Most Popular Reviews This Month: Top Five

1. Dell OptiPlex 990 

The Dell OptiPlex 990 was the first ultra-small form factor workstation we played with from Dell, and to this day, it remains one of our favorites. Barely bigger than a can of soda, this box manages to pack stability and performance - and it's still smaller than a breadbox.

2. ASUS ET2700 

ASUS has jumped into the market opportunity presented by all these all-in-ones coming out, and they're doing it with both feet. The ET2700 is a 27-inch desktop with a gorgeous 1080p display and excellent audio thanks to the subwoofer included in the box. If you don't need a touchscreen on your desktop (and we'd argue that most of you don't), then the ET2700 deserves a look.

3. Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z

The Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z, like ASUS above, shows Lenovo's concerted effort to push themselves into the all-in-one market - and we're thankful, too. The Edge 91z is one of the most stunningly well-designed pieces of technology we've seen introduced in the last five years, with an all-glass, edge-to-edge display, clean industrial styling, and an attractive black finish. This machine is targeted at business users, but it looks so good we'd be happy to have it in our home.

4. HP Z220 Small Form Factor Workstation

They say good things come in small packages, and HP's Z220 SFF WorkStation is no exception. HP's diminutive powerhouse packs a big performance punch into a SFF (Small Form Factor) housing that is some 65% smaller than the typical workstation tower. Powered by your choice of Intel's Xeon E3-1200 family of processors or Intel's Core i3/i5/i7 processors, the HP Z220 SFF offers a multitude of configuration options that are housed in a quiet, tool-free chassis. 

5. Netgear R6300 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless Router

No doubt about it: the new (and still unfinished) IEEE 802.11ac standard is already making big waves in the world of wireless LANs. 802.11ac extends, in current implementations, Wi-Fi performance to raw, Layer-1 speeds of 1.3 gigabits per second. While the standard itself will include throughput possibilities all the way to almost 7 Gbps, that 1.3 Gbps is about three times the 450 Mbps that is today quite common in 802.11n implementations. And the Netgear R6300 is the very first product on the market to offer that kind of throughput. So we were very pleased to have the opportunity to put this product through its paces.