The Aspire comes with a basic wired keyboard and mouse, which are nothing to
write home about but get the job done. The system also includes Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth 5.0. There is a decent amount of preinstalled software, including
some potentially useful Acer Care Center software for system updates and
monitoring. Nothing too extensive, but if you want to do a clean Windows
install, go for it.
PERFORMANCE TESTING: TOP OF THE BUDGET DESKTOP HEAP
For benchmark comparisons, I’ve gathered a batch of desktops with similar
components and price tags. This group of competitors provides context for the
Acer Aspire: the HP Envy Desktop TE01, HP Pavilion Desktop TP01-0014,
Lenovo IdeaCentre 510A, and Lenovo ThinkCentre M79q Tiny.
The Aspire has a leg up here with its recent Core i5 processor, but part of the
reason we like this system so much is that it’s including this superior core
component without much of a price increase. It’s only $50 more than the HP
Pavilion and the Lenovo IdeaCentre, and less expensive than the HP Envy and
Lenovo ThinkCentre. Considering what you’ll see below, that’s a value we can
get behind.
Productivity and Storage Tests: PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance
suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
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and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use
to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both tests yield a proprietary
numeric score; higher numbers are better.
While its margin of victory in PCMark 10 wasn’t big, the Aspire did come away
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recommend the Aspire before the others (well, tied with the Envy) as a system
for daily multitasking without slowdown. As for PCMark 8, the throughput of
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drive alternatives.