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Last year saw a surge in the release of mini PCs from various manufacturers, capturing the attention of users. Many users discovered that mini PCs, which were previously synonymous with soft routing, actually possess impressive office performance. Mini PCs inherently offer a compact size and high hardware expandability, making them very friendly for most light office users. However, many users are skeptical about the mini PC products from lesser-known brands on the market. Recently, the veteran PC manufacturer Acer launched a very distinctive model—the Acer Aspire Go mini PC, providing users with a new choice. Let’s take a look at whether this mini PC product is truly user-friendly and what usage scenarios it can meet.
Acer Aspire Go Mini PC Core Configuration>>
■ Processor: Intel Core i5-13500H
■ Graphics: Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics
■ Memory: 2×8GB DDR4 3200MHz
■ Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe4.0 SSD
■ Front Ports: Full-featured USB-C, 2×USB 3.2 Gen2, 3.5mm audio combo jack
■ Rear Ports: DP power connector, 2×USB 2.0, RJ45 Ethernet port, 2×HDMI, full-featured USB-C
■ Dimensions: 120mm×120mm×37mm
■ Service: 3-year limited warranty, 1-year on-site service
Compact and Agile Design Highlights Business Qualities
The Acer Aspire Go adopts Acer’s classic PC-style design, featuring a brushed metal top cover, a light gray body, and an electroplated CD pattern power button. These simple elements outline a strong minimalist attribute for this model, making it suitable for both business and home use. The circular chamfer design covering almost all positions of the body gives the Acer Aspire Go an excellent grip, combined with the black interface panel on the front, leaving a deep impression of its appearance.
What’s even more surprising is that the Acer Aspire Go mini PC has a volume of only 0.5L, with a top cover size of 12cm×12cm and a thickness of just 3.5cm, placing it in the leading tier of thin and light designs among mini PCs. When placed on a desk, the Acer Aspire Go appears compact and exquisite, greatly freeing up desk space for users. The bottom of the Acer Aspire Go mini PC is pre-set with two wall mount holes, and its weight of 0.49kg allows it to be easily mounted on various surfaces such as monitors, walls, or office desk partitions. This way, it saves a significant amount of space compared to traditional PCs, making the office space look clean and aesthetically pleasing.
Rich Ports Easily Meet All Office Needs
Although the host has a capacity of only 0.5L, the Acer Aspire Go mini PC is equipped with a rich array of ports. As a model primarily aimed at business use, one of its major highlights is the clear functional partitioning of the front and rear ports. The front is equipped with a full-featured USB-C port (supporting 15W fast charging output), 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack, making it convenient to plug and unplug ports whether placed flat or mounted. The rear is reserved for ports that are unlikely to be unplugged for a long time, featuring a variety of port types from left to right: DP power socket, 2 USB 2.0 ports, an RJ45 Ethernet port, 2 HDMI ports, and a full-featured USB-C port (supporting 15W output).
From this, it can be seen that the port settings of the Acer Aspire Go mini PC are quite thoughtful. With up to 4 USB-A ports, it can connect devices such as a mouse, keyboard, printer, and tax control card simultaneously. If 4 ports are still not enough, the full-featured USB-C can be used for port expansion. If you have an obsession with cable management, there’s no need to worry, as the compact size and lightweight nature of the Acer Aspire Go allow it to easily achieve hidden wiring using the bottom of the desktop or the back of the monitor. Therefore, when we compare it to the size of a 330ml soda can, the compactness of the Acer Aspire Go mini PC becomes even more evident.
The Acer Aspire Go also has another major highlight in its ports. With 2×HDMI+2×USB-C, this model can support up to 4 external displays. The maximum video output resolution of 4K allows this model to transform into a multi-screen office tool. The only downside is that, possibly due to its design as a standard office model, the Acer Aspire Go is only equipped with one network port. This may deprive users who enjoy soft routing of some fun.
Mixed Architecture + High-performance Integrated Graphics for Smooth Usage
The Acer Aspire Go mini PC, as a customizable model for both business and home use, has a rich configuration combination. The Acer Aspire Go offers four processor models: N100, N305, 1240P, and 13500H.
The unit we have is the most powerful i5-13500H version, equipped with the 13th generation Core i5-13500H standard pressure processor, 2×8GB DDR4 dual-channel memory, and a 512GB full-size SSD. The i5-13500H adopts the advanced Intel 7 process technology and currently boasts a very powerful performance with a hybrid architecture. This processor integrates 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. Although it is a mobile processor, its performance is impressive, totaling 12 cores and 16 threads, with an 18MB L3 cache and a maximum turbo frequency of 4.7GHz. Compared to mini PCs using N-series and P-series processors, this model’s advantage in core configuration is manifested in the high main frequency and strong multi-core capability brought by the hybrid architecture. Coupled with the 80EU Xe integrated graphics that comes with the 13500H, this high-performance version of the Acer Aspire Go handles everyday 1080p gaming, high-performance office tasks, and video editing with ease. To accommodate this relatively high-performance mobile processor in a mini PC, Acer has incorporated an integrated turbo fan and a heat pipe + fin combination inside the chassis. The design with dual air vents on the left and right ensures very high cooling efficiency for the entire machine.
