Seven Small (But Powerful) Mini-PCs, Reviewed

Acer Revo RL80-UR22

Acer introduced its Aspire Revo series in 2009, starting with the Atom 230-equipped R1600. Like most nettops at the time, it was underpowered, but provided passable service in the most basic workloads. The RL80 we're looking at today is quite a bit different; it introduces some much-needed compute potential through an Ivy Bridge-based Core i3-3227U.

Running at 1.9 GHz, only two products in this round-up operate at a lower clock rate, but one also peaks with a 2.6 GHz Turbo Boost setting. The Revo doesn't have Turbo Boost enabled, so we expect it to bring up the rear in most of our CPU benchmarks. The on-die HD Graphics 4000 engine pretty much par in this group, and we know it to be capable of fairly mainstream gaming aspirations.

Priced at $430 on Newegg, including an operating system, the RL80's biggest selling point is a massive price advantage compared to the rest of the playing field.

Bundle And First Impression

Of the companies involved in our round-up, Acer is the most well-known as a system vendor, rather than a component manufacturer. This becomes evident in the bundle: the Revo RL80 is the only PC in this comparison that includes a wireless mouse, a wireless keyboard, and an operating system. Just hook up a display and you're good to go.

The system can sit horizontally or mount vertically. At 8.3" x 8.3" x 1.4" and 2.2 lbs, it's one of the larger mini-PCs in our story. But it's still small and light enough to attach to the back of a monitor, thanks to a VESA-compatible base.

There's not a lot to see up front except for two USB 3.0 ports, a memory card reader, and audio input/output jacks.

Most of the connectivity is found around back. You get HDMI and DVI outputs, two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, an optical audio output, and a GbE jack, which isn't visible because it occupies the bottom corner.

A single screw holds the plastic cover down, although some force is required to pop it off. After that, remove a thin layer of metal for access to the hardware underneath.

First off, we notice that Acer's mini-PC has two memory slots for a dual-channel configuration, but only comes equipped with one 4 GB SO-DIMM. You can also see one mini-PCIe slot populated by the Atheros AR5B22 802.11n/Bluetooth 4.0 combo card. There's another mini-PCIe slot on the other side, which looks like it should be able to take an mSATA-based SSD, except that it doesn't. Only another mini-PCIe peripheral will work there.

On the left is the bundled Seagate Momentus Thin 500 GB hard disk with a 16 MB data cache and relatively slow 5400 RPM spindle. There's an unused combination SATA/power port right above the hard drive, which is seemingly useless in an enclosure like this with no room for another disk. Acer does offer an optical drive add-on module, though.

Unfortunately, the Seagate drive is bolted in from the back of the motherboard, so it's a pain to access if you want to swap in a 2.5" SSD. What's worse, Acer's firmware doesn't make it each to install another operating system without jumping through some hoops.

Special Features And Livability

The Revo RL80's biggest strength is its low price and very complete bundle, which comes with everything you need to get running, except for a display. Even if you add a second memory module and the optical drive add-on, it's still the lowest-cost system in our round-up. Enthusiasts may want to consider the other options, though; the locked-down BIOS doesn't let you do much more than install the factory copy of Windows.