing; still, I was a bit surprised by Acer’s decision to go with a resolution of only 1366 by 768 pixels on its 15.6-inch screen. Acer didn’t include an optical drive, but when you’re streaming video, 1080p resolution looks so much better—especially when you’re up close to the screen. The Aspire M’s audio subsystem, on the other hand, is very good, thanks to a strong amplifier, four bottom-mounted speakers, and Dolby Home Theater.

ROBERT CARDINAlthough the Acer Aspire M is ultraslim, measuring just 0.7 inch thick, it weighs almost 5 pounds.

Connectivity and port options are basic: Two USB 2.0 ports (but just one USB 3.0 port), an SD card slot, headset jack, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, and an Acer Converter Port (for dongles, such as VGA). The Aspire M also supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi. The built-in high-def webcam was fairly typical, producing decent if not great video in Skype calls.

If you’re looking for a notebook with a large touchscreen and respectable performance, Acer’s Aspire M is a good choice at a price that won’t instill sticker shock. It’s not that easy to find all these attributes in a single product. And Acer has done a good job of balancing price and performance.

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Acer Aspire V3 review: "Budget desktop replacement” needn’t be an oxymoron

It might seem as though every new Windows laptop has a bright, glossy touchscreen. After all, Windows 8 is a touch-centric operating system, and Intel requires any notebook powered by a fourth-generation Core processor to have a touchscreen. The hulking desktop-replacement models that gamers gravitate to, on the other hand, rarely have this feature. That omission has two reasons: First, gamers prefer to use wired mice or gamepads. Second, large touchscreens are expensive.

Acer’s Aspire V3 (model V3-772G-9402) isn’t necessarily a gaming machine, but it does have a 17.3-inch display (with resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels) and a powerful discrete graphics processor. Acer describes it as a “versatile entertainment powerhouse,” and its $1100 price tag puts it in budget territory for people who don’t mind lugging an 8-pound machine.

The absence of an SSD suppressed the Acer Aspire V3's overall benchmark performance numbers compared with the pricier Toshiba Qosmio. But its Haswell-class Core i7 processor and 12GB of memory helped it beat the older Asus VivoBook. (Click to enlarge image.)

It’s powered by one of Intel’s fastest fourth-generation Core (aka Haswell) processors, the Core i7-4702MQ; 12GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and Nvidia’s third-fastest discrete mobile GPU, the GeForce GTX 760M. But Acer skimps on storage by equipping the machine with just a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. That component choice explains the Aspire V3’s somewhat unimpressive Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 177.

While that score marks the Aspire V3 as 77 percent faster than our reference machine, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, pricier gaming notebooks have delivered scores well north of 400. But when you look at some of the gaming benchmark results that go into that composite score, the Aspire V3 looks a little better. With Dirt Showdown and BioShock Infinite at resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and visual quality set to low, it delivered very playable frame rates of 65.6 and 69.7 frames per second respectively.

And having a discrete mobile graphics processor boosted its performance with demanding games. (Click to enlarge image.)

Spend an additional $800 to buy something like Toshiba’s $1900 Qosmio X75, on the other hand, and you’ll experience those games at 119.7 and 165.3 frames per second respectively (and at lower—but playable—frame rates at higher resolutions).

The Aspire V3 is an attractively designed, well-built machine constructed mostly from plastic, but with a finish that looks like brushed aluminum. Its island-style keyboard is well spaced, includes a numeric keypad, and delivers very good tactile feedback. But if you like to play in the dark, you won’t like the fact that it’s not backlit.

ROBERT CARDINThe Acer Aspire V3 has four USB ports, but only two are USB 3.0. A DVD burner is nice to have, but a Blu-ray player would be better. (Click to enlarge image.) 

Since it’s not a touchscreen, the 17.3-inch display has a nonglare finish (most touchscreens are highly reflective, which can be problematic if you’re using the computer near a bright light source). I didn’t miss the touchscreen, because the large multitouch clickpad supports most Windows 8 gestures. You can pinch to zoom, for instance, and swipe in from the right to reveal the charms bar and in from the left to switch application windows.

