Lenovo's budget-priced C315 all-in-one offers a competent, low-cost media PC for a fair $699.I also pleasantly surprised by both its gaming capabilities, as well as the sharp responsiveness of its touch-screen input. Slow performance on our benchmark tests keeps this system from earning a recommendation as a productivity system. It also lacks the connectivity options we like to see in an all-in-one. Despite those shortcomings, we can recommend this PC to those looking for a casual, affordable entertainment system with a small footprint.
Lenovo's touch-specific software is limited to three primary features. You get a power-down screen that displays Windows' shut-down options in a touch-friendly form. You also get a media app carousel, for launching video and photo software, as well as a prototype photo-collage-making program from Microsoft. Lenovo has also enabled the touch-capable software keyboard built into Windows 7.None of those touch apps are revolutionary, but we also appreciate that Lenovo has kept things simple. You'll find no useless touch-enabled koi pond on the C315, and Lenovo also left off the generally joyless programs that pass for games on other touch-based PCs.
Before we expand on the Lenovo's video strengths,I must face that fact of its slow day-to-day performance. All of the other PCs on these charts are more expensive than the Lenovo C315, but the HP All-In-One 200-5020 is only $80 more and it's almost twice as fast as the Lenovo on every test. We'll blame the Lenovo's slow, low-power 1.6GHz AMD Athlon II X2 250u processor, but its older 800MHz DDR2 system memory doesn't help, either. You won't have trouble browsing the Web or word processing or performing other basic tasks on this system, but open more than a couple apps at once and you'll feel the effects of its limited CPU.
I can, however, recommend the Lenovo C315 as a casual entertainment PC. It would work very well on a kitchen counter, or as a computer for the kids. The display is only 1,600x900 and it has no video output, so it won't display true 1080p video content. It handled 720p and 1080p movies (condensing the latter) from YouTube and in QuickTime, and it also had no trouble with lower-quality feeds from Hulu and NetFlix.I do wish the system had more muscle behind its audio output, as it's likely not loud enough to overcome the general din of an active household.
However capable this PC is as an entertainment system, Lenovo missed an opportunity by leaving out an HDMI input.By leaving off not only HDMI, but any sort of video input or output from the C315, Lenovo thus prevents you not only from connecting an external video source to this system, such as a game console or a cable box, and you also get no recourse for connecting a second display. We expect most people can live without those features, but adding an HDMI input improves the versatility of an all-in-one so dramatically it's hard to forgive its absence.
The other inputs on this system are only adequate. You get a handful of USB ports on the left edge and rear of the system. You also get a few analog audio jacks, as well as an Ethernet port, a TV tuner jack, and a mini FireWire 400 input. We're glad to see FireWire, but eSATA and/or some kind of digital audio output would also have been welcome. A multiformat SD Card reader rounds out the external ports.
Lenovo's power consumption won't put too much of a burden on your wallet, but I suspect the discrete graphics chip has canceled out any efficiency gains this PC might have made with its low-power AMD CPU. Coming in squarely in the middle of the all other all-in-ones, the Lenovo C315 will run you around $1.25 a month to operate.
My Rating: 3/5
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