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Acer Revo One review: A living room desktop you won't have to hide

The Acer Revo is a small 4K-friendly desktop with a sleek look and plenty of storage.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Dan Ackerman
6 min read

Small desktop PCs are enjoying something of a renaissance, thanks to systems such as HP's Pavilion Mini and Intel's Compute Stick . Along with the standard bearer of the category, Apple's Mac Mini , these computers appeal to both aesthetic minimalists looking for a computer chassis that can hide in plain sight, as well as movie and music fans who want a system that can connect to a bigscreen TV, but do more than a basic streaming media box.

8.1

Acer Revo One

The Good

The Acer Revo is an attractive mini desktop with plenty of storage for media files, which can easily play 4K video.

The Bad

Basic streaming boxes or even other media-friendly PCs cost less. The included keyboard and mouse feel cheap, and most gaming is out of the question.

The Bottom Line

The Acer Revo is a do-it-all media-friendly PC that can fit anywhere.

And it's those streaming media boxes that have kept media center PCs on the defensive for the past several years. For under $100, a Roku or Amazon Fire TV can bring Netflix, Hulu and other cloud-based media-playing apps to any den or living room. To stand out, a media center PC has to do more, especially for the $300 to $600 most of these systems cost.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The Acer Revo One wants to be both a media streamer and a full-function desktop. It's housed in a small white plastic box with gently rounded corners and a glossy finish, and isn't as easy to hide as an Intel Compute Stick or Mac Mini. Instead it's designed to be aesthetically pleasing enough that you won't mind its small footprint next to a TV set or desktop monitor.

The Revo One starts at $249 and runs up to the $579 model reviewed here (£239 to £599 in the UK and AU$419 to AU$1,099 in Australia, each with slightly different local configurations). The entry level models use Intel Celeron processors and small 80GB solid state hard drives, while the more expensive models trade up to Intel Core i3 and i5 processors and a big 1TB hard drive. The faster processors are important if you're planning on watching a lot of 4K video or doing anything more intense than basic websurfing or video streaming.

The price puts this system right in the same ballpark as Apple's Mac Mini and the HP Pavilion Mini. The entry level Mac Mini costs $500 (£399, AU$619) and includes a similar Core i5 CPU and a 500GB hard drive, while the HP Mini comes in a $449 configuration (£349 in the UK) with an Intel Core i3 CPU and a 1TB hard drive. The Revo model reviewed here combines the higher-end specs of both, with a Core i5 CPU and 1TB hard drive, plus a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Sarah Tew/CNET

If you're going all the way down to the bottom of the price range, Intel's $150 Atom-powered Compute Stick is a very interesting product, essentially a mini netbook-style computer built into a stick-like chassis. But it's also very limited in its connectivity, with only a single USB port, and has a mere 32GB of onboard storage. It'll stream Netflix or play YouTube videos just fine, but anything beyond that is pushing your luck.

Meanwhile, the Revo worked fine for not just video streaming, but local 4K video file playback, Web surfing and basic productivity, and other mainstream tasks short of game-playing. (For gaming, try the Alienware Alpha , a quirky small gaming desktop in the same price range.)

It may have more processing power than a living room PC actually needs, but it never hurts to have enough to double as a home office PC or dorm room media hub. If you can forgive the plastic-feeling keyboard and mouse combo it comes bundled with, and the higher-than-average amount of shovelware preloaded onto the hard drive, the Revo is a great-looking, flexible small form factor desktop that you won't need to hide behind a houseplant.

Acer Revo One

Price as reviewed $579, £599, AU$1,099
PC CPU 2.2GHz Intel Core i5 5200U
PC Memory 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 5500
Storage 1TB SSHD 5,400rpm
Networking 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

Design and features

While both the Mac Mini and HP Mini are squat, puck-like systems that are designed to have a very low profile but a wider desktop footprint, the Revo is a tall rectangle with gently rounded edges and a glossy translucent white finish. Even though it's bigger than the two Minis, it's still shorter than an iPhone 6 Plus, standing 6.1 inches tall, and about 4.2 inches square.

machines01.jpg
The HP Mini (left), Acer Revo, Intel Compute Stick and Apple Mac Mini (far right). Sarah Tew/CNET

The front face is featureless, aside from an Acer logo, and almost all the connectivity happens on the rear panel, including a tiny, hard to reach power button. White status lights are on the top surface, as is an SD card slot.

Bundled with the Revo are a basic white keyboard and mouse, both connected to the same USB receiver. The mouse is cheap-feeling plastic, but at least has a curved ergonomic design, although there are no extra buttons or media features. The keyboard is small, good for living room lap use, and has deep keys that are clacky, but easy to hit.

Sarah Tew / CNET

My main complaint about the keyboard is that its media control features, such as the volume control, are mapped to the function key row in such a way that you need to hold down the Fn key in order to use them. That makes on the fly media playback control a two-handed job. Many media-friendly laptops and desktops have reversed this, making the volume and media transport controls the primary function of the Function key row.

