Lenovo H320 slim desktop calls “an affordable family PC”, and in some ways, consider it the computer equivalent of the midrange minivan. At $ 600, it’s not too pricey, its performance is commensurate with similarly priced systems, and is light on extra features except for a Blu-ray reader / DVD ± RW combo drive. That said, its small form factor (which Lenovo is asking is half the size of a standard desktop) and a sharp-looking design is striking enough to H320 between its peers.

The H320 is charcoal-colored, mini-tower, metal chassis is only 4 inches wide, stands just 11.5 inches high and is about 15.2 inches deep. Its slender footprint makes it a good candidate for squeezing into tight quarters, but keep in mind that you need to leave a few inches of breathing space to the left of the system where the vents are located.
A number of conveniently located ports are positioned on the front of the system. Find an 8-format media card reader, two USB 2.0 ports and microphone and headphone jacks. The front panel is made of glossy black plastic that increased silver strip running downward, the upper part of the strip is the eject button for the vertically mounted optical drive. An illuminated power button on the top front of the case, as an illuminated logo below the Lenovo card reader, add extra flair.

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The back of the system is more utilitarian, with a decent collection of connections: two PS / 2 ports, HDMI and VGA video output, four USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and three audio ports that supports up to 5.1 channel surround sound. Located at the bottom are two expansion slots, one of which was filled with a discrete graphics card that both HDMI and VGA video-out ports.
If you’ve been keeping count, that’s a total of four video-out ports: two HDMI and two VGA. Only the video ports on the graphics card actually works when you plug in a monitor unwanted or integrated system of video-out ports, would you scratching your head trying to figure out why nothing appeared on the monitor. H320 is the motherboard has an integrated video-out capabilities, but is disabled by the presence of the add-in graphics card. Technically-minded individuals will automatically know what ports to plug in their monitors, but less tech savvy people might not. As such it would have been nice if Lenovo had placed plastic covers over the failed ports-as-party system do so to hide them and to remove any possible confusion.

If you happen to have the technical chops to make your own upgrades and repairs to do, the H320 areuser accessible parts, but you will have to work hard to most of them. After removing the three screws and slide the side panel, you are greeted by a tight space, with the only easily accessible area that the x16 and x1 PCI Express slots. Finally, the x16 graphics card, while the x1 slot is empty, note that any card that you plan on installing in either slot can not be more than about 2.5 cm and 6 cm long. To go to another room inside the case, you need the system to detach and then the two screws holding the Blu-ray proximity reader / DVD ± RW combo drive in place. With the optical drive removed from the road, you can finally access the 640GB hard drive and system memory. Three of the four DIMM slots each have 2GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM memory modules in them, for a total of 6GB.
Although the interior of the H320 is close to the claustrophobic, almost anorexic frame, the keyboard is bundled everything, but measuring a full 18 inches wide. The keyboard feels a bit thin and has a bright orange button in the upper right, labeled “LVT”. Pressing this button while the system runs under Windows launches the Lenovo Vantage Technology (LVT) Startcenter utility, which is Launch a program bar appears on the Windows desktop.

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The LVT tool is not adjustable and it really useful little shortcuts (other than for CyberLink Power2Go disc burning app and Lenovo Driver & Application Installation Utility). There are even two shortcuts for apps that you can not even, at least not with how the H320 ships. One is the Lenovo System Dynamic Brightness app, which is supposed to automatically adjust the brightness of the screen, depending on the current ambient space. The other app is Lenovo’s Eye Distance System, which is believed to be an automatic warning when you sit too close to the screen. H320 is the documentation states that these apps only work with a Lenovo PC camera does not come with the system. A spokesman for Lenovo, Lenovo cameras while only officially supported, the cheap oem software also works with other manufacturers’ cameras. Unfortunately, we were unable to either app to work with our Logitech webcam to get.
The LVT tool also includes a promising-looking shortcut for “OneKey recovery”, but when you select, all it does is tell you that pressing F2 when the system starts launching the Lenovo Rescue System. Although the Lenovo Rescue System is a useful boot-level utility that lets you do things like recovery discs and the system of a backup or restore factory settings, placing a shortcut in the Windows LVT tool that actually does not do seems a waste of space. We find many of these bars manufacturer’s program to be of dubious value (particularly if they are not adapted, like this one), and we usually finish it off. Additional bundled software includes InterVideo WinDVD 8 for watching Blu-ray and DVD movies, and a 60-day trial of McAfee Security Center.

