Acer Veriton N282G review

Acer’s Veriton N282G mini PC has a dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 processor, 2GB of RAM and Nvidia Ion graphics. Its performance is much as you’d expect, but there are a few features that set this mini PC apart from its rivals.

Its design is fairly standard, although Acer has opted for a slightly diamond-shaped chassis instead of a generic rectangle. It’s small and slim, which means that there isn’t much room for ventilation, so the PC can become rather warm. It’s almost entirely silent, which is typical for a mini PC. A VESA mount, with which you can screw it to a monitor, is provided, as is a desk stand.

What’s interesting is that despite its relatively low price of just over £300, the PC comes with a full copy of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. This is particularly impressive because many similarly priced mini PCs come with no operating system at all. You don’t get operating system media with the N282G, but its 320GB laptop hard disk has a recovery partition and pressing a recessed button during boot time accesses it. This only works if you don’t reformat the hard disk to install a different operating system, though.

The N282G has five USB ports, which is more than most compact systems provide, although none of them support USB3. It also has a multiformat card reader that supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC, Memory Stick and xD cards, and that’s a wider range than you’ll find on most PCs. What’s particularly unusual is the serial port on the back of the system. It’ll be useless for most people, but some specialist hardware, including CNC mills and digital multimeters, still require an RS-232 connection, making this budget PC particularly interesting for some small business users. The rest of us can happily ignore the extra port. Also located on the rear of the PC are VGA and HDMI graphics ports, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port. The obligatory 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports can be found on the PC’s front panel.