Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: A competent all-rounder at a sensible price

The Acer Aspire C27-1800 is the latest in the brand’s line of 27-inch all-in-one PCs, targeting cost-conscious home and home office users looking for a simple desktop system for work and entertainment. It has no pretensions of being an iMac rival, with its no-nonsense design and basic spec. However, it’s a decent choice for anyone who wants the comfort and ergonomics of a desktop PC, in a compact and hassle-free form factor.

Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: What you need to know

This particular all-in-one range covers two screen sizes and three specifications, with the C27 models packing in a 27in 1080p screen and the C24 range dropping down to 23.8in. You can pick between Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 units, each running 13th-generation Intel mobile CPUs, and while the base models have 512GB SSDs and 8GB of RAM, higher-end versions are available with 1TB/16GB specs.

Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Price and competition

Prices start at under £500 for the basic Core i3 C24-1800, rising to over £1,000 for the Core i7 variants. In between you’ll find the version we’re testing here: the C27-1800 with the Intel Core i5-1335U with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, yours for £749 at the time of writing.

At this price point, the C27-1800 is close to half the price of the entry-level 24in iMac, which comes with M3 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD and sells for a princely £1,399. Needless to say, the iMac offers a superior screen and significantly stronger performance. The real competition lies in all-in-ones from HP, Dell and Lenovo, specifically the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 3, which can be found with a faster Core i5-13420H for around the same money, or the current Dell Inspiron 27 all-in-one, which offers the same CPU and 16GB of RAM for slightly less.

Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Design and key features

As with many current Windows all-in-ones, the Aspire C27-1800 effectively gives you the innards of a laptop packed into the rear of an LCD monitor, with all the connectivity placed out of the way at the rear. It’s a well-designed and fairly stylish unit, with thin black bezels on either side and slim black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. It sits on a simple stand, with no horizontal rotation but 30-degrees of tilt. At 612mm wide and 446mm tall, it’s no bigger than it needs to be given the screen size, and it’s only 37.3mm deep on its stand.
The connectivity is relatively basic, with one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C. Bear in mind that the first will instantly be occupied by the wireless dongle for the bundled keyboard and mouse. However, you do get an RJ-45 for Gigabit Ethernet and an HDMI out, along with Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity for wireless networking and additional peripherals.

In theory, both the RAM and the SSD are upgradable, with the 8GB of DDR4 currently fitted occupying just one of the two available DIMM slots. However, you’ll need to be handy with a screwdriver and a pry-tool to get to them or the single M.2 slot, with no easy access panel to be found.

Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Peripherals

The bundled keyboard and mouse are both perfectly usable, but don’t exactly help create a premium experience. The keyboard is a slimline effort with a numeric pad and chiclet keys, but it feels lightweight and plastic-heavy, though the action is consistent and you get 2mm or so of travel. The row of Function keys at the top is tiny, and the Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys on the left are undersized.
Meanwhile, the mouse – a compact ergonomic model with an ambidextrous design – will please those with smaller hands more than those with larger mitts. It looks good and does the basics, but the plastics feel cheap and the buttons have an uninspiring, hollow click. You’re getting functional peripherals, but you might want to swap them out if you’re spending hours at this PC.

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Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Display and speakers

The Acer’s 27in, 1080p screen has its good and bad points, so let’s get the negatives out of the way first. A size of 27in is about as far as you can go with a 1080p resolution, and unless you’re sitting a few feet away from the display, you’ll see the pixel structure and notice that the image isn’t as crisp or as detailed as you may be used to on a laptop or smartphone screen. The brightness levels aren’t stellar, peaking at 288cd/m2, while contrast is merely okay, at 1,047.9:1. Steer clear of bright windows and you’ll find it more than workable, and it’s pretty good for watching Netflix or YouTube when you need some downtime. But if you’re looking for a sharper, brighter image, you’re going to have to spend a little more.
On the plus side, colour reproduction is better than you might expect, with the screen covering 98.8% of the sRGB colour gamut and 78% of DCI-P3, while an average Delta-E of just 1.86 shows that colour accuracy is also fairly good. And though nobody could describe the built-in sound as Hi-Fi, it’s adequate for background music or casual viewing, with some bass to be found, good levels of clarity and only a hint of tinny treble creeping in.

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Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Performance

The Aspire C27-1800 delivers mid-range performance from a mid-range spec. It’s close to the performance of the 2021 Apple iMac 24in in our 4K media benchmarks, but a long way behind the 2023 version, the current Mac Mini, and the Huawei MateStation X with its Ryzen 7 5800H. The same goes for its results in the Geekbench 5 and Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core benchmarks. 

Of course, that’s to be expected given the difference in spec and price, and when you compare it to mid-range laptops such as the Acer Aspire 7 or the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7620 , the performance is a little more appealing. If you’re planning to run high-end 3D rendering or video-editing apps, this isn’t the machine you’re looking for; but for everyday browsing, image-editing and productivity work, it will be fast enough. 

Just don’t get too excited about its gaming potential. While it will comfortably hit 60fps in the undemanding GFXBench Car Chase test, modern games will prove too much for the Core i5-1335U’s integrated Iris Xe GPU – unless you drop the resolution to 720p and any detail settings down to low. Even then, you’ll see this machine struggle with more recent titles. If gaming is your thing, you’ll either need to find the budget for an all-in-one with a dedicated GPU or more capable AMD APU, or you’ll need the network bandwidth for cloud gaming.

Acer Aspire C27-1800 review: Verdict

The C27-1800 is the epitome of a solid AIO for cost-conscious buyers, delivering fast-enough performance in a simple monitor-like design with a decent screen and a smidgeon of style. This is a competitive market, with other brands offering similar specs at similar prices; but Acer’s new AIO is a good all-rounder that doesn’t fall down in any one area, and it’s hard to fault on value, too.