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Acer’s Aspire Z3731 is a rather unattractive all-in-one with an underpowered dual-core Pentium processor. However, it has a rather significant redeeming feature: its price. At £400, it’s easily one of the cheapest all-in-one PCs around, and although its features are basic, it works surprisingly well and comes from a big-name manufacturer with an excellent reputation. If all you need is a basic and relatively inexpensive PC, this could be just the ticket.
If you’re buying a basic PC of any sort, you need to make sure it meets your needs. If you’re after performance, you should definitely look elsewhere. The 3GHz Pentium Dual-Core E5700 processor crawled through our benchmark tests with an overall score of just 35 and a particularly slow performance in our video editing and multi-tasking tests. There’s not much memory here, either – the 3GB of RAM is a little scant if you want to carry out tasks such as mass image editing. The PC comes installed with a 64-bit version of Windows 7, which makes upgrading your memory a possibility, but there’s a lot of screws to remove and it’s a fiddly job.
The PC’s graphics capabilities are similarly poor. The motherboard uses Intel’s elderly G43 chipset, which provides you with G4500HD on-board graphics. The PC will play HD video files at the screen’s native 1,920×1,080 resolution, but its gaming performance is poor and this isn’t a computer for the latest games. The 500GB hard disk isn’t particularly generous, but isn’t bad for the money. Despite a rather poor all-round performance in our tests, the Z3731 is actually a perfectly capable little PC; it’s fine if you want to browse the web, edit your photos, watch videos or do any of the tasks that people usually want a computer for.
It has six USB ports – four at the back and two on the right-hand side of the display – as well as an eSATA port, 5.1 analogue surround sound outputs, a memory card reader and a TV tuner that you can use with Windows Media Center. You can output your display to projector or second screen with a VGA connection. There’s even a pair of PS/2 ports that means you can replace the supplied wireless mouse and keyboard if you have an old set that you want to use.
The 21.5in touchscreen display doesn’t suffer noticeably from the gritty appearance that affects some, although it’s not particularly good for using Windows and we prefer using a keyboard and mouse. Although it’s not the brightest screen around, its backlighting is even and its colours natural, with clear white tones. The built-in speakers are a little harsh and tinny, without much depth to bass notes, but they do a fair job for casual listening.
If it cost more or had fewer ports, the Z3731 wouldn’t be worth having, but at £400 this is a flexible, space-saving PC that covers the basics and can even serve as a TV. If you can live without 3D gaming, it’s a great choice for saving space in a student flat and an excellent Budget Buy.
