Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB10 review: Budget all-in-one keeps things fun

Calling Windows 8 a "tough sell" is a bit of an understatement. Microsoft's re-imagining of the classic desktop as a touch-centric affair threw many of us for a loop, especially those of us accustomed to PCs with large monitors, managed via a keyboard and mouse. And that's where all-in-one desktops like the 23-inch Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB10 step in.

7.8

Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB10

The Good

The Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB10 offers good performance and an attractive IPS display at a budget price.

The Bad

The 5,400 RPM hard drive results in slower load times for applications, and peripherals can eat up the five USB ports quickly.

The Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire AU5-620 is a great entertainment PC, pairing an attractive display and strong media-streaming performance with a wallet-friendly price.

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Unlike a laptop, the Aspire's 23-inch display gives you enough space to experience Windows 8's touch interface without needing a keyboard and mouse. And since portability isn't a concern you get a DVD burner, and more USB ports than you'd find on a laptop.

This Acer all-in-one ticks all of the right boxes, straddling that perilous line between price and performance. While not quite as exciting as 27-inch, Blu-ray-playing behemoths, you'll find a PC that will tackle work and a fair share of play without a bit of fuss. Better still, at $999 the Aspire AU5-620-UB10 is affordable.

Design and display

The 23-inch Aspire AU5 isn't quite a tabletop PC, but with a light push it can slide back onto its stand until it's just about flat.

That's not necessarily a great angle for reading or watching videos, but if you're feeling artistically inclined, it makes for a comfortable doodling surface. I suspect it'll be better for things like board games, though the ability to go completely flat would've been great. That's a route many other all-in-ones have taken -- consider the Dell Inspiron 23, for example.

That range of motion wouldn't be all that great with a shoddy display, but Acer fortunately didn't cut corners on the screen. This IPS panel's 1,920-by-1,080 pixel resolution pales in comparison to many modern displays, but it suits the 23-inch frame just fine. Colors are bright and vibrant, but more importantly, they look consistent, without shifting no matter where I sit, or how far I tilt the screen. Text is similarly crisp and clean, which makes reading articles on the Web a pleasant experience. I did have a bit of trouble with reflections when the all-in-one sat on the sunnier edge of my desk, but it was never overly problematic, and the display is easy to see in a brightly lit office environment.

A glossy finish lends the machine's edge-to-edge glass display a really sleek look, but the whole thing is a magnet for fingerprints -- you'll want to keep a microfiber cloth handy, so it's a good thing Acer packs one with the PC. The screen sits atop the stereo speakers, housed behind a grille that runs along the bottom of the machine. These speakers aren't earth-shatteringly loud, and music can be a bit distorted when things are really cranked up, but it's a pleasant-sounding machine overall.

Features and apps

The apps bundled onto the machine are decidedly less impressive. To start, Acer really wants you to sign up for an Acer ID: you'll need one to access a collection of Acer-branded apps whose purpose is to mimic existing cloud services in a cumbersome manner. AbPhoto, AbFiles, and AbMedia are managers for photos, files, music, and media, respectively, with support for syncing between PCs, iOS, and Android devices that have installed Acer's Portal app. As Acer cloud is a sort of personal data center -- your files never leave your personal devices to sit on a foreign server somewhere -- it does have some semblance of privacy, but that utility comes at the cost of a universally clunky UI and far less utility than something like Dropbox or Google Drive.

The rest of the PC is plagued by standard bloatware, including that WildTangent Games portal that I swear is creeping up on every new PC purchase. You're also stuck with McAfee Internet Security, whose near constant barrage of notifications is so blisteringly annoying I'm generally tempted to take my chances with the malware.

Still, there's nothing that takes up an especially large chunk of the Aspire AU5-620's 1TB hard drive, and the apps are generally bundled under the "Acer Apps" group on the Windows 8 start screen, so you can easily find and ignore or uninstall them at your leisure. I realize some folks might find some of these bundled apps useful, which is fine. I just prefer to install things I might be interested in myself.

It isn't all onerous, though. Acer has included Nuance's Dragon Assistant, which gives the machine some Siri or Google Now-like abilities. You can use Dragon Assistant to open apps, update social networks like Facebook and Twitter, dictate emails, and even control media playback in apps like Spotify and Hulu Plus -- two apps that are also pre-installed.

