Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 AIO Desktop Review

The Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 AIO Desktop is a good standard-bearer for affordable all-in-one desktops. The Acer Aspire looks good at first glance, considering its 23.8-inch display, superior CPU, and extra storage space for nothing more than $600. It also delivers reliable performance for day-to-day tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing.

Pros

• Vibrant Full HD display
• Modern design and exterior
• Thin bezels give it a professional look
• Powerful six-core performance
• Decent port system
• Affordable price range
• Almost quiet operation

Cons

• Doesn’t have touch screen option
• Storage option is on the slow side
• Built-in speakers are mediocre

An all-in-one desktops need to be all things to every member of the household, from a learning tool for kids to a photo-editing machine and sturdy workhorse capable of odd jobs for mom or dad. The Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 AIO Desktop ticks all the right boxes without denting your wallet, delivering remarkable processing and general capability for under $600.

While it might not satisfy your gaming cravings, it offers butter smooth performance for just about everything else in daily run-to-the-mill tasks.

Inside it packs an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 23.8-inch Full HD display, 8GB DDR4 memory, and 1TB mechanical hard drive storage. All these come together to make a fairly robust desktop experience. But how does it stack up against other AIO desktops in its category?

Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 Specs

Screen Size	23.8-inch
Display	Full HD IPS
Processor	Intel Core i5-8250U
Memory	8GB DDR4
Storage	1TB HDD 5400 RPM
Speakers	Built-in Stereo
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Dimensions	21.26 x 0.46 x 12.64 inches
Weight	13.9 pounds

Design and Features

The Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 AIO has a relatively sleek and attractive design for an all-in-one, with a black and silver color scheme that looks and feels elegant. If you’re looking for a high-end AIO desktop, the construction leaves a little to be desired, as most of the silver-colored trim is plastic rather than aluminum you might find on a system like the iMac.

Nonetheless, such an enclosure is fine for low-end all-in-ones, but I start to expect less plastic and more metal when the price starts getting to highs of $1000. Acer enshrouds a plastic enclosure with a faux-metal look to the whole machine. The bezel is made of black plastic, the back silver plastic leaving the base and mounting bracket as the only pieces built with metal.

The system measures 21.26 x 0.46 x 12.64 inches and weighs 13.9 pounds. With such dimensions, it casts the same net as its predecessor and our most recent favorite, the Acer Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT desktop. The Acer Aspire Z24-890-UA91 AIO Desktop  (21.29 x 1.45 x 17.3 inches) is slightly larger in comparison, but our unit is more compact

Like the Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT desktop before it, the Aspire Aspire C24-865-UA91 has an attached Y-shaped base. The all-metal stand attaches to the back and offers minor 45-degree adjustments save for swivel and height adjustments. You will have to get used to moving the entire unit in place of horizontal adjustments and stack the PC on something like a stack of books for height.

This is not an uncommon issue for all-in-one systems, and even expensive workstations may find themselves perched on a stack of stuff, but we’d still like to see more height options if only to improve the ergonomics of the machine.

Display

The Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 brags of a 23.8-inch IPS, non-gloss display. The display is laden with 1920 x 1080 resolution, which is pretty average but considering the monitor’s price is reasonable. The thin screen bezels are one of the Acer Aspire’s design advantage, and they give it a sleek, modern look.

On the flip side, the thin bezels are, in a way a detriment to the desktop. There is not enough space to hold a webcam which means you’ll have to use an external webcam and microphone.

Thanks to the Full HD display, images are sharp, accurate, and pleasant to view on. That makes the monitor great for watching movies as it is easy to make out every detail of images. The display sits rather high up the desk, which is excellent for viewing while working. Speaking of viewing, the display is an IPS panel and provides wide viewing angles and accurate colors.

Ports

The port selection is okay. There are two USB 3.1 ports and an SD card that faces up on top of the display’s upper side for convenient access. Both of the USB 3.1 ports are Gen 1 and not Gen 2, meaning they are slower.

Meanwhile, the rear houses 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. Generally, the port system is enough for casual home and office tasks but not more than that. 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.

Acer also included a free wireless keyboard and mouse which are pretty standard and gets the job done with daily tasks. The Acer Aspire TC-885-UA91 Desktop (the desktop version of this unit) we reviewed earlier also comes with a wired keyboard and mouse too. On the whole, Acer did a great job in this section. There is no tray-loading DVD drive, which is a standard for PCs but not really necessary now because of better storage transfer solutions.

While this is slowly emerging as an oddity on modern desktops, it may nonetheless prove helpful to anyone who has an extensive CD collection or uses DVDs as a storage option for documents and media.

