Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z review

Unfortunately, the machine shipped with only a single DIMM of 1GB of RAM, which is something of a performance limiter. It hit the heights of 1.15 in our standard 2D benchmarks, which puts it nearly twice as fast as very much lower power Atom based machine, but still modest next to a fully fledged desktop. The integrated graphics should be fine for standard video acceleration but it’s stretched by HD. Streaming 720p from the BBC iPlayer gave us a solid frame rate of 20fps, but no more.

The system is Energy Star 5 rated and, power wise, we saw the machine draw 43 watts and 46 watts when playing video compared to 82 watts from a Lenovo A58 desktop.

The system shipped with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 installed and it felt sprightly in use. It took us 48 seconds to boot to a usable desktop from cold, which isn’t too bad, and shutdown was less than 10 seconds.

Storage is catered for by a 320GB hard disk, which should be more than ample for the level of performance on offer.

The ThinkVantage tools come preinstalled, which will enable an IT manger to remotely access the machine, perform local diagnostics to troubleshoot hardware issues, set up power management and perform an OS recovery.

The warranty is only one year as standard which isn’t great, though this can be extended and 24/7 support is available from Lenovo too.

Our system shipped with a rather basic keyboard and mouse. While we liked the feel of the keys on the former, the spacebar made too much of a disconcerting squeaking noise for our liking.

What we like best about the A70z though is the price. The £355 tag is a great starting point, and though you’ll want to up the RAM count and extend the warranty, you’re getting a decent low footprint machine, that should prove trouble free.

It’s easy to set up, comfortable to use, and easy to manage. It’s not the speediest or most stylish machine and the lack of integrated wireless bothers us but aside from that if the display was slightly better quality then we’d be singing the A70z's praises from the hills. As it is, it’s more of a quiet nod of approval.