Review: Lenovo IdeaCentre A720 Rethinks The All-In-One Desktop PC

Somewhere between the standard desktop computer and notebook computers with large screens lies the all-in-one PC. While Apple is generally regarded as the king of this category with its iMac series of machines, HP had recent success building the TouchSmart line of all-in-ones designed for Windows Vista and subsequently Windows 7. The primary differentiating feature, as the brand name implies, is the integrated touchscreen. Bundled with several proprietary applications, users can easily slide a finger across the screen to view photos in their collections, peek at the weather forecast, and more. Since then, more PC manufacturers have followed suit with variations on the theme — some more successful than others.

Lenovo ups the ante with its latest all-in-one computer, the IdeaCentre A720. Let’s see how it stacks up to the competition.

First Impressions

Unboxing the IdeaCentre consists of removing two brown cardboard boxes containing the accessories and cables, followed by removing the computer itself (with fitted foam packaging material around the top and bottom). The boxes of accessories were packed full of goods, including not only the wireless keyboard, mouse and batteries, but a remote control, a USB remote control receiver, an adapter cable allowing standard television coaxial cable hookups to the computer, a CD containing Windows 7 drivers for the A720, a safety and warranty guide, a user guide, several miscellaneous flyers (such as a packing list and instructions for installing batteries in the remote control, keyboard and mouse) and last but not least, a big AC power adapter and its accompanying wall cord.

By the power of, well, not Grayskull.

The computer itself is surprisingly heavy, with a case made of solid aluminum and a 27″ glass screen. (As I’ve noticed with other recent Lenovo products, the A720 makes an effort to copy some of Apple’s design choices, mimicking the iMac’s aluminum and glass construction.) A720’s wireless keyboard and mouse, however, only share an aluminum appearance, while they’re actually made of lightweight plastic.

The infrared remote control is one item making no attempt to follow Apple’s minimalist design. Instead, Lenovo sticks with the typical remote design seen with Windows Media Center PCs from HP and others. A Windows logo button launches the Media Center menu, and numerous buttons allow entering channel numbers, navigating menus, turning volume up or down, rewinding, fast-forwarding, playing, recording, and more.

The Software

The IdeaCentre ships with Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit edition. Additionally, a 30-day trial version of Microsoft Office 2010 (which allows use as a free, ad-supported starter edition of Word and Excel as well as purchasing a full version of the product) is included, as is a trial version of McAfee Anti-virus. ArcSoft PhotoStudio Paint provides graphics editing capabilities, and Lenovo Rescue System 3.0 allows restoring the system to the original factory configuration (or to backups made at specific points in time). To highlight the touchscreen capabilities of the A720, Lenovo also includes IdeaTouch 4.5 — essentially an application launcher with six categories: video, music, ebooks, games, photos, and widgets. The games category probably provides the most impressive use of the touchscreen, with such popular titles as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja included as well as an air hockey game (particularly interesting because it works best with the screen folded down flat with opponents seated on each side of the computer), and a number of other diversions. A widgets group only contains two programs: a note-taking board allowing audio or video notes as well as anything doodled on the touchscreen and a utility that allows setting a picture-based password to access the operating system. Other categories simply allow easy, touch-based access to various types of content. Lastly, Lenovo Vantage Tools (LVT) provides a second application launcher with two groups of programs presented on stacks of virtual cards riveted together in a corner so they fan out, like those paint sample cards at the hardware store. LVT provides access to a CD/DVD burning application, PowerDVD (to play DVD or Blu-ray movies), a collection of games integrating the webcam (allowing players to interact with hand motions), Lenovo YouCam to record one’s own videos and add special f/x, and duplication with applications available from IdeaTouch.

Performance

For those interested in the specs, the A720 comes with an Intel Core i7-3610QM processor running at 2.3 Ghz, 8 GB of system RAM, a 1 TB SATA hard drive, and nVidia’s GeForce GT 630M video chipset.

Initial boot time from power on to a Windows desktop takes a relatively unimpressive 45 seconds. After booted to the desktop, the machine feels responsive. (If I drag a window around the screen or watch a video, the screen updates without any noticeable lag.) However, slow disk performance rears its ugly head when I suddenly see a semi-circle appear in the right-hand corner of the screen for the Lenovo Vantage Tools. It takes a good 30 to 40 seconds for the program to load itself and launch after the desktop is up and running. I encountered the same thing when launching the IdeaTouch application. At first, I thought the application failed to run properly, but it simply took a long time to load into memory and run.

NovaBench reports an overall score of 1096, with system RAM scoring 200, the CPU scoring 696, graphics speed earning a 137, and hard disk read/write speed scoring 63. The overall score puts the IdeaCentre in the same category as many desktop PCs using AMD’s Phenom II 6 core processor or Apple’s current version of its 15″ Macbook Pro notebook with the Intel Core i7 CPU.