Acer Extensa M2610 review

Sound desktop performance at a bargain price

Next to the transforming flashiness of convertible tablets and the sheer portable power of ultrabooks, the plain black box that is the Acer Extensa M2610 desktop can't help but look a bit dull in comparison.

Which is fair enough, as the superior upgradability and relatively low prices of enterprise desktops mean they still can still find a place in the modern office, despite their lack of frills.

Acer has almost abandoned the very concept of frills for the Extensa M2610, focusing instead on creating a low-cost desktop machine for juggling basic everyday tasks.

Design
The Extensa M2610 measures 365x372x175mm, classifying it as a minitower. Despite this, it still feels quite roomy on the inside. Cables are fastened tidily to the sides, and the stock air-cooled CPU heatsink is decently low profile.

Not that there's an airflow to disrupt. There are no case-mounted intake or exhaust fans, but then we never found the system running hot enough to warrant them. Build quality as a whole is excellent, even with the basic chassis.

Everything has been fitted, slotted and screwed in with a reassuring firmness, which is especially important considering the top-mounted PSU configuration that leaves it suspended over the delicate motherboard.

Speaking of the motherboard, it's well equipped enough to enable several upgrade possibilities. A PCIe x16 slot allows for a dedicated graphics card, and there's space for an extra stick of RAM, in addition to two PCIe x1 slots and an older-style PCE slot.

Thankfully, the use of Intel chips also means that the heatsink is held in place with Intel's simple screw-in system, rather than AMD's awful, tedious clip-on design. This makes it a lot easier to remove or replace the cooler and the CPU itself, although be warned that simply opening the case is enough to void the warranty.

Back on the outside, there's a solid range of connectivity options. The front panel features two USB 2.0 ports and a DVD RW drive, while around the back there are four USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, a dual-link DVI-D socket, male and female VGA connectors and two PS/2 ports for an older mouse and keyboard. Headphones and microphones can be connected to a set of ports on the front and at the back.

The wealth of ports, sockets and connectors is one of the best reasons to opt for a desktop over a laptop, so it's great that the Extensa M2610 doesn't disappoint in this regard. It would have been even better if a couple of the USB ports used the speedier USB 3.0, though.

It's also worth noting that two of the USB 2.0 ports will be taken up by the bundled mouse and keyboard. These feel very cheap and plasticky, especially the keyboard with its mushy key action. They'll suffice for the kind of everyday work that the system itself is designed for, at the very least, but we'd recommend swapping them out for some more comfortable accessories.

Next: Operating system, software and security

Acer Extensa M2610 review

Sound desktop performance at a bargain price

Operating system and software
The Extensa M2610 comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Professional, available through downgrade rights from Windows 8.1 Pro. Units should arrive with a code that enables a free upgrade to Windows 8.1.

Normally we'd say to ditch the older OS and take the upgrade offer, since 8.1 Pro offers various handy features that Windows 7 does not: BitLocker encryption, a wider range of configuration and management options and synchronised Work Folders, to name a few.

However, in this case it's probably better to skip 8.1 and go straight to Windows 10 Pro instead. It's free for all devices running Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8/8.1 Pro, including the Extensa M2610, and adds even more new features, security updates and UI enhancements, making it a generally more desktop-friendly OS than 8.1 was.

In any case, we tested the Extensa M2610 as-is, including Windows 7 Pro. It's an operating system that's proved enduringly popular among home and business users, and we can see why.

It's still nimble and straightforward to navigate, and offers the same high degree of compatibility with widely used and obscure enterprise software as other recent Windows versions.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that a wealth of useful software comes preinstalled as well. Evernote is included, as is the norm for new Windows machines, and a 30-day trial of McAfee LiveSafe Internet Security (more on this later) has also been thrown in, but that's about it.

The positive side is that there's very little bloatware either. Acer can sometimes load its products, particularly laptops, with a daunting pile of unhelpful and uninteresting applications, but it has seemingly held back with the Extensa M2610, offering just a few redundant settings-management programs.

We say 'offering' because they aren't even mandatory. On the first startup, we were presented with a Software Assembler window that gave us the option to add these apps or leave them uninstalled. It's a surprisingly considerate touch, and other manufacturers should take note.

Security
Most firms will already have their own online security measures in place, so the bundled 30-day trial of McAfee LiveSafe Internet Security is not likely to be much of a draw.

Nonetheless, it's a well-rounded selection of firewalls and anti-malware tools that private users and certain smaller businesses will appreciate - while it lasts. Our main complaint is that, in typical McAfee fashion, it's annoyingly liberal with pop-up alerts under the default settings.

An optional Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 microprocessor is available on certain Extensa M2610 configurations. This chip creates and stores encryption keys that can help prevent unauthorised parties from modifying software and firmware.

Unfortunately, our test model did not include a TPM - a shame, as they offer an additional and relatively unobtrusive layer of authentication protection.

Next: Performance, storage and conclusions

Acer Extensa M2610 review

Sound desktop performance at a bargain price

Performance
Our test unit included a Haswell-generation Intel Core i3 4160 3.6GHz dual-core CPU, along with 4GB of RAM. There are slower Intel Pentium and faster Core i5 configurations available, making the i3 4160 the middling option, but this didn't stop our Extensa M2610 putting in some surprisingly strong benchmark performances.

It scored 227.2ms in Sunspider and 1,155.8ms in Kraken, lower scores being better in both. We haven't tested another desktop recently enough to compare, but the Extensa M2610 was much faster in both tests than ‘desktop replacement' laptops like the Asus ZenBook UX305 ultrabook and HP ProBook 455 Ubuntu, despite having a weaker CPU than the ProBook and half the RAM of both.

Acer said that this is a machine for everyday multitasking, so to make sure the benchmark scores were deserved we opened and edited multiple documents and presentations, browsed the web, played a video file and edited pictures in Gimp, all in quick succession and without closing any windows.

To the Extensa M2610's credit, it never stuttered or slowed down even when we were bombarding it with processes. That's an impressive feat for a rather basic budget PC.

Storage
There's only one storage option available - a 500GB hard drive - although this is actually is more like a 440GB hard drive split into two 220GB partitions.

We're not complaining too much, as that's still enough storage space for the kind of undemanding, mainly documents-based work for which the Extensa MC2610 is designed. Swapping the HDD for a larger model is a straightforward process as well and all you'll need is a screwdriver.

Overall
Despite its somewhat basic specs and unassuming physical design, the Extensa M2610 stands out as an excellent choice for SMBs looking for an everyday workstation. It's fast, affordable and compact by tower standards without compromising the ability to open it up and replace individual components.

This upgradability gives the Extensa M2610 a potentially huge advantage over laptops and convertibles, as it can - with a little investment - scale up to meet the demands of more resource-intensive work. This is also often a cheaper alternative to buying whole new high-end systems.