Lenovo Ideacentre H215 Series 08931EU Desktop (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Pros:
Very low price
Attractive glossy case
Great expansion possibilities
Cons:
Integrated graphics architecture
Wired mouse & keyboard
Includes bloatware
No WiFi
Overall:
I'm very happy with my purchase. We had a laptop go dead in my house and needed a quick'n'cheap replacement. Benchmarks online indicated that the new Radeon 3000 graphics chipset was very good as far as integrated graphics go. Even though this computer had less storage, RAM, and an inferior CPU for the price to many competing computers, that was enough to make me go with this one.
Quick and easy, out of the box, turned on, it was ready to go in very short order. It comes with a 15-day McAfee installation that needs to get shown the digital door, and a variety of Lenovo-branded applications that are likely useless, but at least they're harmless. For such a cheap computer, this is a very low level of bloatware. I would have liked a wireless mouse and keyboard considering how cheap they are, but what they offer isn't bad. The integrated memory card reader is a nice touch, but the lack of WiFi was sorely missed.
320GB of storage is fine, the optical drive is an optical drive, and the memory is good. It comes with Windows 7 x64, but only has two memory slots and as such maxes at 4GB of memory with 2GB included in one of those slots. Hopefully, memory sticks with greater than 2GB will arrive soon, thus allowing you to take advantage of the x64 architecture and install more than 4GB of memory. Even if that never happens, though, 4GB is enough to keep you happy for at least five years, and very likely more.
Performance is as expected. It pushes a 1920x1080 monitor perfectly well. Online Flash videos play in high-def without issue. Adobe Lightroom runs smoothly. This would do well as a media PC for your television setup since the fans inside are very quiet.
What this computer will NOT do is play games. I figured it would be comparable to the five-year-old laptop (that came with desktop gaming hardware), but it does not. World of Warcraft is entirely unplayable at the monitor's native resolution. You will NEED an external video card. This has the added bonus of freeing up the 256MB of RAM that the video architecture hijacks. Stock, the computer turns out ~1,100 in 3DMark06. Very good for this price range, but not good enough.
It's here that I'm so glad I went with this computer. The motherboard inside has lots of room to breath and everything is easily accessible. Better still is that it has a PCI slot, two PCI-Express X1 slots, and a PCI-Express X16 slot. Wow! Usually, discount computers skimp anywhere they can, and expansion slots on the motherboard are some of the first things to go. Totally kickass. Also kickass, installing the new video card automatically disables the integrated video card. No need to go into the BIOS to disable it. Is this new? I haven't been building computers in awhile. I still remember DIP switches and jumpers. Sigh. Those were the days.
Moving on. Consider before you buy a video card, though. I bought a Radeon 5750 to guarantee Warcraft nirvana and it requires a 500 watt power supply, where the included PSU is only 180W. You can buy a silent 500W PSU for $35, but that's more money, and if budget is a consideration, every dollar counts. Still, I think it's worth it. The overall component choices made by Lenovo are quite solid, and with an extra $165 spent on the video card and power supply, the computer can run World of Warcraft at max graphical settings at the monitor's native resolution and maintain framerates above 30fps. The 3DMark06 score is now ~12,000. With a little money spent now and then, this super-cheap computer could remain modern and usable for many years.
You can find this computer for about $20 cheaper ($359) at BestBuy. Just thought you'd like to know.

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Safe, Fun, Family Computing. Fun is non-stop multimedia from a PC that takes care of all the family\'s needs - the affordable Lenovo H215 desktop computer. For homework, family finances, editing photo albums or watching movies, the Lenovo H215 desktop computer is the ideal family PC. The AMD Athlon II X2 processor combined with plenty of DDR3 memory makes the Lenovo H215 powerful and flexible enough to handle most all home computing tasks. Plus the Lenovo Rescue System provides peace of mind by making data backup and recovery simple and easy. Best of all, it\'s from Lenovo, makers of the award-winning ThinkPad and legendary service and support.

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