Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 Desktop Review

7.5Expert Score
Awesome

The Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 Desktop is a great value desktop, offering decent design, plenty of ports (USB-C), great performance at a reasonable price. While it doesn’t come with standout features, it certainly avoids any obvious errors.

Positive
  • Top value we’ve tested in under $500 desktops
  • Simple compact design
  • Decent set of ports including USB-C, SD card slot
  • Optical drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth included
Negatives
  • Slightly higher priced than competition
  • Fairly tight interior

The Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 Desktop ticks all the right boxes required for a great value budget desktop. It sports a no-frills design, plenty of ports including a peppy USB Type-C. For the most part, this PC has everything a budget user would require, a perfect balance of price, build, and performance competing with a range of other remarkable desktops from HP and Lenovo.

Our biggest gripe with this system is its pricing. Well, if you look around carefully, Acer does have a few other desktops in its lineup that are in direct competition to our unit especially in terms of price. The Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 is a good example. It combines price, build quality, and performance as well – but costs less. It packs a mean set of features that beat our review unit fair and square and for that reason remains our Editor’s Choice award for best budget desktop.

Nonetheless, the Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 is still a sound buy. Finding the best value requires a bit of hunting, plus attention to nuance. The Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 takes all the guesswork from this decision. It works with an Intel Core i5-9400 6-Core Processor, 8GB DDR4 memory, integrated graphics.

A No-Fuss Design – Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 Review

From a single glance, you can tell this desktop is as basic as it gets, and for its category and price, that’s perfectly fine. From its boxy compact size, there’s little about this desktop that screams “powerhouse”. In fact, other than the logo on the front panel, there is nothing fancy about it. This look is unoffensive and unless black clashes with your décor, it should blend right in with your home or work office desk just right.

Desktop with simple design

Speaking of desk space, the Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 won’t take up much of your disk space either. At 13.78 x 6.42 x 13.39 inches, this desktop is compact and just the right size. You can fit your desktop right next to your monitor on an evenly sized desk, or even on the floor without utilizing much real estate. Remember this is a daily-use desktop and as such, is filled with basic components. For the most part, you will not need to upgrade it as it wasn’t designed to accommodate extra or larger components for that matter.

The interior is just as simple as the rest of the system. To access it, you’ll need to remove two screws on the left panel of the chassis. Inside, you’ll notice the motherboard running across the whole real estate of the right panel and a metal plate housing blocking one-third of the view. Behind that is the housing for the DVD drive, and beneath that (on the motherboard) is the 512GB M.2 SSD. The CPU air cooler is clearly visible at first site and so is the power supply.

The power supply is contained in the top left corner, a 250-watt unit. This will limit your upgrade options for a graphics card, and it isn’t swappable with a standard aftermarket ATX supply due to non-standard power connectors at the board end and a narrower body. Basically, this PC is designed to be a plug-and-play system, not a robust upgradeable one.

Ports

We loved the port system because it contains a USB Type-C on the front panel. USB Type-C isn’t nearly the standard among peripherals, but it’s slowly getting there especially with budget systems, so it’s nice to have faster transfer speeds on this budget PC.

The Optical drive at the front panel

Other ports right at the front include a USB 3.2 port and headphone and mic jacks. At the back, there is extra USB 3.2 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, two HDMI connections, a VGA port, and a Gigabit Ethernet jack. Wireless connectivity comes via dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

Acer also includes a basic wired keyboard and mouse, which like the theme of the PC are basic, but get the job done.

Performance – Powerhouse for Office-centric Tasks

Under the hood hides a 9th Generation Intel Core i5-9400 6-Core processor, 8GB of memory, and 512GB SSD storage. While this feature list stacks up well with competition, its direct competition the Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 has an upper hand thanks to its processor. The Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 packs a superior 10th Generation Intel Core i5-10400 6-Core Processor which considerably improves its performance a few folds over our review unit, and the PC is priced cheaper.

Budget desktop with great features and performance

Even so, our unit’s 9th Generation Intel Core i5-9400 is a brilliant processor that excels in overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. As a result, this PC is best suited for daily home and office multitasking.

 The 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory is also a plus too. If you need to work on multiple spreadsheets while a few other applications and multiple browser tabs are open, this desktop can handle it. With 512GB SSD storage, you should be able to store most of your data files, videos, and gallery. However, I prefer using Solid-state drive PCs for software and application. The Acer Aspire boots up in seconds because of this which is much better than traditional HDD desktops that take a few minutes on the same. Check out our new article on best Acer desktops for home use where we’ve listed some of Acer’s finest PCs.

Gaming Performance

As far as gaming goes, I wouldn’t say there is anything worth writing home about. The Aspire comes with an integrated graphics card which while muscled up for hardcore daily work, is nowhere capable of higher-level gaming. If you don’t mind casual gaming, you’ll find the Acer Aspire TC-866 can handle a few games here and there, but it still is a far cry from what a gaming PC with a discrete video card could deliver. We’ve summarized some the best Acer gaming desktops for you. Check the full article

Conclusion – A Top Budget Desktop, But There’s An Alternative

While the Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 doesn’t receive our Editor’s Choice award,  it comes from a very strong starting point. This unit has a sound combination of features and components and offers great performance which is really remarkable for its category. You will love the simple design, plenty of ports including USB Type-C ad peppy performance. So, is it great value…sure. Do we recommend it, absolutely. You don’t have to buy an expensive PC to handle daily home and office chores, the Acer Aspire TC-866-UR11 is full-well capable of handling that.

However, on a fair scale of value for money, the Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 trumps right out of the box. This Intel-based system costs around $90 less but features a higher quality 10th Gen Intel processor and almost double the memory available (12GB). At the end of the day, the Acer Aspire TC-1660-UA92 Desktop outshines our review unit and clinches the Editor’s Choice award for best value budget desktop. Check it out on Amazon.

Author

  • Victor is a tech writer and blogger for GetThatPC. A writer and SEO consultant of popular tech sites such as Computer Shopper. He loves sharing his thoughts with the world through his blogs and it has always been his dream to write in print, too. When he is not busy blogging, he takes time out to enjoy the company of friends or play video games on PC. As a hardware analyst, Victor tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at GetThatPC. He previously covered the consumer tech beat at Examiner.com and has done consulting work for some of the biggest names in the industry. Victor R was recognized by TopSEOs as one of the Top 30 People in Digital Marketing, 2017.

Victor R

Victor R

Victor is a tech writer and blogger for GetThatPC. A writer and SEO consultant of popular tech sites such as Computer Shopper. He loves sharing his thoughts with the world through his blogs and it has always been his dream to write in print, too. When he is not busy blogging, he takes time out to enjoy the company of friends or play video games on PC. As a hardware analyst, Victor tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at GetThatPC. He previously covered the consumer tech beat at Examiner.com and has done consulting work for some of the biggest names in the industry. Victor R was recognized by TopSEOs as one of the Top 30 People in Digital Marketing, 2017.

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