Don't plan to be away from a power source for more than two hours—that's about all the Acer Aspire V3's battery will last. (Click to enlarge image.)

The screen looks good, for the most part. It displays crisp, clean text and images with an accurate color balance. But I did notice a few issues with it: First, I saw some occasional shimmering, even in static images. Second, I had intermittent problems with the machine’s brightness setting: Occasionally, when I turned the computer on, the display would be set to maximum brightness and refused respond to changes (even when I changed the power scheme). A restart resolved the problem each time it happened.

ROBERT CARDINThe Aspire V3's other ports include gigabit ethernet, VGA, and HDMI-out. (Click to enlarge image.) 

The Acer Aspire V3-772G-9402 isn’t for everyone. It’s big and heavy, it’s a little clunky, and it doesn’t deliver top-shelf performance. If you’re looking for a powerful gaming laptop, or if you want to watch Blu-ray movies, Toshiba’s Qosmio X75 is the better choice. But if you need an inexpensive desktop replacement with a big, high-resolution screen, the Aspire V3 is one of the better choices on the market right now.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Acer Aspire V7 review: This Ultrabook can play a decent game or two

Acer’s Aspire V7 (model 482PG-9884) remedies many of the shortcomings I mention in my review of HP’s Envy TouchSmart 15t. In addition, it has faster components, more memory, and better battery life. On the other hand, the Aspire V7 costs $350 more than the Envy—but there are a number of good reasons for that.

Acer selected Intel’s Core i7-4500U CPU, a lower-voltage chip than the one HP chose; it has a maximum thermal design power of 15 watts, in contrast to the 47-watt TDP of the Core i7-4700MQ in the Envy. That CPU contributes greatly to the Aspire V7’s superior battery life (5 hours, 2 minutes in our tests, versus the HP’s 3 hours, 19 minutes).

Robert CardinAcer's Aspire V7 can't compete with Sony's VAIO Pro 13 for the sexiest Ultrabook, but it packs higher-end components and a larger screen.(Click to enlarge)

And whereas HP cut a few corners to squeeze both a Core i7 processor and a discrete GPU into the Envy’s $950 price tag, Acer managed to toss in a 24GB solid-state drive and 12GB of DDR3/1600 memory alongside a faster discrete GPU, Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750M. The SSD acts as a cache for a 1TB, 5400-rpm mechanical hard drive, and it makes Windows and applications load lickety-split. The SSD and the graphics card boosted the Aspire V7’s benchmark scores by a considerable margin.

Acer’s machine delivered an impressive Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 246, marking it as nearly 2.5 times faster than our reference notebook, an Asus VivoBook S550CA powered by a third-generation Core i5 CPU. The Aspire V7 is a capable gaming notebook, too, as it ran our BioShock Infinite test at a very playable 76.5 frames per second (with the resolution set to 1024 by 768 pixels and the visual quality set to low).

It's simple: You need a discrete GPU for reasonable gaming performance. And the Aspire V7 has one. (Click to enlarge.)

The Aspire V7’s 15-inch touchscreen display, which provides a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, is vibrant and responsive. The smaller screen means that the system lacks enough room to include an embedded numeric keypad, but the keys that are present are backlit and nicely spaced. Although they’d benefit from a bit of sculpting to provide better tactile feedback, the keys travel just the right distance for comfort and accuracy. While this machine measures just 0.83 inch thick, it’s twice as heavy—4.7 pounds—as the Sony VAIO Pro 13 (which is a wafer-thin 0.68 inch thick and weighs just 2.3 pounds).

Intel’s lower-voltage Core i7-4500U CPU contributed significantly to the Acer Aspire V7’s impressive battery life. (Click to enlarge.)

Acer outfitted the Aspire V7 with three USB ports, but only one is USB 3.0 (and it’s oddly placed on the rear of the computer alongside a gigabit ethernet port, HDMI-out, and a VGA-out that relies on a dongle). The two USB 2.0 ports are located on the left and right sides, and an SD Card reader sits on the right. The power button, however, is oddly positioned on the left side (where you’ll inevitably press it accidentally and power down your computer when all you intended to do was to pick it up).

