Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A

Blame its cheap-looking plastic exterior if Acer's $799 Aspire M5800 doesn't look like much. It makes up for its discount bin looks with fast performance, as well as a solid all-around set of features. We'd recommend this desktop to budget-minded gamers, digital media artists, or anyone in need a reasonably priced PC focused on core computing speed.

We rag on the Aspire M5800's looks mostly because it's different. In truth, its two-tone dark-and-light gray chassis doesn't have many structural shortcomings, but it simply looks less polished than its near-universal all-black competition. Like the Acer Aspire M3800, the M5800 has an obstructive plastic cover over its top gadget tray. Perhaps the cover would work to keep device cables under control, but that would mean storing your portable accessories on top of the cover and flush with the top of the system. We thought the whole purpose of recessing the tray was to provide a little extra drop protection, not cable wrangling.

The Acer Aspire M5800 compares favorably against the more affordable Asus Essentio CG5270-BP003. That $750 desktop has no glaring gaps in its features for its price, but the Acer system gives you more than you might expect for just an additional $50. Between the Acer's faster Intel quad-core processor and an Nvidia card that offers slightly more speed along with more graphics memory than the card in the Asus system, the Acer offers very clearly defined benefits for its higher price. As you'll see in our performance charts, the faster components most definitely pay off.

CineBench test
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Rendering multi-CPU

Rendering single CPU

Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A

11,660 

3,226 

HP Pavilion Elite e9120y

11,010 

3,037 

Asus Essentio CG5270-BP003

10,435 

2,961 

Gateway SX2800-01

10,085 

2,773 

Gateway DX4300-03

9,367 

2,452 

We like desktops that make our analysis easy. The Acer system outperforms all of its closest competitors on each of our lab tests. From core speed-sensitive tests like iTunes, to multitasking, to multicore-capable single programs such as Photoshop and CineBench, the Acer proves itself the fastest of its lower midrange desktop cohort. Serious HD video editing may prove to be a challenge for this desktop, but it will give you no trouble in either mainstream digital media manipulation or general productivity.

Unreal Tournament 3 (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,920x1,200

1,280x1,024

Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A

52 

86 

Asus Essentio CG5270-BP003

41 

67 

Gateway DX4300-03

30 

52 

HP Pavilion Elite e9120y

NA 

23 

Far Cry 2 (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,920x1,200

1,440x900

Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A

22 

33 

Asus Essentio CG5270-BP003

17 

26 

Gateway DX4300-03

14 

21 

It's a testament to the $700 to $800 price category in general that we even include a Far Cry 2 test in this review. Six months ago we doubt we could have found a single system in this price range able to post a decent score in that game. And even though the Acer again posts category-leading scores, it certainly has room to improve. Even at lower resolutions, you may also need to reduce the image quality to achieve a stable frame rate, depending on the game. Still, on all but the most demanding 3D titles, we'd expect this system will provide you with a reasonably smooth, reasonably good-looking PC gaming experience.

All of the systems in our performance comparison cost less than the Acer system, with the exception of HP's $830 Pavilion Elite e9120y. That PC's only tangible benefit is its Blu-ray drive. The Acer has only a dual-layer DVD burner. We don't consider Blu-ray a necessity in this price range (yet), especially in a midtower chassis, but you can always purchase a Blu-ray drive and add it to the Acer yourself, and you can find them online for about $75. Thus, while the HP technically has an HD video playback advantage over the Acer out of the box, a little DIY initiative will cure any Blu-ray envy you may experience while considering the Acer.

Should you opt for the Blu-ray drive, you'll find the Acer well equipped to output video to almost any kind of modern display. The video card comes with jacks for DVI, HDMI, as well as VGA connections, putting any LCD, HDTV, or legacy CRT in play to use as a monitor. Sadly there's no digital audio output (unless you send audio out over the HDMI port as well), but the 7.1 analog audio jacks will cover any PC speaker needs you might have. We also miss having an eSATA port for fast external data transfers. Instead you'll have to settle for USB 2.0 and FireWire jacks.

The Aspire M5800 also offers only limited internal upgrade options, although we don't expect much expandability from a system of this size and price. Its single PCI Express graphics card slot is occupied, as are its pair of standard PCI slots. That leaves you with a single 1x PCI Express mini slot for card upgrades. All four RAM slots are also occupied, although with 8GB installed you should be set for a while. The only other interior room comes by way of two more hard-drive bays.

Juice box
Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A	Average watts per hour
Off	1.35
Sleep	3.52
Idle	66.67
Load	110.83
Raw (annual kWh)	260.99982
Energy Star compliant	No
Annual energy cost	$29.62

Acer should be commended for building a desktop that's not only faster than its competition, but also more power efficient. We felt that way about the Gateway SX2800-01, which was faster than most of its lower-end competition. And we feel the same way about the Aspire M5800, which--next to other $700 to $800 desktops--is only a hair more power hungry than that $500 Gateway. Acer demonstrates the kind of power efficiency with this PC that other desktop vendors should use as a model.

Acer's support is not as strong as some of its competitors. Gateway, actually a subsidiary company to Acer, has 24-7 toll-free support, whereas Acer's phones are only open from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT weekdays and from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT on weekends. You do at least get a year of parts and labor warranty protection, as well as a handful of troubleshooting tips and other support help on Acer's Web site.

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:

Acer Aspire M5800-U5802A
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (SP1); 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400; 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230; 750GB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive

Asus Essentio CG5270-BP003
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (SP1); 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300; 8GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 220; 750GB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive

Gateway DX4300-03
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (SP1); 2.4GHz AMD Phenom X4 9750; 8GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4650; 1TB 7,200rpm Hitachi hard drive

Gateway SX2800-01
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.3GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200; 4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 32MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 640GB 7,200rpm hard drive

HP Pavilion e9120y
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (SP1); 2.6GHz AMD Phenom II X4 910; 8GB 1,066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4350; 1TB, 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive

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