The Aspire AU5-620 comes bundled with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I'm usually one to dismiss bundled peripherals, as they are, almost as a rule, not very good. The gear Acer has provided doesn't veer too far from the norm, but it's serviceable. The glossy mouse is small and simple -- just two buttons and scroll wheel in an ambidextrous shell. The full-size keyboard offers a number pad and chiclet keys that are wide enough to type on comfortably, but it's thin and thus rather shallow, so my fingers keep slamming up against the keyboard's frame. Both peripherals are wireless, care of a tiny wireless transceiver nub that'll reside in one of the USB ports. I do wish more all-in-one manufacturers would follow Apple's lead and go with a Bluetooth solution -- these USB ports are precious.

Connections and performance

Speaking of ports: there aren't all that many of them. The headphone jack sits on the left side of the machine, alongside an HDMI input and USB 3.0 port, and an SD card reader. On the right, you'll find the tray-loading DVD burner, volume controls, and the jack for the power supply. The rest of the ports sit behind the display: one more USB 3.0 port and a pair of USB 2.0 ports, HDMI out, and the Ethernet port. There's technically one more USB 2.0 port, but the aforementioned USB transceiver for the bundled peripherals lives there.

I'd love to see at least two more USB 3.0 ports squeezed in here somewhere, but as it stands you should have room for a proper keyboard and mouse (if the bundled pair don't suffice) and an external hard drive. Other connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11a/c Wi-Fi, which will prove nice and speedy if you've got a compatible router.

The Acer Aspire AU5-620 runs on a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-4200M processor, paired with 8GB of RAM. Couple that with the aforementioned 1TB of internal storage and a DVD burner, and you've got a machine that's built for entertainment. The lack of a discrete graphics card is a bit of a bummer, but expected at this price. Also disappointing is the hard drive speed: the 5,400 RPM drive will be fine for storing gobs of files and photos and the like, but boot times or launching applications would been vastly improved with a solid state drive. Of course those are pricier, and we've got to strike a balance somewhere.

Relying on Intel integrated graphics severely limits this machine's gaming ability, but there's a growing library of casual and not-so-casual games that hum along just find on integrated graphics. I'm not ashamed to admit that testing Fruit Ninja took a little longer than it should have, but it's an excellent showcase of just how responsive this PC's touchscreen is. I took Microsoft Studios' own Halo Spartan Assault for a spin, and the isometric shooter pulled no punches, serving up smooth, stutter-free gameplay without compromising on the fairly attractive visuals.

Need a bit more power? Acer also offers the Aspire A7600U-UR24, a 27-incher in a slightly different chassis, that essentially ticks all of the boxes the Aspire AU5-620 is missing. It's got a faster Core i7 processor, pairs the 1TB hard drive with a 32GB SSD for faster boot times, offers a 2GB discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT640M GPU, and offers a Blu-ray player. It'll cost you quite a bit more though, at $1,699.

Conclusion

With a responsive, 23-inch touchscreen and capable hardware, the $999 Acer Aspire AU5 is a good option for anyone looking for a capable performer that's light on frills but still manages to keep things lively. The Acer Aspire AU5-620 also fares well in light of its competition. The $999 variant of the Dell Inspiron 23, for example, ships with a meager Intel Core i3 processor. You can, of course, get a lot more machine by spending more -- consider the $1,400 Lenovo IdeaCentre B750, which ditches touch in favor of a cinema-friendly 21:9 display.

My biggest gripes here are the sluggish 5,400 RPM hard drive and the meager number of USB ports. Some will balk at the 1080p resolution, but photos and video honestly look fine on this 23-inch display. But the overall package is a solid one: temper your expectations (and excise the bloatware), and you'll have a fine machine for work and play without spending all that much.

System configurations

Acer Aspire AU5-620-UB10

Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 4200M; 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1792MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 4600; 1TB 5,400rpm HDD

Apple iMac (21-inch, 2014)

Apple OS X 10.9.3 Mavericks ; 1.4GHz Intel Core i54260U; 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1792MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 5000; 500GB 5,400rpm HDD

HP Envy 23xt Beat Special Edition

Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 1.9GHz Intel Core i5 4460T; 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1792MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 4600; 1TB 5,400rpm HDD

Dell Inspiron 23

Windows 8 (64-bit); 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 4700MQ; 12GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 2GB AMD 8690A Graphics; 1TB 5,400rpm HDD