Lenovo IdeaCentre A310 review

Jonathan Bray September 3, 2010

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We’ve seen a veritable avalanche of Lenovo gear hit the PC Pro Labs of late, and continuing the flow is the company’s latest consumer all-in-one PC, the IdeaCentre A310.

It’s an unusual piece of kit. Rather than build the motherboard, processor, memory and ports in behind the screen, as with its bigger brother the Lenovo M90z, Lenovo has decided to pack everything into the A310’s base. That means it takes up a little more room on your desk than a standard all-in-one.

It might have ended up looking dowdy too, but in fact the A310 is far from that. With no components bolted on its rear, the screen measures just 19mm from front to back, as slim and svelte as any high-end consumer monitor we’ve seen.

The white and chrome colour scheme looks smart and, thanks to a handful of unusual design touches – a right-angled chrome elbow in the rear right corner of the base holds the screen sturdily in place, while the base is a trapezium rather than square – the A310 is like no other all-in-one we’ve seen.

Beyond the exotic looks, you’ll find the Lenovo A310 is a capable little thing. The 21.5in Full HD screen, for starters, is pretty darned good. A glossy finish gives images and movies deep contrast, while colours are vibrant and brightness good. Dab the touch sensitive menu control to the bottom right of the screen and you can control brightness, and swap between three preset colour profiles: “Movies”, “Text” and “Internet”. Unusually for a modern all-in-one PC, the A310 doesn’t have a touchscreen, but we didn’t miss it at all.

The processor is a mobile model – the Intel Core i3-350M – but has plenty of oomph, scoring 1.36 in our real world benchmarks, with the help of 4GB DDR3 RAM. The presence of only Intel HD graphics, however, means gaming at the native Full HD resolution of the screen will only be possible for the very least demanding titles; in our Crysis test at Low quality settings and 1,366 x 768 it only managed an average of 7.5fps. It’s plenty powerful enough for any HD content you might throw at it, though.

Elsewhere, there’s a reasonable selection of ports and connections too. On the left edge of the base are two USB 2 ports, a 3-in-1 card reader and 3.5mm microphone and headphone sockets (the latter doubling as a mini optical S/PDIF out). At the rear is a further pair of USB 2 sockets, accompanied by HDMI in and out, Gigabit Ethernet and an aerial connector for the integrated hybrid DVB-T/analogue tuner.

Inside, there’s single-band 802.11n and Bluetooth wireless on offer, plus a 500GB hard disk – large enough to store hundreds of hours of recorded TV and leave enough room for a sizeable music collection. Power is provided via a laptop-style adaptor.

It’s almost enough to make the Lenovo not only an attractive all-in-one desktop but also a complete media hub for a small bedroom or flat. But there are a few flies in the ointment. The first is the rather odd decision not to build in an optical drive. Instead, you get an external USB DVD writer in the box, which has the double disadvantage of looking clunky and occupying one of your four precious USB sockets.

Another irritant is the infrared receiver for the bundled media centre remote, an add-on occupying yet another USB socket, leaving just two free for peripherals of your own choosing. The wireless mouse and keyboard are a letdown, with the former feeling small, cramped and plasticky, and the latter rattling like a child’s toy when you type on it.

Finally, audio quality is poor: it doesn’t distort at any point, but output from the small stereo speakers mounted at the front edge of the base is far too quiet at maximum volume, and bass is entirely lacking.

What really kills the Lenovo A310 for us, however, is the price. At £764 exc VAT it’s poor value for money. Our current favourite budget all-in-one, the Acer Aspire Z5610 boasts a larger screen, a built-in optical drive, plus a similar level of specification and faster performance, for almost £60 exc VAT less.

So although we like the A310 in many ways we can’t bring ourselves to recommend it. It looks neat, with good performance and a decent array of features, but it doesn’t feel like a particularly well-thought-out package, and that price is just too high.