The Acer Aspire V7 isn’t the ultimate Ultrabook, but it’s thin, it’s fast enough for all but the most demanding content-creation tasks, and it’ll play hard-core games (albeit at slightly lower resolution than full HD). I like it a lot.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of the 5 best Haswell notebooks as of September 2013.

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Acer Aspire Z3-605-UR22 review: An all-in-one with a sleek look and slow performance

If you like HP’s picture frame design, but you’d prefer something a bit more polished, the Acer Aspire Z3-605-UR22 ($900 as of 8/29/13) is another AIO with a space-saving chassis. The Z3-605 sports an Intel i3-3227U processor; 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and a 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive. It has integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, a 23-inch touchscreen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and a wireless mouse and keyboard.

Acer had the best budget notebook in our earlier roundup, but its inexpensive all-in-one offering leaves us cold.

The Aspire Z3-605-UR22 has a frame design similar to the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23, with a glossy edge-to-edge glass display surrounded by a frame that extends past the bottom of the screen to rest on your desktop. The screen is propped up by an easel-like stand that’s very easy to adjust thanks to a spring-loaded hinge.

Unlike the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23, the Aspire only has one slim bezel under glass. This gives the machine a much more minimalist and streamlined look, though it is slightly disrupted by the system’s convenience ports. Instead of being located neatly on the side of the machine or out of sight on the rear panel, the Z3-605’s convenience ports—a card reader, a USB 3.0 port, and headphone and microphone jacks—are located right up front, just below the display. The placement sounds convenient, until you plug in an external drive or a headset and end up with cables draped over your keyboard.

Performance-wise, the Aspire is the weakest AIO of this bunch. It scored just 89 in our Desktop WorldBench 8.1 test, which means it’s 11 percent slower than our baseline (which happens to be its sibling, Acer’s Aspire A5600U-UB13). That also puts it 20 points behind the second-to-last contender, Dell’s Inspiron One 20. The Aspire won’t have any problem with basic productivity apps, and it will stream HD video, but you might have trouble when you try to multitask.

PCWorld's Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite measures performance with a number of productivity, creation, and entertainment programs.

The Aspire Z3-605-UR22 also delivered an appallingly low score with our suite of media editing and encoding tests (it finished last, and by a very wide margin), so we were surprised that it performed as well as it did in our gaming tests. This AIO managed to produce Dirt Showdown at 33.2 frames per second, and BioShock Infinite at 21.0 frames per second (both games set to a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels, with visual quality set to Low). It’s no gaming powerhouse, but it performed better than most of the PCs in this roundup.

The Aspire Z3-605 does have one of the better-looking touchscreens in our roundup. Its glossy 23-inch touchscreen offers 10-finger multitouch with smooth, accurate gestures; bright, vibrant colors; and crisp, clear text. The only minor issues I saw during my testing was some minor artifacting—even in still or nearly-still images—and softening of details in photos and film. In some shots, people looked a bit featureless and oversaturated.

All-in-one PCs just make more sense—even if your dorm room will never ever be featured in an issue of Architectural Digest.

The Z3-605 has very nice wireless peripherals. Its keyboard is soft and noiseless but still comfortable and easy to type on, and its mouse is just the right size and ergonomically curved to fit your hand. While these peripherals aren’t as striking as the Toshiba’s silver-accented ones, they are far more usable and comfortable.

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Acer Aspire E1-572-680 review: This budget 15.6-inch laptop is an outstanding value

Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 $580.00 You’re not going to get everything in a 15.6-inch notebook priced less than $600. Acer made nearly all the right compromises to get to that price point.

For general use, Acer’s Aspire E1 is the clear winner in this roundup. Acer crams a lot of value into this laptop’s $580 price tag, including a Haswell-class CPU (Intel’s 1.6GHz Core i5-4200U) and a 15.6-inch LED-backlit display with native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels.

