TechSmart 121, October 2013 TechSmart 123, December 2013 | Page 22
REVIEW
ACER
Aspire 5600 U
There is much to be said for the benefits of All in
One PCs, but did Acer’s Aspire U inspire us
and should you aspire to own it?
T
o start with, the Aspire U is certainly a modern and dare we say,
exceedingly attractive All in One (AIO) PC. Its equal measures
of transparent glass and glossy black aesthetic looked like it
was straight from the set of Minority Report, and looks like PCs in the
21st century ought to. To really fulfil your Minority Report aspirations,
you can try your hand at Acer’s PointGrab Gesture control, which
enables you to control the cursor and type with gestures. It worked
well enough in our tests although it took some getting used to.
Acer’s 5600 U looks like PCs in the 21st century
ought to.
Interestingly, our 15" notebook gobbled up more desk real estate
than the glossy and sharp 23" full HD screen and the included keyboard combined. The PC’s 1.3" frame also has a minimalistic feel to
it; although it offers up pretty much everything we wanted, including
an optical drive, three USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI in, an
Ethernet port and SD card slot.
Duty calls
Looks aren’t everything, and on this Windows 8 PC, performance was smooth across the board, which counted for a
great deal. Doing duty here is the ever reliable
Core i5 3230M processor, supported by a dollop of 4 GB of memory
in our review model, apparently accommodating up to 8 GB, and a
generous scoop of 1 TB of space for storage. Interestingly, the AIO
comes with a stronger than average graphics solution for AIO’s,
boasting the GeForce GT630 M graphics card. This appeared up to
some casual gaming (more so than Intel’s built-in HD graphics), with
the screen allowing photos, panoramas and video to look beautiful.
Touching tomorrow
If we had to find one fault with the device it would belong to the
onboard sound, which wasn’t great and thus would certainly need
to be supplemented. Nonetheless, for the most part, the 5600 U is
certainly one of the more alluring AIO’s we’ve seen to date. RRP:
R14 000 for the 23" and R23 000 for the 27" version. [RN]
BLACKBERRY
Z30
BlackBerry may be on the ropes but cannot be counted
out yet thanks to the release of its new Z30. Is the
biggest smartphone from Waterloo also its best?
T
he Z30 is an all-touch smartphone that boasts a 5" (720 x 1280;
294 ppi) AMOLED screen that matches screen sizes on rivals
like the Galaxy S4, but falls short of the ever more common
1080 x 1920 screen resolution and 400+ ppi tallies seen on displays
such as that of the Xperia Z1.
The power
Powering the Z30 is a 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon
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