Price Comparison
The all-in-one market offering has moved towards higher prices over the past few years thanks to machines like the Apple iMac and the Microsoft Surface Studio 2, but the Acer Aspire C24-963-UA91 remains ever affordable.
The model we’re reviewing boasts a new 10th Gen Intel Core i3-1005G1 processor, 8GB RAM, and 512GB SSD, a configuration that makes it ideal to handle mainstream home and office tasks with ease – and to look beautiful while doing it. It is in the same performance category as the Aspire TC-885-UA91, but the internal components and design are something else. That sounds great, but we’re still concerned that a few corners have been cut to hit that affordable price.
Design
Looking at the Aspire C24, it doesn’t pass for a budget machine. It’s made of plastic, but you can’t tell because the material looks like metal. It has a brushed finish on the main screen bezel that extends to the rear, and it doesn’t get any unwanted extras.
The screen has slim bezels that are quite a sight to behold, and the build quality is solid too – the plastic around the back barely gives into pressure, and the screen is quite sturdy on its smart base.
Acer gives the C24-963-UA91 a clean bill of health, it’s not so big for a conventional 24-inch screen. It only takes up around 1.4 inches of space (front to back), and it only weighs 12.4lbs – meaning, you can easily move it around.
Display & Ports
The 24-inch IPS screen has a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080) resolution, and it’s as good as anyone can expect for a budget all-in-one. The Acer’s brightness measurement of 261cd/m2 is just high enough to cope with home and office lights, and it’s paired with a black level of 0.24cd/m2. That latter figure is good enough to ensure solid depth to all sorts of images.
Port selection is acceptable, but that doesn’t make it great. There are two USB 3.1 ports and an SD card rear that face up from the top of the component section, making them easy to access. While that’s good, the ports use USB 3.1 Gen 1 not Gen 2. So, they’re slower – and you don’t have any other convenient ports on the sides of the system.
Around the back, you’ll find more ports. Here you have two slower USB 2 connections alongside an HDMI output and a Gigabit Ethernet port. This AIO doesn’t have a USB Type-C, no DisplayPort, and comes with only one audio jack. Wireless connectivity comes via dual-band 802.11ac wireless, Gigabit Ethernet, and Bluetooth 4.2.
Performance
As mentioned earlier, the model we’re reviewing has a Core i5-1005G1 processor. It’s a 10th-generation Comet Lake chip, combined with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD. The Core i5’s base speed of 1.20GHz is fine, and it reaches Turbo peak of 3.4GHz. It’s a low-power part with four cores that use Hyper-Threading – so it can utilize eight concurrent threads.
This specification is at pad with midrange laptops that also drive 1080p screens. This Aspire is designed for day-to-day computing: web browsing over several tabs, you can run office applications load different apps at once and pay media.
However, it’s not designed for photo and video editing, content creation or any other complex tasks. If you need something for heavy productivity tasks, you’re better off with the Apple iMac or the Microsoft Surface Studio 2.
Bottom Line
The Acer Aspire C24-963-UA91 is an all-in-one desktop PC that looks gorgeous, with metal-effect plastic that’s eye-catching, a physical design that’s smart and subtle too. Apart from that, it packs Intel’s new 10th generation Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
As designed, it will be comfortable at home in an office or the living room, and the built quality is great. The screen is great too. However, the speakers are poor, and the Aspire could have better connectivity. Everywhere else, the Aspire C24 is better.
If you need an affordable, sleek-looking all-in-one then the Acer Aspire C24-963-UA91 certainly fits the bill. It looks the part, is well priced and performance is unmatched considering it can be had for much less than the competition.
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