Score: 6/10 (Okay)
Pros Stunning 27-inch 1080p HD display, responsive and fast, loud speakers, Aura software is unique and fun to use, included games and accessories make the Horizon feel like more than a standard all-in-one PC. | Cons Only 2 USB 3.0 ports, speakers sound a bit distorted when playing audio with heavy base, finicky touchscreen, not great for graphically intense games, Aura software is cool, but not very practical or functional, similar all-in-one PCs are available for a lot less money. |
Despite it's shortcomings, loads of Windows 8-powered machines are continually released onto the market. While most of these machines are standard tablets, laptops, and desktops, there are a few manufactures who are trying to shake things up a bit in the Windows 8 world. One of those manufacturers is Lenovo, with their IdeaCentre Horizon 27" Table PC. Along with full Windows 8, the IdeaCentre Horizon has an exclusive Aura mode, which allows users to interact with the PC in a very Minority Report-esque way. Does Lenovo's risk of shaking up the standard all-in-one PC pay? Find out in our full review!
Design/Build Quality
Since the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon is a 27-inch table PC, it is most likely going to attract a bit of attention to itself while living in your home. Thankfully, the Horizon is a very well designed piece of machinery, and is very easy to look at. Wrapped around the edges of the screen, is a solid feeling rubber to protect the edges of your computer. On the back of the Horizon, is a sliver-colored plastic with a large Lenovo logo on the upper left-hand side. In the middle of the back of the Horizon rests the stand to keep the 27-inch PC propped up on a table. To lay the PC on it's back, simply grab the top of the Horizon with one hand, and push down. When the Horizon is laid flat on it's back, it will enter the Aura mode (more on that in the Software portion of the review). While the IdeaCentre Horizon has great looks, it doesn't come light. The Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon measures in at 27.18 x 16.94 x 1.17 inches, and weighs in at a whopping 18.95lbs. That's nearly 20lbs folks. Although the Horizon will most likely be sitting on a desk or a table if you decide to purchase it, the heavy weight does make it a bit uncomfortable to carry around your house if you do decide to move it.
In terms of ports, the Horizon has a fair amount, but it certainly would have bee nice to see more that what it offers. All of the ports can be found on the right hand side of the PC, where they are tucked away in a little nook behind the right edge of the screen. Here you will find a 3.5mm microphone jack, 3.5mm headphone jack, MS/MS Pro/MMC/SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader, 2 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI-In, and charging port. For a table PC of this caliber (and price) it would have been nice to see at least 3 USB 3.0 ports. On the back of the Horizon, you will find your speaker grills. While the speakers were able to provide extremely loud audio, they did get distorted quite quickly, especially when playing audio with heavy base (Sail by AWOLNATION does NOT sound that good on this thing).
In the left corner below the screen are 4 notification lights, which indicate your Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and charging statuses. Below the screen on the right side, are 5 capacitive buttons to control screen rotation settings, brightness, and volume controls. While all of these inputs work fine, I did have an issue with the brightness controls. To adjust the screen brightness on the Horizon, you must use the single capacitive button, with no option to use the brightness control in the Charms bar. This made adjusting the brightness take a bit more time than it usually does on a Windows 8 or RT device. While this is a pretty small complaint, it still proved to get quite annoying at times.
In the left corner below the screen are 4 notification lights, which indicate your Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and charging statuses. Below the screen on the right side, are 5 capacitive buttons to control screen rotation settings, brightness, and volume controls. While all of these inputs work fine, I did have an issue with the brightness controls. To adjust the screen brightness on the Horizon, you must use the single capacitive button, with no option to use the brightness control in the Charms bar. This made adjusting the brightness take a bit more time than it usually does on a Windows 8 or RT device. While this is a pretty small complaint, it still proved to get quite annoying at times.
Hardware
The Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon features a large 27-inch display with a pixel resolution of 1920 x 1080p HD. Needless to say, the screen on the Horizon looks absolutely gorgeous. Colors are vibrant and rich, text is razor crisp, and absolutely everything on the screen looks fantastic. The Modern UI with all of it's Live Tiles looks especially great with all of the Tiles' bright and beautiful colors. If you are looking for a table PC to deliver great looking images, and a high-res screen to watch TV shows and movies on, the Horizon has you covered. One issue I had with the screen though, was that it would sometimes completely stop responding to my touch input. I would be cruising right along on the PC, and then all of a sudden it would stop registering my touches to the screen. I'm not sure if I accidently bumped a button on my keyboard or not, but I do know that it got quite annoying at times, and always forced me to restart the PC to get it back working again. And yes...the above image is a picture of just how good the Horizon's screen is. The picture of the Horizon's screen was taken with my Fujifilm FinePix S4200 camera.
The IdeaCentre Horizon is available in 4 different configurations, all with tweaked processing and memory specs. The model that I reviewed has the specs listed below:
Processor: 3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3537U Processor (2GHz 1600MHz 4MB)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT620M 2GB
Memory: 8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz
Hard Drive: 1TB 5400 RPM
During my time using the IdeaCentre Horizon, I never experienced any big issues when it came to heavy web browsing, music streaming, light game play, etc. However, the IdeaCentre Horizon wasn't the best performer when it came to heavy 3D games. When I tried playing Slender: The Eight Pages, I was only able to play the game on 'Good' graphics quality before I started to get lag times. Considering the price you are paying for this PC, that is a bit of a disappointment, especially for all of you heavy gamers out there.