Additionally, the Acer Aspire Go has sufficient expandability in memory and storage space. Upon disassembly, it can be seen that the Acer Aspire Go has two memory slots and a full-size 2280 M.2 interface. It supports up to 2×32GB DDR4 3200MHz dual-channel memory. The storage is officially claimed to support a maximum capacity of 1TB. The 2280 M.2 hard drive interface allows users to conveniently upgrade to higher capacity SSDs in the future. The benchmark read and write performance of the built-in SSD meets basic office performance requirements, with a maximum sequential read speed of 563MB/s and a maximum sequential write speed of 522MB/s.
Benchmark Testing Shows Quiet and Efficient Performance
As a mini PC emphasizing use in business office scenarios, the Acer Aspire Go mini PC first considers the comfort needs of business office use. Therefore, the configured Core i5 13500H standard pressure processor is conservatively set in terms of power consumption to meet most low-power, stable heat dissipation usage scenarios. The performance of this processor in practical tests easily handles office software like Office and Photoshop.
CPU-Z single-core score is 675.4, multi-core score is 5251.4. Cinebench R23 single-core score is 1766pts, multi-core score is 8715pts. 3Dmark CPU Profile maximum thread score is 4427. From the comprehensive results of these three tests, this model exhibits excellent single-core performance, and its multi-core performance is also quite competitive among 20W models. We conducted graphical benchmark performance testing on the Xe integrated graphics using 3Dmark. The 3Dmark TimeSpy graphics score is 1270, 3Dmark FireStrike graphics score is 4322, and 3Dmark WildLife graphics score is 10361. The test scores also indicate that this model will perform well in 1080p gaming and video editing.
Since this model emphasizes efficiency and quietness, we are also very concerned about its control over power consumption, energy efficiency, and heat dissipation. The actual test results are equally satisfying. We conducted a half-hour single-test on the Acer Aspire Go using AIDA 64. The peak power release of the CPU is about 25W, stabilizing at around 18.5W after maintaining 20W power consumption for 2 minutes. At this point, the processor core temperature is 84℃.
During the high-load testing process, the Acer Aspire Go mini PC still maintained a sufficiently quiet operating state, with the surface noise level of the device being only 54.4dB (due to testing environment limitations, the noise value was obtained with a decibel meter pressed against the device, and in a real environment, the human ear can hardly perceive the noise from the device’s fan). After half an hour of testing, the average surface temperature of the Acer Aspire Go was around 45℃, with the maximum surface temperature being 50.8℃ near the exhaust vent.
Real-world Scenario Testing: Efficient Office Use + Smooth Entertainment Experience
As a model emphasizing quiet office use, we initially had low expectations for its performance in actual usage scenarios. However, after a series of practical application tests, we found that the actual performance of the Acer Aspire Go far exceeded our expectations! Its PCMark 10 modern office performance final score was 5953. This score is quite close to mainstream thin and light laptops that also emphasize low power consumption (the PCM10 modern office score for Core i7 1360P is approximately in the range of 6100~6250). The Procyon office benchmark test score was 6535. It is worth mentioning that from the office benchmark tests, the Acer Aspire Go’s application launch response speed is very fast. Opening 8 100MB Word files with animations and a large 160MB PPT file simultaneously operates very quickly and smoothly on this model.
In addition to efficiently meeting daily office needs, thanks to the 13500H + Xe integrated graphics, we can also achieve smooth online gaming and light editing on the Acer Aspire Go. After enabling the low-spec model adaptation mode, the Acer Aspire Go maintains a relatively high frame rate performance at 1080P maximum quality in League of Legends, with frame rates around 210fps in the fountain waiting area, and maintaining over 170fps during battles (the frame rate loss is significant when using OBS for recording, only for demonstration of smoothness). The gaming performance is commendable.
In the editing software, we edited 150Mbps high-bitrate 4K video materials, and this machine experienced no stuttering. Generating a 2-minute 1080p video from 4K material took only 36 seconds, demonstrating very high editing efficiency. Even without the NPU, the 13500H’s experience of AI image processing features allows us to sense the high efficiency of this model. The AI portrait extraction for this 2-minute host video took only 1 minute and 2 seconds.
Conclusion: An Excellent Choice for Efficient Office Work
Although most players currently interested in mini PCs are attracted by their compact appearance, wanting to save desk space through their ultra-small size, mini PCs obviously have greater potential in the commercial market. Based on this review, the Acer Aspire Go mini PC, equipped with the 13500H processor, fully meets the current mainstream light office and light entertainment needs. Moreover, a simple calculation shows that purchasing the Acer Aspire Go mini PC along with a keyboard, mouse, and ordinary office monitor is more cost-effective than buying a similarly performing thin and light laptop alone, and the office experience is also more comfortable. Its compact size allows it to perform well in various practical scenarios such as office desks, monitor mounts, conference room TV wall mounts, monitoring screen walls, and cabinets. Notably, Acer provides a 3-year limited warranty and 1-year on-site service for this model, along with dual online and offline support, ensuring a more stable and worry-free user experience.
Editor: Xiao Ziyang
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