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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo C325 Review: An Unimpressive All-in-One, All Around

It's always nice when PC makers cram above-average components into budget-friendly, space-saving, energy-efficient machines. This is not one of those machines, however. The Lenovo C325 all-in-one PC costs just $499 (as of April 10, 2012), but this is definitely a case of "you get what you pay for."

Our review model came with an AMD E-450 processor, which explains the system's performance scores--though the dual-core E-450 packs decent integrated HD graphics, this processor is designed for small laptops and netbooks. The C325 also has 4GB of RAM, 500GB of hard-drive space, and built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and it runs the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

Performance

The C325's performance is fairly weak. On PCWorld's WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, this all-in-one posted a measly score of 45, which means that it's about 55 percent slower than our testing model. Of course, our testing model has a desktop-class processor (an Intel Core i5-2500K), but that's no excuse--45 is one of the lowest WorldBench 7 scores we've seen.

Graphics performance on the C325 is nearly nonexistent, too. The integrated AMD Radeon HD 6320 graphics hardware is okay for casual multimedia consumption, but not much else. In PCWorld's Dirt 3 graphics tests, the C325 managed an unplayable frame rate of 16.2 frames per second (medium quality, 1024 by 768 pixels). In other words, the C325 is a gaming machine only if you're a Minesweeper aficionado.

Design

Housed in an all-metal chassis, the C325 sports a matte 20-inch screen with a slim, shiny black bezel. A 0.3-megapixel webcam is located at the top center, and Lenovo's logo sits at the bottom center. The power button occupies the right side, while screen/volume adjustment buttons and a screen-off button reside on the left. Slightly curved silver speakers jut out from underneath the bottom portion of the bezel, and the entire system sits on a sturdy, tiltable stand.

On the left side of the system, directly behind the screen, are a few convenience ports: a multiformat card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, and microphone and headphone jacks. The right side of the AIO houses the tray-loading DVD-RW drive. The rest of the ports--four USB 2.0 ports, one gigabit ethernet connection, and a lock slot--are on the back of the machine, easily accessible in the lower-left corner. Nothing too fancy, but since this is a budget AIO with a netbook processor, it'll do.

Screen, Speakers, and Peripherals

The C325's 20-inch screen has a native resolution of 1600 by 900 pixels, and is unremarkable in every way. It's bright enough, but the matte texture leaves images and text looking soft and slightly out of focus. Individual pixels are clearly visible, and video playback struggles. Blacks are sort of gray, colors look washed out, and high-def streaming video with dark scenes looks sort of 16-bit, with visible color gradation. Our review model didn't come with a touchscreen, but you can get a touchscreen on the C325 for around $50 more.

The speakers on the C325 are like laptop speakers--pretty bad, but useful if you just want to, well, listen to something. The two 3-watt speakers are located directly below the screen and face forward. They're acceptably loud, though you will hear some fuzziness at higher volume levels. Sound is generally muffled, and lacks bass and fullness. Lenovo does include SRS Premium Sound enhancement, which offers a mediocre surround-sound simulation.

As for peripherals, the C325 comes with a very basic keyboard and mouse, both of which are USB-wired. The keyboard features flat, Chiclet-style keys that have a slightly rounded bottom and a soft-touch feel. The keys are comfortable to type on, and offer surprisingly good feedback despite their soft-touch nature. Also included on the keyboard are volume controls and a silver button that opens Lenovo's Vantage Technology software with one touch. The optical mouse, equipped with two buttons and a scrollwheel, is slightly jumpy and oversensitive. It's also very narrow--a little too skinny, even for my small hands.

Bottom Line

Lenovo's C325 is simply unimpressive all around. It's boring to look at, it's a poor performer, and multimedia looks and sounds average at best (and awful at worst).

But all is not lost--the C325 has a small footprint, both physically and environmentally, thanks to its decently sleek design and energy-efficient netbook-class processor. Plus, it's fairly cheap. So if you're looking for a budget-friendly, space-friendly, and environment-friendly computer--and you don't really care about performance--this might be the all-in-one for you. I think it would make a good secondary PC (especially if you snag the touchscreen option) for a kitchen or for a child's room.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Envizen Home Roam TV Review: Tote Your TV Around the House

Envizen Home Roam TV has a simple purpose—to let you watch any home entertainment center video on a small, low-res display you can carry around the house—and it gets the job done for a modest $160. But the gotchas are so numerous—starting with no ability to control the remote device—that it’s difficult to recommend it.

Home Roam TV is basically a two-piece kit. A small transmitter box connects to any media source with AV (composite audio-video) out ports, and sends the signal wirelessly to a portable 7-inch display. The transmitter has one set of standard AV ports for a direct connection (using a provided cable) between the transmitter and a primary media source (most likely a TV or cable/satellite box), and three additional ports that accept a single-pin adapter cable to which you attach a standard AV cable, so that you can connect up to four AV sources, total. Envizen includes one adapter cable, but you must buy additional cables yourself.

The display unit is fairly lightweight (1 pound) and, while not tablet-skinny, its 0.9-inch thickness certainly does not make it super-bulky, either. It has a headphone jack as well as its own auxiliary input port, so you can use it as a monitor by directly connecting it to a media source using the adapter and AV cables. Buttons for selecting the video source (corresponding to the inputs on the transmitter) are conveniently situated on the bezel, to the right of the display.

Setup was a breeze. The transmitter and the display’s receiver communicate over a peer-to-peer 2.4GHz connection—this gadget does not depend on a home network, and Envizen pairs the transmitter and display at the factory. I was up and running with Home Roam TV in a matter of minutes once I screwed in included antennas to the transmitter and display, connected the transmitter to my cable box, and plugged the transmitter and receiver into their power supplies. (The display has a rechargeable battery, so you can use it without its power supply for a couple of hours.)

Now for the drawbacks. Image quality wasn’t great, in part because of the limitations of composite video output—Home Roam TV’s analog hookups obviously can’t capture the pristine digital signal that my cable box sends to my big-screen set via HDMI—but also because the device downsizes the high-res image to fit its 480-by-234-pixel display. That's very low resolution, even for a small screen.

The wireless transmission also introduces problems: Home Roam TV uses the same wireless frequency as many Wi-Fi networks (802.11b/g and 2.4GHz 802.11n), Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens, and some cordless phones, which means the signal is highly prone to interference, especially in densely populated areas. This can degrade video quality, and I did in fact notice some stuttering and frame loss in my tests in downtown San Francisco.

Even if you’re content with mediocre video, you might be frustrated by the device's complete inability to control the media source—in other words, you can’t change channels, watch on-demand content, switch to a DVR built into a connected cable box, start or stop a DVD or Blu-ray Disc, or do anything but watch whatever the media source was playing when last you were in front of it with a remote close at hand. Home Roam TV does have its own volume controls, but that’s it. And even those volume controls don’t work if you choose to use the display unit as an auxiliary monitor.

Home Roam TV might meet some specific needs—say, for a sports buff who has to leave the room for a few minutes and doesn't want to miss a single moment of the big game—but its poor video quality and lack of remote control features make it a nonstarter for prolonged use. Too many other ways are available to access TV content (Monsoon's Vulkano line comes to mind) that don't demand so many compromises.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here