Also bundled with the Revo is an inordinate amount of software, some from Acer, some from variou corporate partners. Adware includes icons for Booking.com, Dropbox, Wild Tangent and eBay. You also get a series of overlapping, and sometimes confusing Acer media apps, with names such as abDocs, abMedia, Acer Portal, Acer Revo Suite, etc. Most are cloud-friendly file storage, which allow you to access files on the Revo from a phone or tablet that running the appropriate iOS or Android companion app. One is a remote control app that's supposed to act as a phone-based touchpad and remote control for your PC. We downloaded the iOS version, and made sure the phone and Revo were on the same network and even connected via Bluetooth, but we could never get it to work.

Having tried dozens of proprietary PC brand file sharing and media suites over the past decade, I can safely say that most are simply not worth the effort it takes to configure and learn them, because media management software will never be a priority for PC makers. Better to stick to third-party photo and media apps that aren't tied to a particular brand of hardware.

We had better luck with living-room-centric media apps from Microsoft's Windows app store, and loaded up our interface with the well-optimized apps for Netflix, Hulu, Comedy Central, Syfy and others. Many of these require logins from your cable TV provider, but they're usually more responsive and easier to navigate than going to a television network's website in a Web browser.

While you're in the Windows app store, however, beware of apps that traffic in pirated movie and TV show streams, which seem to be flooding some categories of the app store of late.

Ports and connections

Video HDMI, Mini DisplayPort
Audio Combo headphone/mic jack
Data 2 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, SD card slot
Networking Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0

Connections and performance

A living room PC, or any media-heavy machine, needs a generous selection of ports and connections. In this case, the Revo provides a decent lineup including four USB ports, although only two of them are the faster USB 3.0 standard (and one will be taken up by the wireless USB dongle for your keyboard and mouse. You also get the top-loading SD card slot, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort for video, Ethernet, and a standard 1/8-inch audio jack. The Mac Mini and HP Mini also have four USB ports each, although I like that the HP Mini puts two on the front face for easy access, and it's the only one with a full-size DisplayPort jack.

Sarah Tew/CNET

As a system for running Windows media software, from iTunes to Handbrake to Photoshop, the Revo performs right in line with other desktops that use low-voltage, dual-core fourth-gen Intel Core i5 CPUs. The Mac Mini, despite a slightly slower (on paper) Core i5, was a bit faster in our multitasking test, while the the Revo took advantage of its faster CPU and hybrid hard drive (augmenting its 1TB platter drive with a small amount of flash memory) to run our Photoshop test faster.

Intel's clever Compute Stick PC, running a low-power Intel Atom, was a distant last place in each of these tests, but it still worked fine for basic Netflix and YouTube streaming at resolutions up to 1080p.

In hands-on testing, the dual-core CPU and integrated graphics struggled even with casual games, but playing 4K video files from a variety of sources was not a problem at all.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Conclusion

The Acer Revo looks great, performs well, and runs a wide variety of media and entertainment software. Its biggest hurdle is that most video viewers simply don't need such an expansive machine, as a simple sub-$100 Roku streaming media device covers much of the ground one needs for home theater.

But, if you want something that can handle 4K video, store up to 1TB of media and other files, and enables easy web browsing from the living room couch, this is a great Windows alternative to the also-excellent Mac Mini from Apple.

Handbrake Multimedia Multitasking test

Apple Mac Mini (late 2014) 409Acer Revo One RL85 440HP Pavilion Mini 580Microsoft Surface 3 754Intel Compute Stick 1103
Note: Shorter bars indicate better performance (in seconds)

Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test

Acer Revo One RL85 255Apple Mac Mini (late 2014) 328HP Pavilion Mini 374Microsoft Surface 3 617
Note: Shorter bars indicate better performance (in seconds)

Apple iTunes encoding test

Apple Mac Mini (late 2014) 77Acer Revo One RL85 115HP Pavilion Mini 162Microsoft Surface 3 300Intel Compute Stick 419
Note: Shorter bars indicate better performance (in seconds)


System Configurations

Acer Revo One RL85 Microsoft Windows (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 3839MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 5500; 1TB 5,400rpm SSHD
HP Pavilion Mini Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit) 1.9GHz Intel Core i3-4025U; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 1792MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 4400; 1TB 5,400rpm HDD
Apple Mac Mini (late 2014) Apple OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite; 1.4GHz Intel Core i5-4260U; 4GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1536MB (shared) Intel HD Graphics 5000; 500GB 5,400rpm HDD
Microsoft Surface 3 Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit); 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z8700; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 128GB SSD
Intel Compute Stick Micorsoft Wiindows 8.1 (32-bit); 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3735F 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz; 64MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 32GB SSD

8.1

Acer Revo One

Score Breakdown

Design 9Features 7Performance 8