Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT AIO Desktop Review

The Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is no Apple iMac, but it a beautifully AIO built with space-saving, power, and flexibility in mind. It lacks a touchscreen option but comes with a host of other features such as a larger 23.8-inch Full HD display, superior CPU, and ample hard drive storage (1TB) all at an affordable price.

If you’re in the market for a sleek all-in-one that won’t break the bank, the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is the right choice. Better yet, if you’re looking for speed, the Core i3 configuration with SSD option is a better option by far.

Pros

• Beautiful Full HD display
• Sharp design and exterior
• Thin bezels give it a modern look
• Great six-core performance
• Decent port system
• Budget-priced compared to others
• Near silent operation

Cons

• No touch screen option
• Slow storage option
• Built-in speakers are poor

The Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is Acer’s new mid-range all-in-one desktop built for day-to-day tasks. With the all-in-one market moving towards higher prices thanks to high-end machines like Apple iMac and Microsoft Surface Studio 2, the Aspire’s budget approach is a breath of fresh air.

That is great, especially for users looking for a system to tackle mainstream home and office tasks without breaking their budgets. Physically, the Acer Aspire looks the part with its eye-catching design, but how does it fare in performance. We dig deeper into this review.

Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT Specs

Screen size	24-inch
Display	Full HD (1920 x 1080)
Brightness	261 cd/m2
Processor	8th Gen Intel Core i5-8250U
Memory	12GB DDR4 2400MHz
Storage	1TB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Graphics Card	Intel HD Graphics 520
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Dimensions	21.26 x 0.46 x 12.64 inches
Weight	6.9 pounds

Design and Features

The Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is made of plastic but doesn’t give off a budget look. The silver color scheme and brushed metal-effect finish does give it a metal look, but all for the best. It’s an enclosure that looks and feels premium, which is what you’ll find less in this budget category and more as the price heads up to $1000.

I loved that Acer included a thin bezel – 12mm from front to back, and it gives it a more elegant vibe. The bottom of the screen is much chunkier because that is where the components are stored, making it 40mm from the font-to back.

As far as dimensions are concerned, the system measures 17.3 by 21.3 by 1.4 inches (HWD). At these dimensions, the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is larger than Apple’s iMac, but the Aspire is more compact of the two thanks to its almost edgeless display. It’s pleasing to know that the Aspire will also not take up more desk space than it needs to.

And because it weighs 6.9 pounds, it won’t break your back when moving it around.

Right at the back, the silver cabinet is supported by a Y-shaped stand. The stands allow some minor 45 degrees adjustments. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support swivel and height adjustments. With this level of movement, it easily fits the bill as a kitchen countertop.

There is no VESA mount, which means you will have to use it on the table. It kind of makes sense not including it for office users, but some home users who prefer wall mounting might be disappointed.

Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT-Display

Acer’s display is of pretty average considering it’s a 24 -inch monitor with Full HD (1920 x 1080). But all the same, the price you pay for it justifies its low-end resolution. The industry standard for 24-inches is undoubtedly more than Full HD, especially for gaming monitors. Nonetheless, colors are reasonably accurate, and the contrast is excellent.

If anything, the thin bezels combined with the Full HD display make this monitor look more elegant than it is (that’s a good thing). Photos and videos are crisp meaning you should be able to enjoy watching movies on this monitor. Also, while the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT isn’t built for gaming, games look great on this display; all except those titles with darker scenes.

The screen panel is a Full HD In-Plane Switching IPS panel which translates to good viewing angles and pretty clear picture. IPS screens for users that want color accuracy and consistency so you should expect the same quality of picture whichever angle you choose to view from. The advantage is that you can share a screen with your friends and family during late movie nights or at the office with co-workers without worrying about losing image quality to extreme angles.

Moreover, Acer’s brightness measurement is 261cd/m2 which is decent enough for indoor use such as home and office settings.

With a contrast ratio of 1088:1, the Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT promises good vibrancy and depth in a document, photos, and web pages. That means you can easily read online websites content without squinting of struggling to read minute writing.

