Preview: We try out Lenovo’s super sleek all-in-one
The designer end of the all-in-one PC market has been dominated by Apple’s iMac in recent years. While the Ideacentre AIO 510S isn’t going to change that, what Lenovo has achieved is to carve out a niche for itself with a slim, attractive design with performance to match.
The 510S (the S stands for ‘Slim’) takes the form of a 23in touchscreen panel on a V-shaped stand. The screen itself has nearly no bezel, and it eclipses all the all-in-ones that have come before it in terms of its svelte build.
There are some interesting features, too. In order to keep the chassis as thin as possible, Lenovo has moved the webcam from the conventional position at the top of the screen down to the bottom, where a bezel is expected anyway. Even stranger, the webcam is hidden in a little module that clicks in and out of the bottom of the machine. You’ll also find two USB 3.0 ports here.
The webcam’s position is similar to that on the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 laptops, and it suffers from the same slightly odd up-your-nostrils angle that will be seen by your friends and family when chatting with them on Skype.
At the rear of the 510S are a further two USB ports, an HDMI input, a gigabit Ethernet adapter and the power connector, which also takes the form of a USB-style port.
Internally, there will be a choice of Intel Core i5 and i7-U processors – the same chips found in slim laptops such as the HP Spectre 13. Performance is therefore expected to be steady, not super-fast. This isn’t helped by the addition of a fairly sluggish 5,400rpm hard disk. It’s capacious enough, with 1TB of storage as standard, but it would have been nice to have the option of a smaller-capacity but faster SSD.
The model I tested featured Intel’s on-board HD Graphics 520. However, some versions of the AIO will include Nvidia GeForce GT 930A chips, which although not powerful enough to play anything but the most simple games at 1,366 x 768 resolutions, may assist with system performance when playing high-resolution video.
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It’s the Ideacentre All-in-One 510S’s screen that commands the most attention here, and it’s wonderful. It’s a matte IPS panel with a Full HD resolution.
Although I didn’t have my colorimeter handy, I was impressed by the display’s brightness and colour vibrancy. Even better, the screen benefits from 10-point capacitive touch, meaning you get a touchscreen that isn’t compromised by a glossy glass panel.
The 510S comes with a keyboard and mouse, too. The keyboard is a thin, wireless model while the mouse, also wireless, has a touch-sensitive scroll wheel. This virtual scroll wheel is actually quite comfortable to use and means you can build up some momentum when scrolling – much like using a touchpad.
First Impressions
Pricing for the 510S starts at around £699 for a Core i5 model and £799 for the Core i7. This is fairly steep by desktop PC standards, but it’s a great-looking device that will fit into any office or living room. It will be available later in the summer.
