Review: Acer Veriton S461 A Performance/Price Winner

The Test Center has taken a good look at the S461: It turns out to be one of the best-performing dual-core PCs we've seen this year. What surprised us was the nice performance the system showed us even though it came to our lab configured with 2 GB of RAM.

The S461 was built with an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3GHz, 2 GB of RAM (which can be expanded to 8 GB), an integrated Intel Q35 Express chipset with Intel ICH9DO on-board video, graphics and audio and Windows Vista Business. Acer designed the S461 so that it's thinner than most towers, although not as small as its ultrasmall desktop; its form factor is 16 x 13 x 4 inches.

We ran the Test Center's standard tests. On Primate Labs' Geekbench benchmarking software, the S461 turned in a score of 3,299—one of the highest marks we've seen this year on a dual-core system. Because of that performance, we took another step and ran Passmark Software's PerformanceTest tool suite to get a better read on its 3-D and 2-D performance. While it fell short of scores for other dual-core, Intel-based systems on those measurements, we really can't hold it against the S461 because of its positioning, price and other attributes that have been nicely integrated into the system.

Measuring energy efficiency, the system drew 67 watts of power when idling in "balanced" power mode; when power-saving features were turned on, that fell to about 55 watts (although it also dropped performance measured by Geekbench by about one-third.) While that's not the most efficient PC rating we've seen this year, power-saving mode would likely provide significant power savings over systems that are three years old or older. So while it doesn't score extra points on an efficiency front, we're not taking anything away from it because of power consumption, either. Thermal management was fine, as well, and the system threw 82 degrees of heat from its vent, about 7 degrees more than room temperature, after several hours of use.

But from a practical, office-productivity standpoint, the S461's performance was really good. Audio was good—not too much base or treble. Making a phone call via Skype, via integrated microphone on a third-party LCD, the other party could hear crystal-clear sound and we could hear crystal-clear sound from that end.

Acer does get points taken off for bloatware, which we've noticed on most of the company's PCs and notebooks this year. The system came to us preloaded with an Acer Store icon and eSobi v2, Yahoo toolbar integrated into Internet Explorer and McAfee security software. A business PC shouldn't need any of those unless a VAR and customer specifically ask for them.

Overall, though, the pluses on the Veriton S461 greatly outweigh the minuses. Acer is showing a nicely re-energized desktop lineup over the past several months and we hope it continues.