Lenovo 3000 C300 All-In-One PC Review

I’ve been playing around with the Lenovo 3000 C300 All-In-One PC for days now. The C300 is one of the more affordable AIO PCs from the Lenovo All-In-One PC line.

Despite being in the Lenovo value line of desktops, the C300 is simply stylish and doesn’t look cheap. Anyone would be captivated by this AIO PC’s design. The black glossy design and floral pattern on the front panel speakers provides this AIO PC a sophisticated look. Build quality is solid and the exterior is pretty nice. The stand provides stability and can be tilted between 12 º and 40 º, depending on your preference.

Located on the top left of the screen are the integrated microphone and 1.3 megapixel camera. On the bottom right are some handy buttons to adjust the Brightness up/down, a button to turn the LCD on/off and a Power button. The built-in speakers are on the lowermost (left and right) part of the front panel.

The C300 has 6 USB ports, 2 of which are located on the left side together with the 6-in-1 memory card reader. At the back are 4 USB ports, speaker and microphone jacks, PS/2 keyboard interface, a Firewire port and an Ethernet port. The C300 also has 802.11b/g Wireless LAN support. The DVD-RW is on the right side of the unit. Although the ports and jacks are accessible, placing the audio and mic jacks either on the front or side would be more convenient.

The unit comes with a PS/2 keyboard. The keys are soft and almost silent when pressed. Additional keys are also provided on top of the numeric keypad to quickly adjust and turn on/off the volume. I find these shortcut keys useful most of the time.

Being slim and lightweight, the C300 provides easy portability and allowed me to carry and place it on almost any part of the house.

Perhaps, the best feature of the C300 is the 20 inch display with a maximum resolution of 1600×900, a better offering as compared to its rivals. The display is bright and sharp and the widescreen display is ideal for watching high definition videos.

The C300 utilizes an Intel Atom 330 1.6 GHz dual core processor, 2 GB DDR2 memory, 512 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 graphics card and 320 GB Hard Drive and is pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Basic.

The Intel Atom processor is predominantly used in netbooks. That being said, the C300 performance falls short of the full desktop PC. Mostly designed for mainstream users, the CPU has enough power to allow you to run Windows and Office applications and other productivity softwares, edit photos, watch movies, surf the internet and play light games.

The graphic card offers decent graphics and allowed fair graphic editing with softwares such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Picasa and light gaming with some PC games although you can easily notice the decrease in performance when running applications and games with intense 3D. Although the C300 will make a great home entertainment system, it is clearly not meant for gaming.

The Lenovo 3000 C300 All-In-One PC is another alternative for the traditional desktop PC. Designed with elegance, it surely is an eye-candy and will definitely look great on your office desktop, at home or in dormitories where space is limited. The slimline and lightweight design gives you portability and saves desktop space and reduces clutter. The 20 inch wide-screen monitor and dedicated graphic card enhances your multimedia experience and makes this PC a decent home entertainment system. The Intel Atom dual core processor makes this inferior over full desktop PCs but provides a far better performance over the netbooks. The C300 is designed for mainstream or general purpose users and is ideal for students, families and SMBs.

I still have to confirm the price but my estimate is that it should be around the 30K range.

Complete specs and PassMark PerformanceTest results below:

Specs:

• Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz processor
• 2GB DDR memory
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530
• 20″ screen size with max resolution of 1600×900
• 320GB SATA HDD
• DVD-RW
• Integrated 1.3 megapixel camera with built in mic
• Integrated Stereo Speakers
• Fast Ethernet and Wireless LAN 802.11b/g
• 6-in-1 Card Reader
• 6 USB Ports
• Firewire port
• Windows Vista Home Basic

The Lenovo C300 got a Windows Experience Index base score of 4.2

PassMark Rating

3D Graphics Mark

Graphics 3D – Simple 250.4
Graphics 3D – Medium 96.2
Graphics 3D – Complex 16.2

CPU Mark

CPU – Floating Point Math 194.9
CPU – Find Prime Numbers 104.9
CPU – Compression 1488.8
CPU – Encryption 5.4

Summary

CPU Mark 685.5
2D Graphics Mark 127.7
3D Graphics Mark 196.8
Memory Mark 212.3
Disk Mark 485.0
CD Mark 736.5
PassMark Rating (Overall) 407.4