Though Acer uses quite a bit of plastic in the Aspire E1’s design, you won’t be ashamed to pull the notebook out of your bag. A smooth finish and rich color—Acer calls it Clarinet Black—make the 1-inch-thick machine very attractive.

The Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 is the easy winner of this roundup.

The chassis and lid, on the other hand, exhibit quite a bit of flex, so you won’t want to subject this machine to rough handling. The upside to all the plastic is low weight: At 4.6 pounds, this laptop has an advantage of more than 1 pound over the other 15.6-inch models I looked at, and it weighs just over a pound more than the ones with smaller displays.

Capitalizing on the display’s generous size, Acer includes a full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad on the Aspire E1’s deck. I expected the island-style keyboard to be somewhat flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised by its solid tactile feedback. It’s not backlit and it’s a trifle noisy, but I have no complaints about how it felt under my fingertips.

The Aspire E1’s display is plenty bright, producing vivid photos and videos, but off-axis viewing is merely adequate. Acer also shaved a few bucks off the Aspire E1’s asking price by not including a touchscreen, but its highly responsive trackpad supports several Windows 8 gestures, including two-finger scrolling, zoom, rotate, and flip. You can also slide in from the right to open the charm bar, and slide in from the left to switch between applications.

The trackpad, which has a wide bar at its base that provides both right and left mouse-button functions, is off center in relation to the display, but dead center to the keyboard. It looks a little odd until you lay your hands on the keyboard’s home row.

The Aspire E1 has only 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, but you can open it up and pop in a second module to double that amount to 8GB. Storage takes the form of a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. There’s no SSD, to handle cache or anything else, and I noticed what appears to be an empty bay where an optical drive might go.

Benchmark performance

Acer’s machine delivered a Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 177, the best of the group by a wide margin. It also outperformed our reference platform, an Asus VivoBook S550CA, which has both an SSD and a touchscreen (but costs more than any of the systems reviewed here). Diving into the individual components in our test suite, the Acer performed better than the rest of the field in the PCMark Productivity suite, but Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z400, which has a larger and faster hard drive, handled our collection of media editing and encoding tasks better.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

All work and no play makes for a boring lifestyle, but you’ll want to stick with casual games on this computer. We dialed BioShock Infinite’s resolution down to 1024 by 768 and its image quality to Low, and Acer’s laptop still managed to render the game at no better than a sluggish 25 frames per second. Intel has made strides with its integrated graphics, but its Intel HD Graphics 4400 still isn’t up to snuff for hardcore gaming. Even so, its gaming score beat everything else in the field (aside from our reference notebook).

Connectivity and conclusion

The Aspire E1-572-6870 offers a gigabit ethernet connection for occasions when you can plug into a network, and a Qualcomm Atheros AR956x dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter for times when you can’t. The laptop also has a Bluetooth 4.0 + HS adapter to support theoretical data-transfer speeds of up to 24 mbps, though the only good application I’ve ever found for Bluetooth is streaming audio).

Acer provides an HDMI-out for connecting the computer to digital displays and TVs, and a VGA output for older monitors and video projectors (the latter could come in very handy in classrooms and conference rooms, which tend to have vintage equipment). The system also has three USB ports, but only one of them is USB 3.0. The included memory card reader supports only SD Card.

i enjoyed using Acer’s Aspire E1-572-6870. The machine is blessedly quiet, and it delivered a respectable 4 hours of battery life (middle-of-the-pack performance in this roundup).

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here.

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Review: Acer's Aspire U (model A5600U-UB13) is a stylish AIO with a few minor flaws

Done up in black and clear plastic, the Aspire U has a clean, modern look. The computer looks like an oversize picture frame, supported in the front by a clear plastic panel running its width and in the back by an articulating kickstand. This design lets you angle the Aspire U from nearly flat on the desk to nearly straight up. It’s an effective design if you have plenty of desk space or table area to work with. If you want to buy an all-in-one to maximize storage area in a small workspace, forget it: The area behind the Aspire U is completely blocked off.

