Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e review: Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e

The Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e is said to be one of the most energy-efficient PCs in the world. It is Energy Star 4.0 compliant, EPEAT Gold rated and has the same carbon footprint as a small daffodil. Well, possibly.

6.5

Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e

The Good

Low power consumption; small form factor.

The Bad

Design; little upgrade potential.

The Bottom Line

The Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e isn't a bad PC, but it's not great either. We like the fact that it uses less electricity than many of its peers, but the lack of expansion and slow performance is a major turnoff

For around £320, it's intended for businesses that want to lower their energy costs, or for energy-conscious users who want to be kinder to the environment.

Design
Some eco-friendly products just don't look right. It's funny then, that Lenovo -- creators of some of the ugliest PCs in the world -- should design its own energy-efficient desktop. The ThinkCentre A61e never stood a chance.

Most small form factor PCs (SFF) we've seen look great, and so should the A61e, in theory. It's lightweight, has the same approximate dimensions as a phonebook and can be positioned in either landscape or portrait orientation. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous IBM styling -- read: tacky black plastic and garish colour highlights -- will appeal to relatively few.

Still, the A61e has a very uncluttered design. It's small enough to fit on a desk, has two easily-accessible front-facing USB ports, plus front-facing mic and headphone jacks. At the rear there are four additional USB ports, three audio jacks and an Ethernet port.

It's pretty functional on the inside, too. The case allows tool-free access so memory can be added or removed within a matter of seconds. But that's all. The A61e has no room for expansion -- not even a spare SATA port. Once you've bought it, you can only add things via USB.

Features
It's easy to see why the ThinkCentre A61e would appeal to tree-hugging geeks. It uses low-power components including a 45W AMD Athlon X2 BE 2350 dual-core CPU. The 2.1GHz clock speed won't raise any eyebrows, but the chip is well-suited for use in quiet-running living room PCs -- or desktops for the hippy generation. Unlike the vast majority of computers, the CPU is so energy-efficient that it can be cooled by a passive heatsink -- there's no fan required.

Our review sample of the A61e came with 512MB of RAM. Most users would baulk at this and we wouldn't blame them. It's barely enough to run Windows XP let alone anything more demanding. This is of the PC2 5300 (667MHz) SODIMM laptop variety so you can't just add any spare desktop memory you have lying around. 

Although the A61e doesn't have a fan over the CPU, there is one situated at the left corner behind the hard drive. This draws cool air from the vent at the front of the chassis across the hard drive and heatsink, and expels it out the back of the PC. Unfortunately, the fan is 40mm so it makes an enormous racket. A larger fan, say, an 80mm part, would have a lower RPM, less noise, yet expel the same amount of air. We know it isn't easy to fit a large fan in a small chassis, but it's certainly possible with a bit of forethought.

Storage in the ThinkCentre A61e is limited to say the least. You get an 80GB Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, which is fine for most corporate users with network storage, but rubbish for anyone else. After you've installed all your applications and filled it up with holiday snaps, freeware and DivX movies, you'll have very little space to play with.

Graphics isn't the A61e's forte, but it's not completely inept in this department. It uses an ATI Radeon XD1200 series video card, which apart from it borrowing from main system memory, is nippy enough to play videos, allow basic image and video editing and even the odd game -- so long as it isn't graphically intensive.

Those who are fanatical about saving the environment or reducing their energy bills should note the ThinkCentre A61e is compatible with an optional solar power system. Lenovo recommends the Solar-PowerPAC Euro from www.solar4power.com.

Performance
Performance is where the ThinkCentre falls down slightly. It's one of the slowest desktop PCs we've tested, scoring 3,420 in PCMark 2005. For reference, the Evesham Mini PC Plus scored a similar 3,232, and is a far cuter -- if not necessarily as energy efficient -- example of a small form factor PC. Graphics was also nothing to write home about. It scored 604 in 3DMark 2006, which was in line with our expectations.

One thing that did impress us was the quietness of the PC. Aside from the tiny exhaust fan, which can be overbearing when the PC is doing something intensive, the A61e is a very quiet machine.

Conclusion
It's difficult to recommend the ThinkCentre A61e. Yes, it's energy-efficient, but it's also slow, difficult to upgrade and isn't pretty to look at. It might be a good bet for small to medium businesses, but home users should look elsewhere.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday