Acer Revo RL100-UR20P

The Acer Revo RL100-UR20P ($569.99 list) melds the world of the home theater within a slim nettop PC, resulting in a Blu-ray playing, Internet browsing, multimedia consumption machine. If you're looking for an innovative PC, the RL100-UR20P has some of the neatest features and the best bang-for-the-buck for a nettop anywhere. It has all you need for IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) and Blu-ray enjoyment on a big screen for a decent price, and therefore it's our new Editor's Choice for nettop PCs.

Design and Features
The RL100-UR20P looks like a kick back to the slim Sony PlayStation 2. It can be positioned vertically or horizontally, just like the PS2, but the chassis has a couple of interesting embellishments that turn out to be rather revolutionary. The RL100-UR20P comes with a wireless controller that acts as a touchpad/keyboard combination?eliminating the need to go out and buy something like the Logitech diNovo Mini to access your media and browse the web. It has a power/mode button on the top: one click and the surface becomes a responsive touchpad to control the cursor. Another click of the mode button and a backlit keyboard appears on the same surface.

The touchpad can handle two finger swipes and holding your finger on the pad will invoke right-click. The keys beep reassuringly when you type, but there's no haptic feedback like on other virtual keyboards (i.e. smartphones and tablets). The bottom of the controller has a volume control, handy for the system's TV-centric usage model. It's notable that the touch-sensitive remote replaces any sort of IR TV-style remote control: you simply don't need it unless you're a FF/REW key abuser. Since it's a small and flat touchpad/keyboard, you may want to pick up a physical one if you do a lot of typing.

The system's other media features include a Blu-ray player/DVD combo drive for movie playback, home theater-specific ports like HDMI and S/PDIF, a 750GB drive, and a low-powered AMD Athlon II K325 processor, which doesn't require a loud cooling fan to keep from overheating. The RL100-UR20P comes with Acer's Clear.fi ecosystem, which adds an easier to use layer on top of DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance). With Clear.fi, you can share pictures, videos, and music among connected Acer laptops, desktops, and tablets like the Acer Iconia Tab A100 (Wi-Fi). It's easier to setup than just plain DLNA, but it's still not quite as easy to use as Apple's Bonjour sharing found in iTunes and on the Apple TV. The system's included 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi or Ethernet port handles the networking.

The system comes with three USB 2.0 ports (a fair amount considering it comes with a wireless keyboard/touchpad), a media card reader, and a bunch of pre-loaded software. Some of the software makes sense, like Netflix for viewing online movies and TV shows. Some pre-loaded software is a little more questionable: Times Reader (NY Times), Nook, Skype, and eBay make their presence known on the desktop, cluttering it with icons. I understand that product placement helps lower the price of PCs, but there are simply too many preloaded programs and icons everywhere. Topping off the pre-installed software is a short 60-day trial subscription to McAfee Internet Security, which needs to be a few months longer.

Performance
The RL100-UR20P's AMD Athlon II K325 runs at a relatively slow 1.3GHz, but the K325 is dual-core, helping the system's multimedia prowess a bit. Dual-core plus the system's Nvidia ION graphics help it display 1080p online videos and Blu-ray movies smoothly, showing that a nettop may be enough if all you're looking for is media consumption. However, it's slower on the uptake when it comes to creating media: 5 minutes 43 seconds for it to encode a video on Handbrake and 13:19 to run through the Photoshop CS5 image manipulation test--leisurely scores at best. For comparison, our last nettop Editors' Choice, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 ($399 direct, 4 stars) took a glacial 23:38 for the CS5 test. The Zotac Zbox AD03BR-PLUS-U ($519.99 list, 3.5 stars) also runs behind the Acer at "almost 15 minutes" for CS5. The larger HP Pavilion Slimline s5-1020 ($429.99 list, 3.5 stars) has a faster Intel Pentium dual-core processor, yielding 2:05 at Handbrake and 4:29 at CS5. However, the s5-1020 lacks Blu-ray and many of the other features that make the Revo RL100 so compelling for a media hound.

The HP Slimline s5-1020 is a bit less expensive and more powerful than the RL100-UR20P to be sure, but the s5-1020 is more or less a plain-Jane desktop PC in a small box (which is a lot chunkier than the Revo). The RL100-UR20P outshines the HP with its innovative wireless controller, HDMI port, and Blu-ray drive. The Zotac Zbox is as similar as can be to the Revo, with its compact size, low power processor, and Blu-ray drive. However the Zbox is a more of a DIY project: the system lacks an operating system (figure on $99 extra for Windows 7 Home Premium), is almost as expensive, is slower, has a much smaller hard drive, less system memory, and doesn't have the innovative remote.

The Revo RL100-UR20P simply out-features and out-performs the Q150 in all areas but price, and the extra dollars are worth it for one of the better home theater PCs out there. So, if you want to connect an inexpensive PC to a HDTV, the Acer Revo RL100-UR20p is one of the best choices out there, particularly if you're looking for the easiest way to view IPTV and Blu-ray movies on a big screen. It's for these reasons that the RL100-UR20P is our newest Editors' Choice for nettop PCs.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Acer Revo RL100-UR20P with several other desktops side by side.

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