The computer was aimed to be used in laboratories, but because of the (low) price the Acorn System 1 was fairly popular with hobbyists as well.

In 1980, Acorn continued to develop the Acorn System 2,
which had the processor on a Eurocard printed circuit board and a cassette interface.
The Acorn System 3 replaced the cassette interface with a floppy drive in 1982 and had additional RAM and ROM memory.
The Acorn System 4 was released that same year with more memory and 2 floppy drives.
The Acorn System 5 was the last of the series and was released in 1983.
It also had 2 floppy drives and the cabinet had room for 7 or 10 Eurocards.

All Acorn System systems could be linked with an external keyboard, the same housing used for the Acorn Atom.