Lenovo IdeaCentre B500 review

If you want to play 3D games, what really counts is your graphics card. In this case, that’s an ATI Radeon HD 5570. It’s not blisteringly fast, but does an adequate job on most games. We got a score of 27.4fps in CoD4, which can be tweaked to provide completely smooth gaming. Crysis is more of a challenge. At 1,680×1,050 we recorded a sluggish 14fps, and we were unable to obtain a playable frame rate by dropping the resolution. The 5570 is a good multimedia card, though, capable of playing Blu-Ray discs if you have an external drive. It can even upscale DVDs to a full 1080p resolution.

The B500 comes with a matched wireless Bluetooth mouse, keyboard and Windows Media Center remote control set. The mouse is compact but comfortable. The keyboard looks more like a laptop layout than a standard desktop keyboard, but has a full character set and numeric keypad. The remote control can be used as an air mouse if you wish to navigate your desktop from the sofa.

The B500 is a surprisingly effective jack-of-all-trades. You can use it as a TV, watch DVDs on it, play less demanding 3D games or just browse the web. It’s easy to use and we even got used to the orange-and-chrome styling. However, for £850, you can get a vastly more powerful desktop PC. If you’re short on space and need a PC to fit into a student bedsit, this is easily the most useful all-in-one we’ve seen. If space isn’t an issue, we recommend buying a bigger and more powerful PC.