Acer Aspire E300-NB73 review

The E300-NB73 desktop PC from Acer, a company perhaps better known for its notebooks, is available with or without Media Center capabilities.

This reasonably attractive non-Media Center version is billed as a 64-bit Gamer. Unfortunately, the E300 performed poorly in our Doom 3 and 3DMark benchmark tests, scoring well below what we would expect of a PC at this price, thanks to its rather average nVidia GeForce 6600 graphics card. In our other benchmark tests, the E300 performed as expected, although it is by no means exceptional.

The E300 is equipped with a 939 processor socket, so future processor upgrades should be straightforward. Unfortunately, the E300 lacks any free PCI slots. Strangely, while the E300 features four free 31/2" drive bays, the single free SATA port means only one drive would be able to take advantage of SATA.

Although the E300 is capable of outputting 5.1 surround sound, Acer provides a rather limp pair of own-brand 2.1 speakers. The spongy keyboard deserves a special mention for its huge swathe of unused space, which is a waste considering the hard-to-hit, half-height function keys and tiny media keys. The comfy optical mouse, on the other hand, does look quite stylish.

Acer deserves credit for including a bright 19" LCD monitor with a fast response time, good contrast and rich colours - no doubt due in part to the display's gloss finish. Unfortunately, this means the monitor also reflects a lot of light, and the resulting glare can be quite distracting. The monitor looks slightly darker near the top and bottom of the flat panel, but this is quite subtle.

The E300 is also available without a monitor for about £200 less. Upgraders looking to replace their existing system while keeping their existing monitor may find this an attractive option.

While the E300 could prove competent as an image- and video-editing PC, its competitors are not only faster at such tasks but also feature better expansion options and peripherals. While bundling a quality monitor, Acer perhaps forgot to pay more attention to the other ingredients that make a good-value PC.