Lenovo H520s

With all-in-one PCs growing in popularity because of their space-saving designs, there's also been a correspondingly burgeoning market for traditional desktop PCs with slimmer profiles. Enter the Lenovo Essential H520s ($449 direct), a desktop that can discreetly fit in some pretty tight workstations thanks to a compact profile that is, in Lenovo's estimation, roughly half the size of a traditional desktop. The H520s can be configured in several ways, and our review unit's configuration landed it under $500. It's a decent performer and most of its faults, like the absence of USB 3.0 connectivity and the inclusion of an older, second-generation "Sandy Bridge" processor, are forgivable when taking its price into consideration. That said, though, there are smaller and more forward-looking entry-level desktop PCs that are better choices for small businesses looking to save space and boost productivity.

Design and Features
The H520s is housed in a chassis that measures 12 by 4.1 by 14.2 inches (HWD). It's slightly taller and wider than the Acer Aspire AX1930-UR10P and significantly larger than the Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p Tiny, but slim and compact enough to discreetly fit in the even the most cramped desk spaces. The H520's black matte-finished chassis is fairly subdued, though it sports a handsome front panel that juxtaposes a brushed metallic finish with touches of glossy black plastic and thin, silvery strips. A vertical slot-loading DVD burner is built into the brushed aluminum portion, while the upper plastic section houses a media card reader, dual USB 2.0 ports, and audio-out and microphone-in jacks. The upper lip of this area is also where the power button is located. The rear of the H520s houses four USB 2.0 ports, VGA and HDMI outputs, an Ethernet port, and audio-out and microphone-in jacks. Overall, the H520s has a decent port selection, though two of its USB 2.0 ports will be occupied by the included wired keyboard and mouse. Moreover, the H520s lacks more forward-looking ports, like USB 3.0, which can be found in the Lenovo M92p Tiny. Still, the inclusion of an HDMI output is a nice touch that isn't found in all systems within this price range, like the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71.

Though it's not nearly as diminutive as the Acer AX1930-UR10P, the H520s has roughly the same capacity for internal expansion. The system's 6GB of DDR3 RAM occupies both slots on the motherboard; there's no additional space to add any new hard or optical drives. There's an available half-height PCIe x16 slot and, though there are three free PCIe x1 slots on the motherboard, two are blocked by the H520s's power supply. Unlike the Acer AX1930-UR10P and Lenovo M92p Tiny, though, the H520s does feature integrated Wi-Fi, leaving users free to add, say, a half-height, low-power graphics card in what is otherwise limited PCIe real estate.

The H520's 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive mercifully comes with less preloaded software than one would expect in a sub-$500 system. With surprisingly few exceptions (namely a Google toolbar and Windows Live Essential), most of the preloaded software serves a useful purpose, like full versions of McAfee Antivirus Pro and the CyberLink Power2Go burning suite. There's also a Starter version of Office 2010?which only features Word and Excel, and with limited functionality.

Performance
Our review unit came equipped with a 3GHz Intel Core i5-2320 "Sandy Bridge" second-generation processor and an integrated Intel HD 2000 GPU, and was an overall decent performer. Intel HD Graphics 2000 isn't Direct X11 compatible, however, so the H520s couldn't run the Lost Planet 2 DX11 or 3DMark 11benchmark tests. This is fairly common among entry-level systems, like the Acer AX1930-UR10P and Lenovo Edge 71, so it's not terribly surprising. The H520s's PCMark7 score of 2,864 points trumped the rest of its class, edging past the Lenovo Edge 71 (2,826 points) by a whisker while outperforming both the Lenovo M92p Tiny (2,491 points) and Acer AX1930-UR10P (2,371 points) by a wider margin.

The H520s excelled in our multimedia tests. It completed our Handbrake video encoding test in a class-leading 1 minute 21 seconds, outpacing the Lenovo M92p Tiny (1:30) by a narrow margin and easily besting the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q180 (7:24). Likewise, its CineBench R11.5 score of 4.9 points breezed past the competition, including the Lenovo M92p Tiny (3.24) and Acer AX1930-UR10P (3.2). Our Photoshop CS5 test was the sole instance in the multimedia arena where the H520s didn't come out on top, as its time of 3 minutes 39 seconds fell behind the Lenovo M92p Tiny (3:21) and was two seconds short of the Acer AX1930-UR10P (3:37).

Like the rest of its class, the H520s no gaming rig, so it's no surprise that it scored 13 frames per second (fps) in medium-quality settings and 2fps in very high-quality settings. The scores were were on par with the those of the Acer AX1930-UR10P (12fps and 2fps, respectively) and slightly below those of the Lenovo M92p Tiny (18fps and 2 fps, respectively).

The Lenovo H520s combines decent performance and good value into a compact chassis. Still, it's not as forward looking or as compact as the current Editors' Choice for entry-level business desktop PCs, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p Tiny, and for that reason the latter remains the system to beat.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Lenovo H520s with several other desktops side by side.

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