September 15, 2009

An Excellent First Step
By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
Published in the August 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

Lenovo IdeaCentre A600
P63,900
www.lenovo.com/ph

Joining Apple, HP, Dell and Gateway in the all-in-one desktop space is Lenovo with the IdeaCentre A600. As such, it possesses the characteristics typical among its competitors in the desktop subsegment: an all-around PC with a good lineup of specs in a space-saving form factor that foregoes a CPU chassis and molds everything, save for the input devices, into the monitor. However, unlike most of them and their clean-cut, minimalist design approach, Lenovo pumped just a little oomph in the design process and came up with a distinctly slick machine that has a bit of glam but at the same time employs hints of the whimsical aspects of modern avant garde industrial design.

Overall, it has a polished all-black exterior that measures an inch thick at its thinnest with the LCD screen up front and a two-megapixel Web cam above it. Its body fluidly bulks up towards the bottom and is softly angled towards the back, giving the impression of a slightly bent display panel. This is where all the ports and accoutrements have been placed. And instead of utilizing the usual array of horizontal bars to serve as grilles or a series of circular holes for openings such as air vents and the built-in speakers, Lenovo saw this as another practical design application and used a pattern that clearly resembles a maze.

On the left side panel you have the power button, a multicard reader, two USB 2.0 ports, input and output 3.5 audio jacks and a FireWire port, while the right side panel hosts the slot-loading DVD-RW drive. The rear is where you’d find a series of ports; namely, the AC, the RJ45, four addition USB ports and one for connecting a coaxial cable for the built-in TV tuner.

While in front, a touch panel is situated just below the LCD screen; three for adjusting the onscreen display and one to eject an inserted disk from the optical drive. The entire setup is resting on top of a flat sturdy base that allows you to tilt the screen five degrees forward or 15 degrees backward.

One of the things we liked about the A600 is its LCD screen which measures an expansive 21.5 inches diagonally and offers a full 1080p hi-def resolution. These two factors alone make it a very competent entertainment machine which easily kicks it up a notch in our books with enhanced visuals that are absolutely bright, well detailed and yielding colors that pop. This makes it a great weapon of choice for playing mainstream action games and for watching movies, as we had done during the testing period, setting up a mini theater within the confines of the PCW test lab.

A 2.1-channel speaker system has been built in which employs Dolby’s Home Theatre technology. It does a pretty good job, producing balanced audios and a decent subwoofer and proved to be a lot better than most integrated speakers we’ve seen in the past. However, it still had some tinny quality to it, so hooking up external multimedia speakers would be advisable if you prefer a more engaging audio experience to match its excellent video quality.

During the test period, the A600 ran smoothly with its intended all-around usage with activities like word processing, Web surfing, multimedia playback and mainstream gaming in both standard definition and hi-def thanks to the 2.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 coupled with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 graphics card at its core. These are supported by 2GB of DDR3 memory (with the option to upgrade up to 4GB) which showed the system’s deftness for running multiple applications. Also in the system is a healthy 500GB of storage, which is more than enough even for advanced users to cram in their work/school files and multimedia contents.

This desktop includes a wireless laser mouse, a keyboard and a multipurpose remote controller. The keyboard is thin and very light with a hard plastic body that bears a brushed texture with adequately spaced keys that are large, flat and adequately tactile. To its right is a touchpanel that gives you quick access to the multimedia settings and playback controls, volume adjustments and launches Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook; while below it is an auxilliary touch pad and its matching left and right click buttons. Meanwhile, the wireless laser mouse also comes in a matte-glossy black duality and an orange scroll wheel to match the thin orange outline around the keyboard. It offers nice feedback and is sufficiently sensitive.

Perhaps one of the most interesting inclusions to the system is its multipurpose remote controller. And it’s only logical for Lenovo to include it to the package since the A600 is also being touted as a multimedia center. First off, it lets you simply navigate through the system’s multimedia contents through Windows Media Center or used the traditional manner for the built-in TV tuner should you decide to include either during purchase. It also functions as a gyroscope mouse to navigate through Windows Vista Home Premium (the operating system that came with our review unit) and for playing games ala-Wiimote. Finally, it also serves as as handset to pair with VoIP applications.