If a family PC, the H320 delivers excellent performance on several fronts. For starters, like making videos is your thing, the H320 showed a lot of promise on our Windows Media Encoder test, where they are our 4 minutes and 15-second test video converted just 3 minutes and 16 seconds. This level of performance puts the H320 in the same field as the Acer Aspire AM3400-U2052, which took 3:23 to complete the same task. When ripping CD’s is more your speed, the H320 is also because the system made short work of our 11-testing MP3s, into AAC files in just 2:36 on our iTunes Conversion Test. That is almost 20 seconds faster than the AM3400-U2052 could gather at 2:57. While a robust system would be even less time to churn through the media-creation-type jobs to take, you’d have to pay for that extra time-saving benefits Garner. As the H320, AM3400-U2052, and other similarly priced systems offer a good balance between performance and price.
Take the Acer Aspire Predator AG5900-U3092. Although costs nearly twice as much as the H320, the AG5900-U3092′s iTunes conversion time of 2:40 is similar to that of H320. This just goes to show that sometimes a “powerful” processor will not necessarily net you faster performance, the H320 is powered by a 3.2-GHz Intel Core i5-650, whereas AG5900, U3092 uses a higher purpose, 2.9GHz Core i7-870. In this particular case, our iTunes test is more sensitive to the actual speed of the processor, rather than things like the number of CPU cores, or the amount of cache.

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Switching gears back to Windows Media Encoder, however, AG5900 and U3092-time is a 2 minutes and 9 seconds is more than one minute faster than the H320. This applies to the overall performance of the system and, as measured by our holistic PCMark Vantage suite. The AG5900-U3092-score of 8827 attracted more than H320 for the score of 7001. But make no mistakes about showing the H320 are the performance is fast enough for many mainstream applications and tasks.
If you lump 3D gaming in that equation, however, the H320 is too short. For many, a family also means PC gaming, but you’re just not going to get at these relatively low price. Although the H320 uses a discrete graphics card Nvidia GeForce-310-best would be to take a meager 9.3 frames per second (fps) on our demanding DX9-based Far Cry 2-test at a resolution of 1680 x1, 050. By contrast, the AG5900-U3092 is more robust processor and ATI Radeon HD 5850 graphics card have the moxie (and much higher price tag to go along with it) to deliver the gaming goods.

The AG5900-U3092 managed 75.8 fps at 1680 Far Cry 2 x1, 050 in the more demanding DX10 mode, pins (not surprisingly) as a more powerful gaming machine than the H320. That said, if you’re willing to drop down the resolution and graphics settings, the H320 should be able to handle less demanding gaming titles like World of Warcraft or SIMS. But if you have a relative who is enthusiastic about upcoming titles like Crysis 2 or Deus Ex, consider a system with a powerful graphics card.
Conclusion
When shopping for a family PC, you can easily spend twice as much as the Lenovo sells for H320. But unless your 3D gaming ability or the fastest performance of the required application is available, there is no reason to spend even $ 1,000. The H320 offers a lot of horsepower for almost any family-friendly application you might think to run on it. You will find a large number of systems at or near this price with similar capabilities and performance. And many of them are very suitable systems (such as the Acer Aspire AM3400-U2052.) But what separates the H320 of many of the competition are three characteristics that are often lacking in other midrange desktops: good looks, a small form factor, and an optical drive Blu-ray movies. All in all, and the H320 is a smart choice for a midrange computer family.

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