Acer Aspire Z3 (AZ3-715-UR15) - Review 2022

The Acer Aspire Z3 (AZ3-715-UR15) ($1,199.99) is a midrange all-in-i desktop with a 23.8-inch Total Hard disk drive bear upon console, a large hard drive, and very skillful multimedia and day-to-day performance, thanks to a powerful Cadre i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. Withal, its grainy display, tedious-booting hard bulldoze, aging pattern, and lack of frontward-thinking ports like USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 seem similar questionable choices when you're paying more than $1,000 for an AIO PC.

The Design Is Familiar

The Aspire Z3's components are congenital in behind its 23.viii-inch In-Plane Switching (IPS) brandish. The trunk measures 18.4 by 23.iii by one.four inches (HWD), a bit larger than the Apple iMac 21.5-inch, simply similar in tiptop and width to other AIO desktops similar the Lenovo ThinkCentre X1, which also has a 23.8-inch screen. The brandish floats above your work surface on a non-removable, brilliant silver-colored, L-shaped stand, that looks very much like the stand on the latest Apple iMac. The stand, which allows tilt, but non height or hinge adjustments, and a silvery-colored lip beginning the black plastic back console and thick black bezel effectually the screen. The design hasn't changed much from the Acer Aspire AZ3-710-UR54 we reviewed in 2022. It's a await that'due south attractive, if a bit dated.

The i,920-by-1,080 resolution Total HD display offers broad viewing angles, but if you wait closely y'all'll see the individual square pixels. As a outcome, text doesn't wait equally smooth as information technology does on competitors like the Lenovo ThinkCentre X1 or the Lenovo B50, our current tiptop choice for midrange all-in-ones. (Both of those also have Full Hard disk displays.) The pixels actually stand out when viewing wide swaths of color that are supposed to be smooth, like the solid blueish window when you first launch the Postal service app. It's a usable display for spider web surfing and working on part documents, simply a deal-breaker if you've approaching $i,200 for a PC for photograph or video piece of work. At this price point, you should look a clear display with no blockiness.

The built-in speakers lack meaningful bass. When I turned upwardly the volume to maximum, the mid-low notes a few seconds into one of our test tracks, "Silent Shout" by The Knife, sounded distorted. I'd recommend using headphones for any critical listening. There is a total HD webcam centered to a higher place the screen, but it doesn't have a privacy shutter similar the one on the Dell Optiplex 7450 or the Acer Veriton Z4820G-I5650TZ.

Inputs and Outputs

The system comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse, both of which use a USB RF adapter rather than Bluetooth. RF adapters are still mutual on Windows all-in-i desktops because they are cheap, and they give PC makers some flexibility when creating retail configrations. The mouse is a standard optical pointer; the mushy keyboard reminds us of a deal-basement model.

The left side of the display has a recessed bank of I/O ports, including a headset jack, an SD card reader, two USB three.0 ports, and a button to switch screen inputs. Around back, you'll find an Ethernet port, an HDMI-in jack, an HDMI-out jack, a USB two.0 port (for the aforementioned RF adapter), and ii more USB iii.0 ports (for a total of four). Notably absent-minded are USB-C or Thunderbolt three ports, which would come up in handy with the many new hard drives and SSDs using this faster, more modern connectivity standard. The HDMI-in jack is handy because you tin keep to utilise the display after the internal components go obsolete. Wireless connections include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.

Spacious (but Slow) Storage

The Aspire Z3 comes with Windows 10, 16GB of RAM, a 2-terabyte five,400rpm SATA hard drive, and an 8X DVD-writing optical drive (a surprise for a 2022 system, but there are still many folks who have large DVD motion-picture show collections). That's more than plenty memory for extreme multitasking, including, say, a dozen browser tabs and a photo editor open, while making a Skype video phone call. Other systems in this price range, like the Apple iMac and Lenovo ThinkCentre X1, come up with just 8GB.

The 2TB hard drive is the real head scratcher. While capacious, the difficult drive is tiresome, especially compared with the speedy SSDs found in desktops similar the ThinkCentre X1. Well-nigh PCs that employ an SSD kicking up in near five to 10 seconds, but in testing, the Aspire Z3 took 45 seconds—most an eternity by comparing. Programs and files besides took longer to open than we've go used to. Acer likely took this path to go along costs down, merely other AIOs like the HP Green-eyed All-in-One (27-b010) offer the best of both worlds, with a 128GB boot SSD for speed combined with a 1TB information bulldoze for extra storage space. And there'southward no SSD upgrade available, since this is a pre-configured retail PC. Acer backs the system with a ane-year standard warranty.

Speedy Multimedia Performance

Equipped with an Intel Core i7-7700T processor and a discrete Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU, the Aspire Z3 placed kickoff amongst competitors on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test with a score of 3,341 points. The HP Green-eyed All-in-One and Acer Veriton Z4820G were but behind, with the Dell Optiplex 7450 and Lenovo ThinkCentre X1 a lilliputian further back. The simply other benchmark win for the Aspire Z3 was the CineBench test (730 points), on the strength of its quad-cadre processor. On the other multimedia tests, Handbrake (1:08) and Photoshop (3:03), the Aspire Z3 placed 2d, backside the Optiplex 7450. (Scores under 1 minute for Handbrake and under 3 minutes for Photoshop are considered splendid.)

Run into How We Examination Desktops

When it comes to 3D gaming, the Aspire Z3 proved to be playable, with boilerplate scores at medium quality settings of 31 frames per 2d (fps) in our Heaven test, and 36fps on the Valley test. Like on other all-in-one systems, though, the frame rates dropped to the single digits at Ultra quality settings at Full HD resolution. 30fps is the bare minimum for smoothen gameplay, but eight to 9fps will seem like a slideshow. The system's other 3D benchmark exam scores were expert compared with other AIOs nosotros've tested, particularly those with integrated graphics, similar the Acer Veriton Z4820G and the Lenovo ThinkCentre X1. You'll be able to play the occasional game like Minecraft in a small window, or diddled up to full screen from 1,366-by-768 resolution.

Powerful, but With Fatal Flaws

The Acer Aspire Z3 (AZ3-715-UR15) is a powerful all-in-one desktop PC, and has plenty of memory and computing ability for, say, mathematical or scientific tasks. It has more than a few flaws, however, including an crumbling design, lack of USB-C ports, and a ho-hum hard drive. The system's grainy screen is maybe its nearly obvious detriment. If you need a higher-quality screen for photos or video, we'd recommend the Lenovo ThinkCentre X1, which as well costs $130 less. The 21.5-inch Apple iMac or the HP Green-eyed All-in-One are other solid AIO alternatives, if you have a more than flexible budget.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/desktops/15737/acer-aspire-z3-az3-715-ur15

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