Budget desktops sold under $1,000 sometimes arrive with old and outdated hardware, but the Acer Aspire TC-1780-UA92 is an exception. It brings Intel’s 13th-Gen Cor processor to a bargain price point thanks to smart sacrifices unlikely to deter most people. It handles homework and video streaming fluently, it has 512GB solid-state drive storage, and it supports Wi-Fi 6E for fast downloads.
While its integrated graphics doesn’t offer much in terms of gaming, it’s still a better option over the HP Pavilion Desktop, as it comes with two HDMI inputs for a dual-monitor setup. Overall, the Acer Aspire TC is a solid, straightforward, and capable desktop that won’t cost you a fortune; it earns our Editors’ Choice award for budget home desktops.
Acer Aspire TC Specs
- Desktop Class: Personal, Business
- Processor: 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13400
- RAM: 8 GB
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 730
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home
- Weight: 14.07 pounds
- Dimensions: 13.78 x 6.42 x 13.39 inches
Design & Features
The Aspire TC-1780-UA92 gets a better design and looks better than most of its competitors: the front combines dark, brushed metal with a sleek, eye-power button and stylish angular angles. As with all other Aspire TCs, build quality is beyond reproach – well, some of the metal and plastic used on the external chassis is a bit flimsy, but it will certainly last several years to come.
The Acer’s mid-size tower dimensions help it fit into everyday life; you don’t have to worry about the little space available on your desk. Measuring just 13.39 inches tall and only 6.42 inches wide, it’s significantly smaller than most other towers in this price range.
The design’s practicality extends to the connectivity options available on the case. On the front, there is a full-size USB 3.2 port, a USB 3.2 Type-C connector, and two headphone/microphone jacks, which are decent enough for most of your peripherals. And, rather surprisingly, this PC offers a DVD drive, which is unusual since most manufacturers are dropping the optical drive from most of their machines.
Around the back, there’s one more USB 3.2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, two HDMI ports, three audio jacks, and an Ethernet port. Wireless connectivity comes in the way of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. There’s room to mount an external hard drive, and Acer has done all the cable work for you, making upgrading simpler.
The Acer Aspire TC-1760-UA92 includes a basic, wired keyboard and mouse. While they’re not high-end peripherals, and they may not satisfy keen typists, they’re nonetheless fine for everyday home and work use. You’ll have to buy the monitor separately – both the Acer KB272 EBI and HP 24mh are great, affordable monitors to consider.
Performance
The Acer Aspire TC-1780-UA92 gets the much-anticipated jump up to 13th Gen Intel CPUs, and sure, 13th Gen chips deliver excellent performance. The Intel Core i5-13400 is a fast desktop processor in the Raptor Lake series, released in early 2023 with a base clock of 2.5GHz (can reach up to 4.6GHz in Turbo Mode).
Just like its predecessor in the Alder Lake-S, Raptor Lake-S is also based on a hybrid design that combines P and E cores. That means the Intel Core i5-13400 offers 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores, which can process up to 16 threads in parallel.
Acer pairs the capable Core i5-13400 with 8GB RAM, which is fine at this price. 8GB of RAM is not massive but more than enough for day-to-day use and entry-level productivity. It’s also good to see Acer stick with RAM clocked at a relatively high speed of 3200MHz. We often recommend having at least 8GB of RAM on a budget productivity machine to ensure simple things like browser tabs will load quickly, so it’s nice to see this desktop go beyond that.
Acer uses a 512GB NVMe M.2 drive installed on the motherboard. This is a typical configuration for a modern desktop, but some older budget desktops rely on drives that use the less capable (and slower) SATA standard.
I also like that Acer uses a 512GB solid-state drive rather than a smaller SSD with a large mechanical hard disk. 512GB is a modest amount of storage, but it meshes nicely with the Aspire TC’s focus on basic productivity. You’ll never have to twiddle your thumbs while the desktop opens a file on an achingly slow hard disk.
Performance is decent; this isn’t going to break any records, but it can certainly handle productivity work well. In that regard, it’s going to do a great job as a media center in the living room, a reliable PC at the office, multitasking as well as photo editing and video editing.
While the PC doesn’t have the option for a dedicated GPU configuration, it still works fine out of the box. The included integrated Intel UHD Graphics 730 shouldn’t be relied on for robust gaming, but they provide some nice little pep for casual work or play.
Acer Aspire TC-1780-UA92 Review: Verdict
The Acer Aspire TC-1780-UA92 is a great budget desktop. It’s especially great value if all you want is a basic yet capable desktop computer on a tight budget. It doesn’t pack any latest hardware, but the 13th-Gen Intel Core i5-13400 processor is still great; the desktop supports the latest wireless standards and has a generous amount of RAM and solid-state storage.
When shopping on a budget, however, you sometimes have to do with a few limitations. In the case of the Aspire TC, it’s not a very attractive desktop, and future upgrades are limited by the compact enclosure and small power supply.
The same limitations are true of Acer’s competitors, however. If you look around, any Dell Inspiron, HP Pavilion, or Lenovo Idea Centre sold for below $600 will have similar (or sometimes worse) issues. With the Aspire TC-1780-UA92, Acer stands apart from these alternatives with better hardware at a very reasonable price.
If you’re on a tight budget and want a home-office PC that won’t hold you back in daily use, the Acer Aspire TC-1780-UA92 is our top pick, earning our Editors’ Choice award for budget desktops.