ROBERT CARDINThe clear front panel gives the Acer Aspire U a modern look, but it prevents you from sliding the keyboard underneath the PC when you’re not using it.

The styled-to-match wireless keyboard and mouse bundled with the Aspire U are both pleasant surprises. The keyboard has a slightly sloppy feel, but the keys offer plenty of travel and feel quite nice overall. The up and down arrow keys are half-size, which makes them difficult to use, but the keyboard includes a numeric keypad that you can use for navigation (when Num Lock is turned off). The mouse has a nice heft, and it tracks well on just about any surface.

The touchscreen display responds well to finger movements, and the Aspire U has one of the nicest webcams out there. It’s HD, and it provides very smooth video—significantly smoother than usual. The Aspire U can also respond to hand gestures via said webcam, though in truth it's a rather strenuous and inaccurate way to navigate Windows.

The A5600U-UB13 model of the Aspire U that we tested was sprightly enough, subjectively—once the Windows 8 operating system worked its caching magic. Until things were cached, however, the sluggish 1TB, 5400-rpm hard drive caused windows and applications to open rather slowly. This is a machine that you’d rather have hibernate or sleep than shut down, lest all that caching go for naught. Acer doesn’t offer an SSD option, which would have worked miracles in both perceived and actual speed.

The A5600U-UB13 is a middle-of-the-road performer, which is why PCWorld decided to use it as the reference machine for Desktop WorldBench 8.1 tests. It’s powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5-3230M mobile CPU (all-in-ones often use mobile components because they don’t require as much cooling) and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory. As is typical of lower-priced AIOs, the A5600U-UB13 relies on the Intel HD 4000 graphics processor integrated into the CPU, so don’t expect to play hard-core games on this machine. Although it managed to squeeze out 47.5 frames per second in Dirt Showdown (at a dialed-down resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and with visual quality set to low), it ran Crysis 3 under those same settings at less than 18 fps.

The 23-inch display has a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and it offers both an HDMI input (a convenient feature for connecting a gaming console, a cable/satellite set-top box, or a Blu-ray player) and an HDMI output (great for connecting a second display). A tray-mount DVD burner (not Blu-ray) sits on the right side.

ROBERT CARDINA tray-mount DVD-burner sits on the right side of the Acer Aspire U.

You’ll find two USB 3.0 ports, a card reader, and microphone and headset jacks on the left side. As the front edge of the Aspire U is always in contact with the desktop, you have to turn the unit around or lay it on its face to access the ports in back, namely three USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, and the aforementioned HDMI connections. The machine is outfitted with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 adapters, so you can keep cable clutter to a minimum with just the one cord running to the external power brick.

Movies look very nice on the Aspire U. In the owner’s manual, Acer describes a remote control and coax input, but the U.S. models have no TV tuner, and the coax input is missing in action. Standard input-select and up/down navigation controls are on the lower-right side. Sound from the Aspire U is clear, but thin. Acer would do well to copy Vizio’s example of providing a subwoofer with its all-in-ones.

Most AIOs are difficult to open, but with only two screws on the back of the Acer A5600U-UB13, I decided to see if it was upgradeable. Acer says this voids the computer's warranty, but there are no anti-tamper stickers, so there's little warning to consumers who buy one.

There's an mSATA slot inside, hidden on the back of the motherboard, and easier-to-access mini-PCIe and SODIMM slots on the front of the motherboard. The hard-drive caddy is in plain sight, held in place by a single screw. Upgrading the memory or adding an internal TV tuner would be easy. Upgrading to an SSD? No so much.

ROBERT CARDINYou need remove just two screws to take off the Aspire U’s back. Unfortunately, doing so will void Acer’s one-year warranty.

Replacing the hard drive is no problem, but you would need a very capable cloning program that understands UEFI. The Aspire U is one of those rare computers with a UEFI BIOS that doesn't support booting from legacy MBR media. That means you can't boot from a flash drive or even normal optical boot discs (although it did boot using a factory-pressed Windows 8 DVD). There is a utility called Rufus that will create UEFI boot media, but the lack of legacy boot capabilities is a serious barrier to repair, recovery, and testing other operating systems. Acer does make a non-UEFI BIOS available on its website, but we were unable to cross-grade to it.

