Desktop PC Review: Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150

For a home user looking for a special-purpose desktop PC, Lenovo's IdeaCentre Q150 takes the lessons of netbooks -- small, not a lot of CPU power, quiet and fanless -- to their logical conclusion. The Q150 is a small box -- about 6 by 7 by 1 inch, the size of an old Walkman CD player -- with a bunch of ports. You can think of it as a netbook minus the keyboard, touchpad, display, webcam, microphone and speakers.

Translation: it's a very compact, low-end desktop computer -- simply connect it to a keyboard, mouse, display, and other peripherals, and you're in business.

You can also think of it as a cross between a pure nettop and a living-room PC. Lacking a DVD or Blu-ray drive and a TV tuner, it's not really a home theater PC (HTPC). But it's a nifty way to add a PC to your home theater.

What Lenovo calls an "ultra-small form factor" PC weighs about a pound and two-thirds and includes a small base to let the unit stand upright on a surface -- desk, media center shelf, kitchen counter -- like an external hard drive. The Q150 also has VESA mounting brackets to simply hang it off the back of any flat screen that can accommodate it.

Inside, the Q150 includes 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, four USB 2.0 ports, an S/PDIF connector for digital audio supporting up to 5.1-channel sound, a VGA port, HDMI video/audio port with 1080p HD support, a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port and audio line-in and line-out.

Setup, as with most modern desktops, is quick and simple: 1) Unpack; 2) Plug in video, mouse and keyboard cables; 3) Connect the Q150's notebook-style power supply to the computer and a wall socket; 4) Optionally connect audio and Ethernet; 5) Turn on; up comes Windows. The system found my Wi-Fi network straightaway.

Plain or Fancy

Lenovo offers two Q150 models. The more bare-bones nettop version ($399, now on sale for $349 on Lenovo's site) combines a single-core Atom D410 CPU, Intel integrated graphics, a 160GB hard drive, and VGA out; Win XP Home Edition is the OS.

My test unit ($499, on sale for $399), more suited for HTPC duty, was maxed out with Intel's dual-core Atom D510, 2GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and Nvidia Ion graphics with HDMI out as well as VGA. It ran Windows 7 Home Premium 32.

Both come with a two-thirds-size USB keyboard and USB mouse. A wireless multimedia remote -- a palm-sized, thumb-typing keyboard with trackball -- is a $60 option for living-room PC'ers.

I don't have a big (or even medium-sized) HDTV to hook the Q150 into, so I've been using it as a regular PC in my home office, connecting to my trackball, keyboard, and 32-inch LCD via my desktop KVM switch. (Unlike with some other Windows 7 systems, there haven't been any problems using the keyboard and mouse through the KVM switch.)

For the most part, the Lenovo's performance is netbook-like -- a bit poky on startup and depending on which or how many applications were running. That's not a complaint so much as an observation; no one's going to mistake an Intel Atom processor for a Core i5. For light productivity apps and surfing the Web, performance wasn't a concern. Web video looked fine and ran without a hitch.

If you're thinking of buying a system to add just enough computing power to your media center -- enough for checking email, browsing the Web and YouTube, running Microsoft Office, maybe some light gaming -- this is an easy way to do it. Ditto if you want to add a computer somewhere that there's a flat-screen, HDMI-equipped TV but not room for a regular desktop or even notebook PC -- or even to provide a computer to a relative who's short on space and wants only the basics.

For anything more than that, this isn't a match. The Q150 is a computer suited for relatively specific types of uses. If you want more power, get something with more power -- which in turn will be larger or more expensive or both.

If you have a VGA or HDMI display and want adequate computer power in a form factor that's small and quiet, the little IdeaCentre is worth considering. Just keep in mind that it's a niche solution, and do look at your alternatives.

Or wait a little, and get a TV or entertainment system that's got a nettop built into it.