Performance is a word that appears to have a different meaning depending on who you buy from. As you’d expect, it’s something many local PC makers offer in spades, while big brands often seem to have a different interpretation. However, if you need a desktop PC with the backing of a big brand and an onsite warranty, there are still plenty of alternatives to look at. The question usually comes down to how much performance and/or features you’re willing to compromise to get that extra support. To give you a better idea, we've reviewed six brand-name PCs under $2,000, which you can compare against the three sub-$2000 local builds we also tested.
Three of the systems here are all-in-one PCs, the stylish compact desktops that big brands are increasingly offering. These have had a tendency to be underpowered in the past but, thankfully, two of them here offer decent application speed. However, the one area the brand names are continuing to struggle with is PC gaming. At best, you’ll find little more than entry-level graphics cards, even in PCs selling for $2,000, so make sure you check the specs before you hand over your money. As we found out, however, not all companies are willing to tell you the exact details of what’s inside their systems.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
In the battle of the name brands, Acer came out on top with its Aspire M3970. It doesn’t have quite the same speed as the HP and although it costs $150 more, you get a decent list of extras, including a 24in widescreen monitor. The M3970 uses a 2.8GHz Core i5-2300 chip and 8GB of RAM.
The 2TB Western Digital hard drive was as generous as we saw and you also get a digital TV tuner and Wi-Fi. Toss in a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive and it’s a decent list of features.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
Apple wanted to send us the $1,949 27in iMac, but could only get us the smaller 21.5in model in time for our roundup. In terms of raw hardware, the only difference between the two is the LCD panel: the 27in model has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, while the 21.5in panel is 1,920 x 1,080. Otherwise, both have a Radeon HD 6770M graphics chip, 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. Up against the Dell and Lenovo all-in-ones, the iMac does pretty well on both performance and storage, although there’s only a standard DVD burner rather than Blu-ray.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
The Inspiron 620 was Dell’s conventional PC submission this month and in some ways, it’s passable value for $1,299, including Intel’s Core i5-2300 processor, 6GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, a 500GB hard drive and Blu-ray/DVD combo under the hood, with an 18.5in widescreen LCD panel for the display. That’s not going to worry local builders for value, but for a name brand at this price, we’ve seen worse.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
HP's Pavilion h8-1130a is the fastest name-brand PC we’ve ever tested in PC User, managing to top 100 on our tough UserBench Encode media encoding benchmark. However, to get that speed you have to spend $1,799 and that’s without a monitor. It’s built around Intel’s Core i7-2600 processor, 8GB of RAM and a Pegatron H67-chipset motherboard. Storage features include a 1TB Hitachi hard drive and HP-branded Blu-ray/DVD combo drive. Wireless networking is included, but no digital TV tuner.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
A business-focused all-in-one PC, the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z’s application speed puts it on top of the all-in-ones we’ve seen so far. Thanks to Intel’s 2.8GHz Core i7-2600S processor, it cranked our UserBench Encode test to just over 95, beating the Apple iMac and delivering the highest all-in-one score to date. Throwing in the Windows 7 Professional operating system also helps. It has a Radeon HD 6650A graphics chip, which has the capability of offering accelerated computing on supported applications.
By Darren Yates – February 1, 2012
Dell's Inspiron One 2320 was the third, but also the slowest, all-in-one PC we reviewed here, with a 2.5GHz Core i5-2400S processor. It’s basically half the speed of the Lenovo Edge 91Z, but is only $250 cheaper. It’s a mix of desktop and notebook tech with a 3.5in 500GB hard drive (our review unit came with a 1TB model) and Nvidia’s GeForce GT 525M graphics chip. Frankly, we don’t understand why vendors bother with some of these budget graphics chips as they’re just not fast enough to game with — DiRT 2 at 13.81fps at 1,024 x 768 pixels isn’t our idea of fun.
Six big-brand desktop PCs under $2000