Because of the warranty and boot issues, Acer said that consumers should contact the company about replacing failed components, such as a hard drive. Perhaps you can live with that for the warranty period, but the UEFI BIOS issue could be problematic after that.

When all is said and done, the Aspire U is an attractive mainstream family computer with average to good components, performance, and features. It's a good pick for those on opposite sides of the spectrum: People who never see themselves repairing or upgrading their own computer, and tech-savvy types who want an upgradeable AIO and are capable of working around the UEFI issue.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Acer Aspire TimelineUltra M5-581T-6446 Review: Apparently Canadians Don't Watch Videos

Acer is bringing its non-Ultrabook Ultrabooks to Canada. The Acer Aspire TimelineUltra M5-581T-6446 is the Canadian version of Acer's M5 series. Except for the default installed memory, it’s similar to the American M5-481T-6642. That American version costs $730 (USD), but it ships with only 4GB of DDR3; the Canadian counterpart includes 6GB. Like the other notebooks in the series, the M5-581T-6446 (henceforth called the M5) is only technically considered an Ultrabook—it may fit the specs, but it's just too big and too heavy for a reasonable person to consider it a true Ultrabook.

Our review model, which costs $799 (Canadian), sports a third-generation Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive with a 20GB SSD cache. Unlike the American counterpart we reviewed, the model 6666, which sports a discrete Nvidia graphics card, the Canadian M5 relies solely on Intel's integrated HD graphics. Other specs include a DVD-RW drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

Performance

In PCWorld's WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the M5 scores a very good 121 versus the baseline of 100—that is, it's 21 percent faster than our testing model. This is a better score than that of the American version of the Acer M5, which earned just 104 out of 100.

The M5 manages nicely in individual tests, as well. It starts up quickly, in just 16.8 seconds—the American M5 takes 17.5 seconds, while the Dell Inspiron 14z and the Dell XPS 15 take 22.5 and 33 seconds to start up, respectively. The M5 also performs adequately in the PCMark 7 office productivity tests, with a score of 2685 compared to the American M5's 1617. It's a little difficult to compare the M5 to other computers, since it fits somewhere in between categories (similarly sized all-purpose laptops are heftier and ultimately have higher productivity scores), but compared to the American M5, the Canadian M5 performs impressively. (Note: The chart below and others in this article include the Dell XPS 15, which hasn't been reviewed at this writing.)

"Performs impressively" in general performance, that is. Graphics performance, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The M5 relies on Intel's integrated HD graphics for video and gaming performance and, well, it shows. In our Crysis 2 graphics tests, the M5 pumped out frame rates of between 12.4 frames per second (high-quality settings, 1366 by 768 pixels) and 26.5 fps (low-quality settings, 800 by 600 pixels). By comparison, the American M5, with its discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card, managed frame rates of between 39.9 and 75.9 fps on the same test. As a gaming system, the Canadian M5 is not even in the same league.

The Canadian M5, however, has excellent battery life: We managed to eke out 7 hours, 31 minutes in our tests. This is better than the other laptops in the category (which, on average, top out at 6.5 hours), and marginally better than the American M5, which managed 7 hours, 24 minutes in our tests.

Design: Chassis, Keyboard, Trackpad

The M5 looks great for an all-purpose laptop, but as an Ultrabook it's a little too big and heavy. Although it's only 0.8 inch thick, it weighs 4.7 pounds sans accessories. This is rather heavy for a slim notebook, even a 15.6-inch one. Luckily it's got great battery life, so you probably won't have to tote the power brick (which weighs about 0.75 pound) very often.

Size and weight aside, the M5 is a great-looking ultraportable notebook. The laptop sports a slate-gray cover with an aluminum finish and a laser-etched silver Acer logo in the center. The screen is super slim, but the two hinges that hold it up are solid, so it doesn't shake or wobble at all when it's open. The M5's interior features the same brushed-aluminum styling on the keyboard deck, which holds only the keyboard and trackpad—the power button is on the front of the computer, near the right side.

