$500 to $750 retail desktop review roundup
Reviews of four retail desktops from $500 to $750.
Updated to correct CPU name typo.
We're in the home stretch of our retail desktop review for this quarter. The low-end and mid-range have both been covered, and we just wrapped up the $500 to $750 middle ground on Friday.
We had four contenders in this category, with one each from
Of the four, we liked the $710 Pavilion a6750y the most. It offers the best all-around performance thanks to its quad-core AMD chip, with a hearty 8GB of RAM and a large 750GB hard drive to boot (get it? "to boot"...). Honorable mention goes to the $650 Dell Inspiron I530-120B and its Core 2 Duo E7400 chip, which rocked our single application tests (less so on multitasking).
We wouldn't blame you if you found it strange that we picked a $710 PC from this category, it being so close in price to the $780
PCs in this price range seem to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground. If all you want is a basic PC, there's no need to spend even $510 on, say, the
Limited to just the $500 to $750 bracket, we like the HP the best. Extend your search both below and above that price range, depending on your needs and your budget, and we suggest you'll find better values.
Read our reviews of $500 to $750 retail desktops.