Poor Audio

Adjusted next to the display are the speakers. The speakers are one of Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT’s biggest wrinkle. The major problem with them is that the pack no bass. Here we recommend investing in some other external speakers with better sound quality.

Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT – Ports

The port selection is satisfactory. There are two USB 3.1 ports and an SD card that faces up on top of the display’s north side for easy access. Both of the USB 3.1 ports are Gen 1 and not Gen 2 which equates to a slower storage transfer.

Meanwhile, the rear is home to other ports as well. You get two USB 2.0s, a single HDMI output and a Gigabit Ethernet port. Unfortunately, there’s no USB Type-C and DisplayPort. Usually, the port system is decent for casual home and office tasks but isn’t reliable for large file transfers. Moving on, other connectivity options include 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, Bluetooth 4.2 and that Acer also includes TPM 2.0, but no Intel vPro.

You will also see that Acer includes a complimentary wireless keyboard and mouse which are pretty decent. The Acer Aspire TC-885-ACCFLi5 Desktop (the desktop version of this unit) we reviewed earlier also comes with a keyboard and mouse too.

Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT – Performance

Our review unit came with a fairly new chip, the 8^th Generation Core i5-8250U processor with Kaby Lake architecture. The chip is one of Intel’s 8th Gen processor built to consume less power and produce low heat. It’s a predecessor of the i7-7200U but it has already been preceded with the i5-8265U that offers better Turbo speeds.

The bright side is, the i5-8250U is not already obsolete. It performs well in tasks such as web browsing, work in Microsoft Office applications, and multimedia playback which it does with relative ease.

The processor sports a passable base clock speed of 1.6GHz and a turbo speed of 3.4GHz. The numbers might not sound like much, but the good part is it packs four cores that use hyper-threading, so it can easily handle up to eight threads simultaneously. That means the processor is great at single-core tasks.

Also, it has enough power to handle day-to-day computing, web browsing, Office applications, and some light multitasking. While it’s great for common tasks, this desktop struggles with multithreaded tasks for example, photo and video editing or content creation. An intensive database, design tools, and applications will struggle here.

Memory and Storage.

Fortunately, the processor doesn’t work alone in tasks. The CPU is coupled with an 8GB DDR4 memory (2400MHz) and 1 TB mechanical hard drive. The memory is sufficient for most tasks. It’s one caveat is that it runs at a middling 2400MHz and that the memory is installed in a single channel arrangement.

The other biggest drawback we have with the Aspire C24 is the 1TB mechanical hard drive storage. The amount is fine and we would have wished Acer include a solid-state drive. But Acer included a 5400 RPM hard disk which is very slow. In essence, this means it won’t be able to fight the same fight as SSDs bring to the ring.

Overall, the low-power processor and slothful hard disk make for a disappointing experience. It also takes notably long to boot the PC and software, applications and Windows take a while to load. The system hardly runs warm or loud which is great, but that’s nothing compared to the inconvenience of waiting for basic software to boot.

SO my two cents; install your own SSD or get the Core i3 configuration with 128GB SSD. It should make things snappier, software load faster and boot times shorter. It’ll provide essential for you for home and office related tasks…Ms.Office and web-based tasks.

Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT – Conclusion

From first glance, the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT’s design, brushed finish, thin bezels and build quality give it an eye-catching appeal. It’s an all-in-one desktop that just looks and feels right in an office or home. From the onset, it has more things going for it: a bunch of USB 3.1 ports, a card reader and generally modest connectivity options.

Of course, we wish that it would have been better but for home and office use, the ports are sufficient.

The display is decent (Full HD), and the IPS panel works great for users watching from every corner. Inside, the Core i5-8250U is a solid choice and 1TB HDD storage amount is impeccable too. What we didn’t like, however, is the slow hard drive and lack of SSD.

Bottom line, the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT is an affordable all-in-one desktop for office and home use. The Core i3 configuration is better but if you can manage to overlook the few mishaps it comes with its definitely a great choice to go for.