The Acer Revo is a do-it-all media-friendly PC that can fit anywhere.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 minimalist 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 big screen TV, but do more than a basic streaming media box.
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.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 web surfing 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.
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 on board storage. It'll stream Netflix or play YouTube videos just fine, but anything beyond that is pushing your luck.
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
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.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 clicky, but easy to hit.
Our 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 various 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, we 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.
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.
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 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.
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