Ever since entering the all-in-one market early last year with the IdeaCentre A600, Lenovo has been looking at expanding its offerings to reach different types of users. The IdeaCentre A Series, for example, is billed as their 'designer' class product meant for the living room, whereas the equally eye-catching B Series promises a little more oomph with a quad-core CPU and discrete graphics, and the ThinkCentre A70z targets business users looking to save some desk space.
Today we'll be taking a look at yet another family of all-in-one desktops from Lenovo, the C Series. This entry-level range is comprised of the Atom-based C300 and the AMD Athlon-equipped C315 – which itself is available in 40221FU or 40221GU variants. Sitting on our test bench is the latter, which for an extra $100 nets you an additional 2GB of memory (4GB in total), a larger 500GB hard drive and a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium.
Otherwise hardware specifications are identical to those of its sibling, including the AMD Athlon II X2 250U CPU operating at 1.6GHz, ATI HD 4530 M92-M+ graphics, integrated Wi-Fi, TV tuner and speakers, a webcam, optical drive and a 20-inch Lenovo NaturalTouch multi-touch panel. The C315 also gets Lenovo's suite of touch friendly multimedia apps like PowerCinema and AutoCollage, so you can start taking advantage of this feature out of the box.
The system ships with a wired PS/2 keyboard and USB mouse, which detracts a little from the clean look of an all-in-one desktop. An infrared receiver with IR cable and a wireless media remote control are also included. The media remote is pretty basic but should be plenty adequate for controlling the integrated TV tuner.
Lenovo touts the $849 C315 as the perfect PC solution for tight spaces and budgets. Read on as we take a closer look at what this all-in-one desktop has to offer.