Lenovo’s First All-In-One PC Think Centre A70z-Review
IBM sold its PC manufacturing business to Lenovo in 2005 and the purists amongst us had concerns that the iconic ThinkCentre and ThinkPad brands would disappear forever and along with them the legendary quality of those brands. Of course in retrospect we had nothing to fear as Lenovo have done quite an impressive job producing a number of machines in the laptop and desktop segment.
The A70z is a departure from the normal desktop chassis and instead is a compact neat all in once machine, an iMac dressed up in a suit. Similar to the Dell Studio One 19 Desktop.
Stylistically the machine has the Lenovo/IBM look, which makes the unit look clearly like it should be placed in an office and not at home.
An all in one PC has a lot of business sense to it, freeing up desk space and reducing the number of items required at the work station. Not only that but it consumes less power since you are running the unit from a single power source rather than two.
An all in one PC is also more environmentally friendly since packaging is with a single box rather than two. Laptops offer the same business and environmental sense, but clearly that is a more expensive option.
The ThinkCentre A70z comes with a 19-inch display that has a 1,440×900 resolution. The resolution of the screen is a little lower that the 20-inch screens that most of us have become used to in our homes, but it does handle regular tasks perfectly adequately.
- 19-inch 1,440X900 Flat Screen Display
- 32 Bit Windows 7 Pre-Installed
- 320 GB Hard Drive
- 1 GB RAM
> > Click here to order online with Lenovo Australia
The main concern with the screen is that the image is slightly grainy and upon inspecting the image closely we found it to have an oily mottled effect. This effect is most noticeable on a white background so for example when you are running Microsoft Word. The colour seems to shift when one moves off axis so someone sharing your screen may have issues.
The screen can be placed at an angle because it is supported by a metal stand at the back which is extremely sturdy. The screen comes with two brightness buttons allowing the user to set brightness for whatever conditions are present. The screen contains a web-cam at the top and an integrated microphone.
Overall the screen is adequate, but first rate would not be the correct description for it.
The PC comes with an easy access power button located at the bottom right, with the hard disk activity light located right next to it.
The speaker is positioned across the front of the screen, and the volume levels the speaker generates are in fact quite impressive. Though in an office environment, we expect most people to just use the area for sticking up post it notes.
On the left hand side of the screen is the laptop style DVD Rewriter. This is fairly unwieldy because it means that the disks must be placed into a vertical tray.
On the right hand side of the screen is located the microphone and headphone sockets, and a more than adequate three USB ports. There are a further three USB ports located at the back of the machine, alongside the Gigabit Ethernet port.
A major problem is there does not seem to be any wireless connectivity, which means either a wireless USB adapter must be used or the user is limited to where they can place their computer.
The system comes included with 32-bit Windows 7 Pre installed, and can go from off to on in 48 seconds and takes less than 10 seconds to shut down.
The hard drive capacity is 320 GB which is more than adequate for the performance level of the machine.
The warranty is a standard one year warranty contract, which is not spectacular but can be extended and comes with 24/7 support.
The best thing about the machine is its cost. The roughly $620 price tag offers excellent value, and though most buyers may want to extend the warranty and increase the RAM which is only 1GB, it’s a very decent machine that should be largely trouble free.
> > Click here to order online with Lenovo Australia
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