Acorn made the A7000 a very cheap system, cutting costs by using far fewer components on the motherboard. 4 MB is built into the motherboard with a single 72-pin slot for standard RAM. Gone is the non-standard Acorn 3 button mouse used since the first Archimedes model, which was expensive and hard to find if broken or lost, a standard PS2 unit is supplied instead.

A major drawback is that a choice has to be made between using a backplane for expansions or using a CDROM. The case design prevents using both at the same time.

A surprise with this machine is the connector on the motherboard labeled "Genlock", designed for video editing/combining/overlapping hardware.

Like the Risc PC, it usually came with a Microvitec multisync SVGA monitor (sometimes with an Acorn badge) that allowed for all the slightly odd screen resolutions Acorns was capable of, which some PC monitors didn't like.

When British supermarket Tesco launched its successful 'Computers for Schools' charity campaign, it had the A7000 proud of its campaign posters. The A7000 was also used exclusively in the Netherlands as a teleprompter at the NOB (Nederlands Omroepbedrijven) where these were provided with software and labels from X-Ample Technology.

The machines that were used in 2009 and 2010 for the Christmas speech of the then Queen Beatrix are a few examples (and are present in the museum).

Unfortunately, due to the increasing influx of PC clones, this turned out to be the last all-new Acorn computer to be released, aside from the Phoebe/RISC PC II computer that was never released.