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With the price and performance potential of laptops these days, it’s reasonably difficult to recommend desktop PCs – especially when they arent’t dedicated for gaming. The Dell Tower ECT1250, on the other hand, straddles the line with solid productivity performance and a more modern, office-friendly aesthetic. It’s available in a wide variety of CPUs, RAM, and storage that you can configure this tower to be an efficient budget option or a creative content machine.
While it doesn’t offer the option of a dedicated graphics card that would make it both a productivity workhorse and a gaming hub, you get that option with the Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 – in a similarly office-centric design. The flexibility in customization for both models is a point in their favor if you’re okay spending a little time picking out exactly what you need. But even if you settle on a lower-end build, both of Dell’s latest towers are made to be expanded upon later, so if you want to save up and get more RAM or memory at a later date, you can.
Dell’s Tower ECT1250 model features a mid-tower chassis and fairly fast components, targeted at mainstream desktop PC buyers. As a package, the ECT1250 succeeds in its goal thanks to a speedy Intel Core Ultra 7-265 processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and Intel UHD graphics. For how well it serves the middle-budget tier and leaves some room for growth, the Dell Tower ECT1250 earns our Editors’ Choice award in the midrange desktop category.
Dell Tower ECT1250 Specs
- Desktop Class: Mainstream, Tower
- Processor: Intel Core i7 265
- RAM (as Tested): 32 GB
- Boot Drive Type: SSD
- Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested): 1 TB
- Graphics: Intel UHD
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home
Design & Features
This Dell Tower ECT1250 features a mid-tower chassis designed for durability and ease of use. The front panel is home to all the ports you’d want quick and easy access to, while the back ports are great for things that will stay plugged in for the most part. This Tower desktop flaunts a sleek and professional design, while the sturdy build hints at sustainability for various office environments.
This machine is an excellent piece of equipment for home office use or in the office. Either way you choose to use it, the Dell Tower ECT1250 will fit right in. Its unassuming chassis puts me in mind of 90s cases, but its mostly metal black casing exudes quality when you really take a moment to look at it.
Unlike many other pre-built gaming desktops at its price level, this one doesn’t have the colorful RGB lighting or sci-fi design. As someone who doesn’t really care about the ‘gamer’ aesthetic, this is a major plus. The same design approach is replicated in the Dell Tower Plus, which, despite its gaming credentials, remains subtly designed, just like the Alienware Aurora ACT1250 gaming desktop.
Otherwise, the build quality is fantastic, with no glaring gaps or separations between the chassis panels. The Dell Tower’s feet also do an excellent job of holding onto surfaces, ensuring that the machine doesn’t slide around on the desk.
Beyond the design, a healthy range of ports on the front and back of the device ensures that you have enough connections to plug various accessories and monitors in, as desired. The front panel has a USB Type-C port, a media card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.2, and a headset jack.
On the back, there are two more USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, RJ45 Ethernet, and expansion ports. Wireless connectivity comes in way of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6. Overall, this is a great desktop PC tower that prioritizes convenience, expandability, and durability over a flashy design.
Performance
The Dell Tower Desktop is a reminder that mid-size, desktop PCs deliver outstanding overall performance: our review model features an Intel Core Ultra 7 265 processor, Intel UHD graphics, 32GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD, and performs well across our usual suite of synthetic and real-life benchmarks.
Despite its unassuming look, the Tower ECT1250 is one of the most powerful office/business desktops you can buy right now. The Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core processor from Intel’s most recent Arrow Lake architecture, and when paired with the latest DDR5 memory, it’s capable of tearing through the most demanding tasks you can throw at a PC.
In raw CPU power, the Core Ultra 7 265 sits behind Intel’s Core Ultra 7 265K available in the Dell Tower Plus, but it offers better single and multi-core performance than most last-gen Core i9 chips. That’s true in Cinebench and Geekbench benchmarks, the latter of which is typically a little more representative of real-world performance differences.
In creative applications, the Dell Tower is a monster. It actually outperforms the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i with previous-gen Intel chips, and it’s a more powerful processor in PugetBench for Premiere Pro. Gaming on the Intel UHD graphics is pretty basic, but editing and batch exporting high-res images in Lightroom on this PC is a breeze. The same applies when opening 20 or more Google Chrome tabs simultaneously, a few of which are running streaming services.
No matter the productivity task you run on this PC, except for gaming, there are no signs of slowdowns, with each succeeding tab opening a page quickly. What’s more, it even zips past some gaming PCs in drive speed tests, scoring a whopping 2,089MBps next to the Aurora 16’s 2,047MBps and the Tower 7i’s 1,340MBps.
Overall, if you’re looking for brute strength and sheer power for both productivity and creative work, the Dell Tower ECT1250 has proven itself to be an absolute ace.
Dell Tower ECT1250 Review: Bottom line
The Dell Tower ECT1250 is a powerful mid-tower PC at a very reasonable price for the hardware and performance. It’s especially a great choice for anyone looking for an office, business, or creative looking for a fast, capable desktop and cares little about gaming performance.
Dell has surprisingly few direct competutors in the midrange business desktop category. Acer, Asus, and Lenovo reserve more expensive configurations for All-in-One business desktops. They’re powerful and space-saving, but not everyone wants a desktop that can’t be upgraded later as needed. HP’s Envy line is Dell’s best competition, offering similar hardware for the price. Current Envy desktops are equally attractive, but rather compact, which could make upgrades more difficult.
The Dell Tower ECT1250 left me impressed. It has the processing to handle productivity tasks and runs most creative apps fluently, and it can be upgraded as needed. Even without upgrading, this machine is a capable workhorse for office/business users and professional creatives. That’s great to see from a mid-size, simple desktop sold below $1000. It’s our newest Editors’ Choice for midrange business desktop PCs.
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