Though the M5 is only a 15.6-inch notebook, Acer has managed to squeeze in a 10-key numeric keypad next to the full-size keyboard. Keys are backlit, island-style, and offer decent tactile feedback, but they're a little small and stiff and take some getting used to. The Return key is sort of awkwardly squashed next to the backslash key, which means your little finger has to travel a bit farther than usual.

Below the keyboard, and off-center, is a large trackpad. The trackpad has a matte texture, so it's easy to distinguish from the smooth wrist-rest. The trackpad is large and easy to use, but it's a little too far off-center for my taste—I feel as if I'm practically on the left side of the laptop. The pad has no discrete mouse buttons, and the lower half of the trackpad tips when you press the built-in buttons.

Because the M5 has a tray-loading DVD-RW player on its left side, most of its essential ports are located on the back. Here you'll find two USB3.0 ports, one USB2.0 port, an Ethernet port, HDMI-out, and a Kensington lock slot. Besides the optical drive, the left side houses just the power plug, and the right side has an SD/MMC/SDHC card slot and a combination microphone/headphone jack.

Screen and Speakers

The M5 sports a glossy 15.5-inch LCD screen with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. While this resolution is somewhat typical for budget laptops and Ultrabooks/ultraportables, it's disappointing on screens larger than 14 inches.

Pixel density aside, the M5's screen looks okay. Images look crisp, but text seems a little fuzzy, colors appear accurate, and the glossiness doesn't throw back too many reflections. The screen is not quite as bright as it needs to be if you want to use it outside in sunny weather, but it's okay for the average user. At brighter screen settings, colors can start to look washed out. Off-axis viewing angles are predictably bad, especially if you look at the screen from above or below.

Video plays pretty poorly on the M5. I saw a lot of artifacting and choppiness, which is unexpected given the robust video block in Intel’s HD 4000 integrated GPU, and also also a lot of shimmering and pixilation, which is something I don't typically see. This happens in both streaming and nonstreaming clips, so it's not the clip quality or Internet connection.

Audio, on the other hand, sounds pretty good. The speakers are respectably loud, though not overwhelming, and offer up decently full sound. The speakers are on the bottom of the machine (under the front two corners), but did not sound muffled even when I sat the computer on my lap.

The Bottom Line

Most of our readers will never see the Acer M5-581T-6446, since it's sold only in Canada. That said, it's a pretty good laptop if you're looking for a larger, more solid Ultrabook-type model. The M5 has great battery life and excellent overall performance, but it lacks a discrete GPU and even its integrated graphics seem subpar. But if you're not too interested in graphics performance, this is a great, sleek laptop.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Deal of the Day: $100 Off Acer Aspire Ultrabook

With Ultrabooks being the hot new laptops right now, the super-thin Acer Aspire S3-951-6464 is a cheaper alternative to the 13-inch MacBook Air. Retailing for $899, you can get the Aspire S3 today for $799 plus free shipping. Save $100 on the Acer Aspire 13.3-inch Core i5 1.6GHz S3-951-6464 Ultrabook plus get $200 Microsoft Store credit with a deal through LogicBUY.

The 13.3-inch Aspire S3 is just .5? thick (weighing 2.98 pounds) and features an Intel Core i5-24-67M 1.6GHz ULV processor, as well as 2 USB ports. In our review of the Ultrabook, we praised its thin, light appearance and performance as well as its low price for an Ultrabook, but we weren’t fans of its short battery life, slow hard drive and limited viewing angles.

Although this isn’t the best savings, the $200 Microsoft Store credit they throw in certainly doesn’t hurt. 

Base specs: 1.6-GHz Intel Core i5-2467M CPU, MS Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), 4GB RAM, 20GB SSD, 320GB HDD, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 1366×768 HD resolution

Acer Aspire 13.3-in Core i5 1.6GHz S3-951-6464 Ultrabook + $200 MS Store Credit at LogicBUY

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