Acer Aspire Z5763 review

All-in-ones have been growing in number over the last year, but we’ve been surprised by how few of them go the whole hog when it comes to entertainment. The speakers tend to vary wildly in power and quality, and while many manufacturers have opted for touchscreens we’ve often wondered why they don’t instead go for a TV tuner.

Acer’s Aspire Z5763 does just that, and goes one better by also including a thick speaker bar beneath the 23in screen, a Blu-ray drive – and one even less common trick. The Full HD panel refreshes at 120Hz, and Acer has bundled a pair of Nvidia 3D Vision glasses and integrated an IR-emitter into the PC’s chassis. That makes the Z5763 a 3D-gaming and Blu-ray-playing entertainment all-in-one, which isn’t bad for a price well under a grand.

We should confirm right up front that it’s not exactly an attractive, sleek, consumer system. A black bezel above the silver speaker bar gives it a boxy, almost fat look, which didn’t meet with universal approval in the PC Pro Labs. But the quality of the screen should immediately put any doubts out of your mind.

In a break from current trends it isn’t glossy, presumably to limit reflections that would distract from the 3D effect. That would be enough to please many people, but the screen is also tremendously colour-accurate: in our colorimeter tests we measured an average Delta E of just 2.2 – as good as any consumer TFT – along with a high 400cd/m² brightness and 930:1 contrast ratio. The only minor technical blip was revealed in the blues, but throughout our time with the Z5673 we had no cause for complaint at all. It’s an excellent screen.

3D Vision is by now really hitting its stride, too, with the latest games displaying few of the HUD and crosshair issues that plagued early adopters. Setup took all of thirty seconds via a wizard on the desktop, and with an all-in-one like this you can easily sit at a desk with the glasses charging over USB while you play.