Review: Lenovo's IdeaCentre K210 Extreme Power Desktop

With a performance benchmark Geekbench score of 4173, this desktop PC has got spunk. The K210 has Intel's Core 2 Quad CPU at 2.4 GHz. This model is a step up from Lenovo's lower-end K210 Photo and Music model. The default 500GB hard drive and 4GB memory is more than enough to run Vista Home Premium and scored a decent Windows Experience Index rating of 3.6 within the operating system.

Lenovo has taken some aspects of its ThinkStation business-class machines and applied them to this series of desktops like the "Tool-less" design, which allows for tool-free access inside the machine and for easy hardware upgrades. The interior chassis is roomy and components are easy to add and remove. We also liked the fact that once the cover was off, the chassis edges were rounded and not finger-slicing sharp as in other desktop designs.

Ports are plentiful. The rear panel has four USB ports, PS/2 ports, DB-9 and parallel ports, as well as connections for DVI, S-video and VGA. The front panel has two additional USB ports as well as a 16-in-1 media card reader.

The K210 has a sleek silver and black finish to it and is snazzier looking than Lenovo's business-class PCs. Included is an antimicrobial keyboard, as well as an HD DVD/Blu-Ray burner. The graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GE, a decent enough card that has some 3D capabilities, but gamers may want to consider an upgrade to a higher-end graphics card.

Lenovo has thrown in some other goodies. The bundled software is light on bloat, but comes with some useful applications like Trend Micro's PC-cillin. The Lenovo Vantage Technology Start Center features Healthcare Software, which assists an end-user in configuring an ergonomically-friendly environment using the included Lenovo Bright Eye Camera and a feature called Bright Vision. Bright Vision will help protect against eye strain, will alert a user if he or she has been close to the display for too long and can automatically adjust the display brightness to a comfortable level in relation to the ambient brightness. The Bright Eye Camera is only available on select K series models.

The Start Center also has several system maintenance options that are "one touch." When the PC is restarted, users can perform a variety of maintenance tasks by clicking F2: run antivirus, restore the system partition to Factory Backup, back up data and load drivers. There's a bundled application called VeriFace, which can use facial recognition to sign a user into the machine.

Using a Logitech Webcam, the facial recognition software worked really well. Registering a face for security enrollment took a scant few seconds, and the K210 was able to log into Vista using a scan of the registered face on the first try. This feature worked much better on the K210 than on a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop the Test Center reviewed last year.

This is a system that will serve as a powerful multimedia machine for the home, but could also suffice for general business applications. At a starting list price of $649 and backed by Lenovo's standard warranty and support, it's also a relatively affordable offering for its class from a company that keeps churning out winning PCs.