Acer Aspire Z5

The design of the Acer Aspire Z5 is a little odd, because unlike most AIOs which seem to look like displays attached onto a stand, Acer has instead decided to merge both display and stand into one single form. Not to say the Aspire Z5 looks weird, but somehow, it doesn’t look as attractive and polished when compared to the ASUS and Lenovo AIOs. What this also means is that instead of a proper stand, the Aspire Z5 relies on a primitive rear kickstand to prop itself up. The use of a kickstand also means that the Aspire Z5 adjusts only for tilt and not for height.


Acer has a reputation for offering great value, and the Aspire Z5 holds steadfastly to this; the Aspire Z5 is the most affordable of the trio, but definitely not lacking on features. Apart from its 23.6-inch full HD LED-backlit touchscreen, the Aspire Z5 also comes with an integrated TV tuner. Where it loses out to the competition, however, is the lack of a Blu-ray drive, making do with a DVD combo drive. As for its touchscreen tracking technology, Acer employs resistive panel technology, which isn’t the most responsive or accurate, but good enough for most daily tasks.





The Aspire Z5 is available in two trim levels, with ours being the premium edition and as such, comes with pretty decent specifications. For starters, it has a quad-core Core i7-3770S processor, a fairly powerful processor from Intel that features a generous 8MB worth of L3 cache. This processor also supports Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, and comes with Intel’s latest Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated GPU. This is complemented by 8GB of memory and a spacious 2TB hard disk. Finally, it has an NVIDIA GeForce GT63OM discrete graphics processor. Admittedly, this isn’t the most powerful graphics solution around, but it will nonetheless handle HD video playback well. It should also be good enough for gaming, so long as you keep the graphics settings modest.





In terms of connectivity options, the Aspire Z5 has two USB 3.0 ports that are positioned on the side and a generous helping of four regular USB 2.0 ports at the rear. That aside, the Aspire Z5 also has integrated Bluetooth connectivity and HDMI input and output ports, increasing the usefulness of the Aspire Z5 as it can be paired with other AV equipment or even gaming consoles. It also means that when the Aspire Z5 does become obsolete in future, it can still be used as a display.

SPECS:
PROCESSOR Intel Core i7-3770S 3.1GHz
MEMORY 8GB DDR3
DISPLAY 23-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080)
GRAPHICS NVIDIA Ge Force GT630M 2GB dedicated RAM
STORAGE 2TB


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