Lenovo IdeaCentre B320: HDTV, Budget All-in-One, or Just Confused? - bridgesshen1994

At a Glimpse

Expert's Rating

Pros

Reinforced in TV radio
Good performance

Cons

Video quality isn't groovy

Our Verdict

The Lenovo B320 seems to make up confused about its mission: is it a multimedia system powerhouse, budget all-in-one, or business-oriented PowerPoint machine?

Connected its website, Lenovo bills the IdeaCentre B320 as a "sleek desktop" with "2 extreme missions" — to be an HDTV and to be a PC. Unfortunately, like many things with multiple "extreme missions," the B320 spreads itself excessively sleazy, and fails short on both counts.

Our review pose, priced at $899, features a Core i5-2500 central processing unit, 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD 6450A graphics card. It has an impressively large 2TB hard drive–an interesting quality for a computer that's suppositious to double every bit an HDTV, simply you'll be able to fit plenty of your ripped pic files along it. It also carries a webcam, a mike, speakers, and a Videodisk-RW drive–every built-in. There's nobelium Blu-ray drive, just this is a budget all-in-one PC, after all.

In PCWorld's WorldBench 6 benchmark testing, the B320 received a score of 126–a top mark in the budget all-in-one category. Graphics performance was simply okay: The B320 managed a frame up rate of 32.7 frames per second in our utmost-upper-class Unreal Tournament test (1680-by-1050-pixel resolving power), but just 13.1 fps at the same resolution and quality in our Dirt 2 test. Those frame rates, though not superior, are fairly standard for the category.

I don't particularly like the B320's design, in the main because I'm not a big fan of large, obvious speakers placed below the screen. Withal, the B320's chassis is sleeker than those of other all-in-ones I've seen with similar speaker designs. A filamentous, glazed black bezel surrounds the 21.5-column inch glossy touchscreen, and a a couple of reach-sensitive buttons occupy the lower right corner. You'll too find non-touch-sensitive indicator lights in the lower left corner.

Situated directly infra the block out, the speakers are bouffant and angled, non even out with the mesa round top. (The system is propped sprouted on cardinal small, wide metallic legs.) Because the speakers are dull flatware, they'ray extremely visible down the stairs the screen. The screen itself leans along a picture-frame like stand, which is thick, heavy, and very sturdy.

Ports are located unofficially of the machine, as recovered as on the back. On the liberal incline, you'll find deuce USB 2.0 ports, headphone and mike jacks, and a multicard referee expansion slot. The back accommodates four Sir Thomas More USB ports, gigabit ethernet, a PS/2 port (for keyboard), and a TV tuner. The right side of the screen holds a DVD-RW drive and several buttons for going into TV mode, changing TV channels, and adjusting volume–but no ports. The Television receiver mode buttons essentially get to transform your all-in-one PC into a veritable HDTV. If you prefer, you can purpose the assembled-in Picture-in-Picture style to sentry TV programming in a little boxful in the lower justly corner of your screen (a dedicated Rack up button sits on the side of the screen).

The B320 sports a lustrous, 21.5-inch touch screen with a full HD native declaration of 1920 by 1080 pixels. Images along the screen looked good–colors were bright and clear, and text was crisp–only TV was a trifle less satisfactory. In my examination, HD video playback (both streaming and native) showed a lot of blocky artifacts and national dissonance. The touchscreen itself seemed quite an true; it wasn't the most sensitive, accurate block out I've used, but it ranks pretty high on the scale.

Included with the B320 are a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a remote contain. The keyboard supports basic functions–typical media control buttons–plus the Lenovo Vantage Technology ("LVT") button, which provides access to some custom Lenovo utilities. The keyboard sports a brushed metal background with orange accents. The brushed metal is very attractive; the orange accents, non so much. Though the keys are widely spaced and well-off to typecast happening, in my testing they sometimes didn't register, especially when I typed quickly.

The physics tune mouse is thin and light, has a bunch of supererogatory buttons, and can two-baser as a pointer. Pretty expedient, simply far from the most effectual mouse I've ever used. For one thing, the sneak away/air-pointer is a good deal thinner than a emblematic creep, which makes it a moment uncomfortable to use. The mouse/pointer was a little too thin-skinned to movement, too. I understand that, A a Spanish pointer, it needed to be ultrasensitive; but as a mouse–cured, let's just articulate I found myself exploitation the touchscreen much.

The Lenovo IdeaCentre B320 is engrossing, to say the least. I'm not certainly why Lenovo supplied a mouse that doubles as a pointer, since that strikes me equally organism more of a business machine feature. The political machine itself has an unusual mix in of attributes–a 21.5-inch screen, so-so video recording playback, no Blu-ray drive, and yet a big focus on being a media heart. The $900 price tag makes it a good scene for a cash-strapped college scholar in a small residence hall room. Only if you'Ra look for a stronger media experience and have a fleck to a greater extent coin to spare, you'll find that a larger simple machine similar the Lenovo IdeaCentre B520 makes a more satisfying investment.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/472550/lenovo_ideacentre_b320_hdtv_budget_all_in_one_or_just_confused_.html

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