Lenovo ThinkCentreA60 8700 review

Costing just £350, Lenovo’s ThinkCentre A60 barely compromises on hardware. A dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ packs plenty of punch, despite residing at the bottom of our 2D performance graph. There’s only 512MB of RAM, but again, this is fine for office apps. Only one memory socket is free, but you can use this to cheaply upgrade to 1GB.

The mini-tower offers plenty of expansion room and easy, tool-free maintenance. At the front is a dual-layer DVD writer and media card reader. It leaves a free 5.25in bay, but inside no bays are spare. A single internal 3.5in tray holds the hard disk, which has a generous 160GB capacity. All three drives can be swapped out without tools, as can expansion cards. Four full-height slots are available: two PCI, one PCI Express 1x and one PCI Express 16x.

However, you can’t have everything for £350 and the A60 does suffer in two key areas. Security is one. There’s no TPM encryption chip and no physical security beyond a Kensington Lock loop. In the BIOS you can only set an administrator and user password. The second major compromise is warranty. Instead of the usual three-year on-site offering, the A60’s cover is a third of this. Fortunately, you can add an extra two years of cover for only £70, and that includes next-business-day response.

ThinkVantage software brings all common tasks into one interface. System recovery, data migration, software updates and scheduled maintenance can all be set. Remote management options include the ability to update the BIOS without needing to locally enter an administrator password.

With temperature-controlled CPU and case fans, the A60 isn’t overly noisy, and with no front-mounted fan it measured just 31dBA from the front when idle. In terms of power consumption, 60W when idle is the second lowest here.

Overall, the ThinkCentre A60 is well specified for the money. Security is lacking, though, and upgrading to a three-year warranty brings the price almost in line with the better-performing and more secure Fujitsu Siemens. But if you have in-house maintenance, the A60 could be a bargain.Costing just £350, Lenovo’s ThinkCentre A60 barely compromises on hardware. A dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ packs plenty of punch, despite residing at the bottom of our 2D performance graph. There’s only 512MB of RAM, but again, this is fine for office apps. Only one memory socket is free, but you can use this to cheaply upgrade to 1GB.

The mini-tower offers plenty of expansion room and easy, tool-free maintenance. At the front is a dual-layer DVD writer and media card reader. It leaves a free 5.25in bay, but inside no bays are spare. A single internal 3.5in tray holds the hard disk, which has a generous 160GB capacity. All three drives can be swapped out without tools, as can expansion cards. Four full-height slots are available: two PCI, one PCI Express 1x and one PCI Express 16x.

However, you can’t have everything for £350 and the A60 does suffer in two key areas. Security is one. There’s no TPM encryption chip and no physical security beyond a Kensington Lock loop. In the BIOS you can only set an administrator and user password. The second major compromise is warranty. Instead of the usual three-year on-site offering, the A60’s cover is a third of this. Fortunately, you can add an extra two years of cover for only £70, and that includes next-business-day response.

ThinkVantage software brings all common tasks into one interface. System recovery, data migration, software updates and scheduled maintenance can all be set. Remote management options include the ability to update the BIOS without needing to locally enter an administrator password.