Our featured deal today has two things going for it that make it a great offer: it’s a bundle and the time of year. Manufacturers tend to offer better deals when you buy more at once, so a PC-plus-monitor bundle is a great way to save money on a new computer. The other factor working for this offer is the fact that we’re quickly approaching the next PC refresh cycle. Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform debuted in early 2012 and finally started shipping closer to the middle of 2012. The next refresh — Haswell — is coming soon and we’re seeing manufacturers offer more frequent and more aggressive discounts in order to move inventory.
The XPS 8500 is Dell’s bread and butter desktop, doing a little bit of everything at a great price. This mini tower model packs a Core i7-3770, with four cores that churn between 3.4GHz and 3.9GHz. 8GB of DDR3 RAM keeps the multi-tasking smooth and you’ve got a 1TB hard drive that will ensure plenty of storage space. It even had a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics card to handle multiple displays and HD video without a hiccup; it will probably even churn out a few gaming sessions for you too.
What really makes this bundle shine is the monitor: an UltraSharp U2312HM. The UltraSharps line of monitors share three common traits among all models that make them some of our favorites on the market: all use IPS LCD panels, fully adjustable stands, and offer a 3-year advance exchange warranty.
IPS LCD technology is the go-to tech for premium displays, giving the user extra-wide viewing angles and richer color. The U2312HM packs 1920×1080 pixels into its 23-inch IPS panel and will connect to nearly any video source via DVI, DisplayPort, and VGA inputs. Don’t worry if you wanted to hook your game console up to this beast, you can easily adapt DisplayPort or DVI to HDMI.
The desktop is backed up by Dell’s one year warranty that includes no-cost upgrades to on-site service and 24×7 premium tech support. With the UltraSharp, you still get the aforementioned 3 year advance exchange warranty. Should you ever have a problem, Dell ships you a replacement monitor straight away and you return your defective one on their dime. It even covers panel replacement should your monitor develop a bright pixel.
We’ve seen this bundle, with varying sized UltraSharp monitors, on sale numerous times before. Normally it runs around $850, marked down from $1100 to $1200. We saw a package with a smaller monitor for a few dollars less around Black Friday, but this bundle marked down to $816.99 with free shipping is the best offer we’ve seen in a while.
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