Hi, it s Daniel Begun for HotHardware. All-in-one desktop PCs are increasingly packed with a product category. These home computers continue to make their way from the home office to the living room, bedrooms and kitchens. Their streamline form factors often no larger than a flat screen monitor, make them ideal candidates for places or spaces type. And all in one desktops can be great all around family PCs. Lenovo recently launched its new IdeaCentre A Series all-in-one desktop PCs and we had the chance to take a look at one.
Certainly no one should mistake the Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 for an iMac but the concepts are very similar. They are both complete desktop PCs scrammed into an LCD display size form factor. The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 is available in a number of different configurations. They all share the same black color to all-in-one chassis and glossy 21.5-inch TFT display with a native resolution of 1920x1080. The models differ from each other primarily only on the inside depending on which components they are configured with.
The unit you see here is the highest inversion of Lenovo IdeaCentre A-Series. The A600 model 30114BU. This machine is powered by a 2.13 GHz Intel Core duo processor, 4 Gigabytes of 1066 MHz DDR3 ST-Ram and 1 Terabytes 7200rpm set a hard drive. Eventhough this is a desktop system on the outside, many of its components are actually designed Lenovo computers. Components such as the Intel GM45 express chip set, the ATI mobility Radeon HD3650 graphics chip and the Intel 5100 wireless chip with 8O2.11 ABG and wireless networking access.
Most all-in-one designs utilized smaller mobile base components in order to cram them into a smaller form factors possible. The A600 even includes an Intel Centrino inside sticker to prove its mobile pedigree. Our unit included an optical drive that complete blu-ray disks and record DVD and DVD Hard W disks. It also came with the wireless keyboard, mouse and remote control. The keyboard is fairly thin and light weight and then includes an integrated touch pad as well as a few touch sensitive controls. The mouse is a four-button laser mouse with a scroll wheel and user selectable settings with either 800 or 1600 DPI.
In addition to including normal windows media center functionality, the remote also access a—pin set with its integrated microphone and speaker. The remote also includes an air mouse feature with both the right and the left click functionality. It also features motion control which works with the—PC games such as bowling. The A600 only comes with a four motion control base games and the motion control is not quite a sleek or sensitive as that of the Nintendo way. The A600 uses a borderless design for its display.
On the system, the top bezel houses a 2 mega pixel webcam and an array microphone. You can see that two holes for the array microphone here and here. The only controls on the front of the unit are touch-sensitive buttons for decreasing and increasing brightness, turning off the display and ejecting disks from the optical drive. The bottom of the front bezel houses the built in 2.1 channel speakers made of two, three watt speakers and an eight-watt subwoofer. The A600 sound systems support Dolby Home Theater audio. The system way is just high of 28 pounds and you can feel its half as you pivot the entire unit back and forth on its base. You need to be careful not to get your fingers stock under the unit when leaning it forward. As I am someone with the young child in a house, this is one part of the A600 design I’m not too keen on. You’ll also notice as I grab the system to pivot the display that the chassis easily attracts fingerprints.
Another design choice that leaves a bit to be desire is the location of the power button. The power switch is located on the left side of the unit towards the base. Unfortunately it’s located right where you might unwittingly grab the system when pivoting the screen or shifting the entire unit left or right. That’s actually happened to me in number of times. The lower left side of the system also has a hard disk activity late, the 6-in-1 multi-format memory card reader, Fire Wire port, two USB ports and headphone and microphone jacks.
All that is on the right side of the A600 is the slot loading blu-ray drive. Oddly, disks must be inserted with a data side facing forward instead of the label side like you might expect. On the back of the system are the power connector, gigabit Ethernet jack, four USB ports and a Coax Internet connection for the integrated TV tuner. The A600 manages to keep it's curvy—figure by placing its power supply in a large size external break. This model has a 150watt power supply but the lower inversions of the A600 which use integrated Intel graphics instead of 130watt power supplies.
Our system came with windows vista home premium edition 64-bit installed and it’s called the windows vista experience rating at 5.1. The windows vista experience rating is determined by the lowest subscore which in this case is the processor. All-in-one desktops are not typically known for the gaming prowess if this A600 actually scored the respectable 5.4 for gaming graphics. To put the A600 to gaming performance in a more real world like, we loaded that enemy territory quick wars with the resolution of 1024x768 with 2XAA—set to their maximum which are respectable 31 frames per second. That is what you see running here.
So, if you don’t mind dropping down the screen resolution, the quality settings you should be able to see possible frame rates on the most modern games. The system had no trouble playing back high definition video. We play the number or 10ATP quick time as well as windows media, video nine clips and CPU utilization mostly have it around the 60% mark. We also play blu-ray movie titles such as I Am Legend which you see playing here and so our CPU utilization’s typically stable of 30%.
As the system comes with an integrated high definition TV tuner, you can also watch over the air digital broadcast. The system does not come with an—of those, you’ll have to add one to yourself. The A600 also comes with a few additional bells and whistles. One such extra is the Veriface application which allows you to log in to windows using facial recognition technology. Another set of the extras are included as part of the Lenovo rescue system which are accessible during system boot up by pressing the F2 key.
The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 model 30114BU sells for $1399.00 from the Lenovo.com and it is also build it for price retail stores. The least expensive configuration of the A600 sells for $679.00. We hope you enjoy this video spotlight of the Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 model 30114BU all-in-one desktop PC. Once again, this is Daniel Begun for HotHardware. Thanks for stopping by.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services