Lenovo B750 All-in-One 29-Inch Desktop Review
Introduction & Specifications
We've all heard the phrase "Go big or go home," but how about "Go wide or go home?" The latter is the message Lenovo is sending with its B750 All-in-One Desktop PC, which offers a spacious and brilliant 29-inch super-widescreen In-Plane Switching (IPS) display to play with. It has a Full HD 2560x1080 resolution, which works out to a 21:9 aspect ratio with copious horizontal screen estate to maneuver your documents and windows. It's also adept at watching movies, as the aspect ratio is very close to the true value of 64:27, allowing for little or no discernible black bars.
Oddly enough, Lenovo opted against touch support, an increasingly rare decision in the Windows 8/8.1 era. Touch enthusiasts aside, there's a little bit of something in the B750 for just about everyone. If you're not watching movies on the 21:9 panel, you can get busy with that research paper you've been working on and have several different source materials open alongside your Word document. And if you need to take a break for gaming, there's a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M GPU inside that's ready to spring into action when duty calls.
To keep the price from ballooning, Lenovo equipped the B750 with a 2TB hard drive (7200 RPM, 64MB cache, SATA 6Gbps) and paired it with a modest 8GB SSD acting as a cache drive. The system didn't feel as snappy and responsive to us as those that rock a dedicated SSD for the operating system, though it wasn't slow by any means. As the world's largest supplier of PCs, you have to trust that Lenovo figured it would sell more systems by going with a 2TB HDD and a lower price tag, versus a more expensive configuration sporting a 256GB or 512GB SSD paired with a 1TB HDD, or some other combination.
As we examine the spec sheet more closely, we see that Lenovo dances a fine line between performance, price, and compromise throughout. For example, the 29-inch IPS panel is clearly the star of the show, and the Blu-ray burner is another high-end amenity, though other areas are bit more conservative -- 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB, 802.11n instead of 802.11ac, and a mid-range graphics engine, though not a slouch by any means. While geeks like us will nitpick the individual parts, it's clear that Lenovo is trying to deliver a serviceable AIO for the masses that's capable of tearing through various tasks without thrashing the buyer's wallet or purse in the process.
Oddly enough, Lenovo opted against touch support, an increasingly rare decision in the Windows 8/8.1 era. Touch enthusiasts aside, there's a little bit of something in the B750 for just about everyone. If you're not watching movies on the 21:9 panel, you can get busy with that research paper you've been working on and have several different source materials open alongside your Word document. And if you need to take a break for gaming, there's a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M GPU inside that's ready to spring into action when duty calls.
;)
The B750 is built on top of a 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4770 Haswell foundation, at least as configured here (we've seen Core i5 versions of the B750 selling online outside of Lenovo's website). It also has 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and 2TB of storage space, plus a Blu-ray burner if you want to backup your files to optical media. At a glance, the B750 is a rather well-rounded machine, but is it the AIO to get? Let's take a deep dive into this machine as we figure that out.
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| CPU: GPU: Memory: Storage: Display: Optical: Networking: Interface: Media Card Reader: Webcam: Audio: Operating System: Peripherals: Dimensions: Weight: Price: |
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4770 processor (8M Cache, 3.40GHz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M 1GB 8GB PC3-12800 DDR3-1600 2TB 7200 RPM HDD / 8GB SSD 29-inch Full HD (2560”x1080) 21:9 IPS super-widescreen Slot loading Blu-ray burner 802.11n Wi-Fi (2x2) 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN Rear: (2) USB 3.0, (2) USB 2.0, (1) RJ-45 10/100/1000, HDMI out, HDMI In Side/Front Ports: (2) USB 3.0, Headphone, Microphone, Optical Eject, Power Button headphone jack, (2) USB3.0, ODD eject, Input select 6-in-1 memory card reader 720p HD JBL designed 2.1 stereo speakers with 20W subwoofer Windows 8 64 bit 2.4GHz Wireless Compact Keyboard USB Optical Wireless Mouse 35.74 inches (W) by 11.73 inches (D) by 23.14 inches (H) 35.2 pounds $1,399 as tested |
To keep the price from ballooning, Lenovo equipped the B750 with a 2TB hard drive (7200 RPM, 64MB cache, SATA 6Gbps) and paired it with a modest 8GB SSD acting as a cache drive. The system didn't feel as snappy and responsive to us as those that rock a dedicated SSD for the operating system, though it wasn't slow by any means. As the world's largest supplier of PCs, you have to trust that Lenovo figured it would sell more systems by going with a 2TB HDD and a lower price tag, versus a more expensive configuration sporting a 256GB or 512GB SSD paired with a 1TB HDD, or some other combination.
As we examine the spec sheet more closely, we see that Lenovo dances a fine line between performance, price, and compromise throughout. For example, the 29-inch IPS panel is clearly the star of the show, and the Blu-ray burner is another high-end amenity, though other areas are bit more conservative -- 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB, 802.11n instead of 802.11ac, and a mid-range graphics engine, though not a slouch by any means. While geeks like us will nitpick the individual parts, it's clear that Lenovo is trying to deliver a serviceable AIO for the masses that's capable of tearing through various tasks without thrashing the buyer's wallet or purse in the process.