Performance

The Aspire TC-885-UA91 features a six-core, Intel Core i5-8250U processor with Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics, 8GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive. It does a great job in tasks such as web browsing, work in Microsoft Office applications, and multimedia playback which it does with minimal stress on the PC.

The processor sports a modest base clock speed of 1.6GHz and a turbo speed of 3.4GHz. Having low Ghz may turn you off, but the kicker is it packs four cores that use hyper-threading, so it can easily handle up to eight threads simultaneously. That means the processor is insanely good when doing single-core tasks.

Also, it has sufficient power to control day-to-day computing, web browsing, Office applications, and some light multitasking. On the other hand, it doesn’t perform well with multithreaded tasks, for example, photo and video editing or content creation. Intensive database, design tools, and applications will struggle here.

Memory and Storage

The choice of 8GB memory is undoubtedly substantial and comes in handy in multitasking workloads. As a result, the Aspire TC-885-UA91 feels snappy in day to day tasks and can handle more than 20 Chrome tabs open simultaneously without showing any noticeable slowing. You can, however, swap out the memory by popping off the screws at the rear and upgrading to whichever amount is comfortable for your work.

We recommend 16GB if you do more than the common tasks in your daily tasks.

As for storage, Acer included 1TB hard drive storage with 5400RPM. That is plenty of storage to go around, especially for saving multimedia, music files, and downloadable games. One downside of this AIO is, however, the hard drive. With the 5400RPM speed, file transfer is on the slow side, which affects the general performance of the desktop.

Loading and booting up of the desktop takes longer than it should because the Operating system is loaded on the HDD storage. As a result, you’ll notice some lag when switching between Chrome and MS Office, with Windows interface animations occasionally lagging.

Gaming Prowess

The Acer Aspire’s system processor makes use of an integrated UHD Graphics 620, which is available to keep screen apps, software and games running. And by games I mean online games. To be honest, it comes as no surprise that this AIO PC has no dedicated graphics card. Considering the price it sells for, it’s priced for productivity, editing and perhaps some web-based games.

The Acer Aspire offers a reasonably robust experience in daily productivity and certainly not in gaming. So if you have to game, we recommend looking elsewhere, preferably on a separate desktop and monitor combination. If that sounds like something, you might consider the ViewSonic XG2401 gaming monitor and the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme GXiVR8060A7 desktop. Together, these two will offer an impressive entry-level gaming performance at an affordable price.

Conclusion

There’s more to love than hate about the Acer Aspire C24-865-UA91 AIO Desktop. With its powerful 8^th Generation Intel Core i5-8250U processor, the Acer Aspire boasts of strong application performance that’s reliable both for home and office tasks. We also loved the stylish design, ample array of ports, Full HD IPS display, and affordable price.

The lack of a graphics card does hamper things a bit, especially if you had hopes of gaming. But for a household system that might be used for anything from completing simple school papers to editing home movies, the Aspire Z24 provides strong performance under most circumstances. To sum it up, it’s a better fit as a central hub in your home

Are there other alternatives?

At this price range, there are more than a few, but I’ll give just three examples. First, the Aspire C24-865-ACi5NT desktop is still a great option. Inside it flaunts a few features better than our unit but on the whole more similar. You’ll find the midrange display is decent (Full HD), and an IPS panel that works great for users watching from different angles.

Also, the Core i5-8250U is a solid choice, and the 1TB HDD storage amount is impeccable too. Like in our unit, what we didn’t like, however, is the slow hard drive and lack of SSD. It costs similar to our unit, but its 12GB memory offers better value than 8GB on our unit.

Secondly, I would recommend checking out the Acer’s new release, the Acer Aspire Z24-890-UA91 AIO Desktop. For about $200 more, it brings to the table a 23.8-inch Full HD display, a 9th Generation Intel Core i5-9400T processor, 12GB DDR4 memory, 512GB SSD storage, 802.11ac WiFi, and a single USB 3.1 Type C port. If you don’t mind topping up, this is also a great AIO option to go for.

Lastly, if Windows the Operating systems isn’t your thing and you prefer a bit of elegance on your monitors, the 21.5-inch Apple iMac is the way to go. For around $1200 (at the time of writing), it offers a 21.5-inch Retina 4k display, 3.6GHz quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core i3 processor, 1TB hard drive storage and two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The stylish design, performance, and affordable price come together to make a highly recommendable AIO home-office desktop. As a result, it receives our Editor’s Choice award for the best budget home-office AIO desktop.