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A living room media PC, with its own projector

The Lenovo 610S stores and streams movies, and also plays them via a wireless projector.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Dan Ackerman
2 min read

Small-chassis computers can get hooked up to desktop monitors or to big-screen TVs, but the Lenovo Ideacentre 610S has an even easier way to share your videos, photos or games -- it comes with a detachable projector that sits right on top of the triangular chassis for turning any room into an impromptu home theater.

That's especially interesting because desktop computers have been trying to infiltrate the media room for many years, with only modest success. Some home theater enthusiasts have hooked computers (such as the Acer Revo One, Apple Mac Mini and Alienware Alpha) up to their media cabinets in order to store and stream video, and the most hard-core of gamers skip big-name game consoles in favor of more powerful, more flexible gaming PCs connected to TVs or projectors.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

The gray pyramid-like shape of the 610S looks more like a piece of networking equipment or a home security camera than a desktop PC, and the projector attachment fits right on top, or can be placed nearby for the perfect angle/distance from your black wall or projector screen. Lenovo says the projector can throw an image up to 110 inches in size (diagonally), at 720p resolution and 220 lumens. That's decent for casual viewing, but this isn't going to scratch your 4K itch.

Inside the desktop chassis, you can get up to a current-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, up to 16GB of RAM and either 2TB of standard hard drive or 128GB of SSD storage, and even some graphics power, in the form of an Nvidia GeForce 750 Ti graphics card. That's not enough for more than basic gaming, but this is more of a movie machine than a gaming rig.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Aside from this clever desktop, also new to Lenovo's mainstream consumer lineup are some new laptops, the Ideapad Y710S and the Ideapad 700. The Y710S is a slim 13-inch clamshell with a 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution display and up to a current-gen Intel Core i7 CPU. It weighs 2.6 pounds, which is a bit less than a 13-inch MacBook Air. The IdeaPad 700 comes in 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch versions (making it one of the few new 17-inch laptops at CES). Both also have 1080p displays, but weigh a good deal more, 5.1 pounds for the 15-inch, 5.9 pounds for the 17-inch. But, you do get the option for Nvidia GeForce 940M and 950M graphics.

Lenovo Ideacentre 610S (pictures)

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The Lenovo Ideacentre 610S is coming to the US in June, starting at $849, which includes the projector. The Ideapad 700 and Ideapad Y710S are coming in June and July, respectively, and all three will start at $799.

See our complete CES 2016 coverage here.