Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 Review

Lenovo recently launched their new IdeaCentre A600 desktop, and I was one of the few invited to try it out first hand.

As you can see in the image to the right, the A600 is an absolute beauty. The A600 is not aimed at the regular desktop user, but at the high-end user who wants a sexy PC that can be kept in the living room and used as a regular HDTV as well. As a direct competition to the Apple iMac range, the Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 offers a whole lot of new features that are currently not available in any other competitive desktop offering. The entire package consists only of four units — a 21.5″ Full High Definition (HD at 1080p, 1920×1080) LCD monitor, a wireless optical mouse with on-the-fly DPI change capability, a super-sleek keyboard that also has a trackpad (the ones seen on notebooks), and a unique remote control with some amazing features (more on that later).

The 21.5″ Full HD display is an amazing monitor with beautiful representation of contrast ratios and rich colour. The display also has a feature where it emits a sound warning the user that he is sitting too close to the display! The display also has touch controls that are built into it. Besides that, it has got everything that you find on any other monitor.

If you were wondering where the “CPU” or cabinet is and why it’s not in the picture shown, that’s because there isn’t any! As I said before, the A600 is a direct competitor to the Apple iMac range that has the whole package built into the monitor. This stunning beauty has everything that it needs to run built into the back of the 21.5″ display, and yet, it still measures an astounding 1″ at its thinnest, and a cool 2.2″ at it’s thickest!

The A600 does come with a hybrid analog and digital TV Tuner. How does the idea of you watching your favourite sport in your room, and the next hour your wife watching her cooking show in the kitchen, sound to you? I wasn’t sure of labelling this as a desktop first, because the A600 can be picked up in one hand and taken off to another room or house! In spite of it having everything in the display, the A600 is quite light weight and completely portable. It belongs to a category that’s neither a desktop nor a laptop!

Wait, don’t think that the best part about the A600 is over, because the remote control bundled with it makes for a whole new series of “talk”. The sleek 4-in-1 remote control can be used to make Skype calls over VoIP! The remote can also be used as a wireless mouse that’s either controlled by the buttons present on it, or by just moving it up and down in the air! That’s right, move the remote up and the mouse pointer moves up, and so on. But wait, it also features a ‘motion sensor’ with which you can use the remote to play games on the A600, just like how you do on the Nintendo Wii. Tennis anyone? Did I mention it can also be used as a simple remote control to control Windows Media Centre? =)

Lenovo has not forgotten the audiophiles among us. They’ve included a decent 2.1 channel Dolby-certified home theater system that can R.O.C.K the house. =)

Most would probably say that Lenovo must have sacrificed on the performance to achieve such a sleek design, but NO! The A600 features a 2GHz Intel Core2 Duo T6400 Processor, 640GB of hard disk space, an ATI Radeon graphics card with DX10 support, and — wait for it — 2GB of DDR3 memory! How’s that for blasting your way through Crysis?

Lenovo has also added their VeriFace application that allows you to use your facial image as the password to the A600. A one-touch recovery system that features Norton Antivirus is also present. This allows you to backup, recover, and/or perform antivirus scans without having to boot into Windows. In addition, around 6 USB ports, a Firewire port, 802.11n wireless networking, and a 6-in-1 media card reader are also part of the package.

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 costs Rs. 69,500/- (inclusive of all taxes) in India. A very good deal.