If you want to unplug the Horizon from it's power brick, and take it around the house with you, you most certainly have that option. The Horizon packs in an 8 cell lithium-polymer battery, and with moderate to heavy Web browsing, music streaming, and application usage, I was able to get around 2 1/2 to 3 hours of usage time on the Horizon's standalone battery. For a 27-inch mini HDTV, I didn't think that was too darn bad. Just make sure that you don't take selfies in the bathroom with this thing. If you did that, you would probably loose any and all possible self respect for yourself.
Speaking of selfies, the Horizon has a 0.9MP front-facing camera that is capable of recording 720p HD video. As I'm sure some of you can tell, the Horizon's front-facing camera takes some pretty disappointing pictures and video. While the lens was able to capture a pretty wide area, I would have expected a higher quality camera for the price that you pay for the Horizon.
When you don't feel like using the Horizon's touchscreen, Lenovo has included a wireless keyboard and mouse in the package. Both the keyboard and mouse are synced to the PC through one single USB adapter, and both performed great. The mouse was comfortable in the hand, and the keyboard felt downright fantastic. One of Lenovo's strong points is their highly accurate keyboards, and the keyboard include with the IdeaCentre Horizon makes no exception of that.
Software
The Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon is running Windows 8, along with it's own unique software called Aura. Seeing that I've shared my opinion on Windows 8 multiple times already in some of my other reviews, I am going to be focusing on the Aura UI for the Software potion of this review.
When you lay the Horizon on it's back, the PC will automatically enter the Aura user interface. When Aura opens, you will be presented with a little circle in the middle of a large background. On the circle are the options of Apps, Games, Music, Video, Photo, Education, and Lenovo App Shop. When selecting on of these options, a large semicircle will appear with a list of all your content in that category. When selecting a piece of content from your Music, Video, or Photo categories, the selected item will be shot out on to part of the blank area on the screen. So, when I select music, a little, virtual CD case will appear for me to move around anywhere on the screen as I please. If I select a video, a small video player will pop up, and you have the option to move this anywhere as well, along with the option to resize it. Now here's where Aura gets really cool. Say that I have multiple pictures, music tracks, and videos opened at once in Aura. If I take my finger, hold it down on a music track, and shake it around, all of the content except for my music will move off to the edge of the screen. If I shake a picture, all of the content except for the pictures will move off to the side of the screen. When I have all of my content on my screen in Aura, and I want to get ride of it, I just put the tips of five of my fingers on the screen, and push them out. This makes all the content on the screen to go to the edge. If I want to get rid of my content completely, I push out with my fingers once more. If I want to bring my content back after having pushed it once, I put five of my fingers on the screen once more, and pull the content back in. I understand that it sounds quite complicated in writing, but it is actually a very simple UI. Watch our video review for a hands-on of Aura, and to get a better idea for how the software actually works.
From the Aura software, there are a good number of games that Lenovo preinstalls on the Horizon. From air hockey, to top down shooters, and even Monopoly, there is a lot of variety when it comes to gaming in Aura. What's especially cool about these games though, is that the Horizon also comes with a ton of accessories to use with the games. The accessories include air hockey sticks for a crazy real game of intensive air hockey, joysticks that stick to the screen for a classic arcade feel, and even a special dice that the you can roll on the screen, which will then know what side the dice landed on. To my surprise, all of these accessories worked really well, and it was a blast to have an air hockey tournament with 3 of my cousins and myself. All of the include games and accessories really could make the Horizon the perfect machine for your family game night. With all that said about Aura though, I rarely used it in my time with the Horizon. Sure, it's cool to show family and friends to see the looks on their faces when they see what it can do, but after that, I just stuck with using Windows 8. While Aura may be cool, I just didn't find a whole lot of real functionality in it.
Before I end the Software portion of the review, I do want to say one thing about Windows 8. It looks freaking incredible on the Horizon. The preinstalled News, Weather, and Travel apps have never looked as good as they do on the Horizon. The giant screen real-estate, coupled with the 1080p Full HD screen resolution, causes Microsoft's Modern UI and applications to truly shine.
Final Verdict
So, is the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon for everyone? Absolutely not. Despite all of the things that I love about this machine, there is one aspect that we can't forget. The cost. On Lenovo's website, the base model of the Horizon starts at a whopping $1,499.00, and goes up to $1,799.00. When you compare this to Sony's VAIO Tap 20 All-in-One Computer, that starts at only $799.99, it starts to get really hard to recommend the Horizon. Sure you're getting a screen that is 7-inches smaller with a lower resolution, slightly less impressive hardware specs, and no Aura UI, there is still a difference of $699 between the base models of the Horizon and VAIO Tap 20. For that much of a difference in price for essentially the same type of computer, you can start to see how much the IdeaCentre Horizon is overpriced. While I applaud Lenovo for trying something different with Aura, I was just never compelled to really use it. It's unfortunate that the Horizon costs as much as it does. If it started selling at $1000, I would be comfortable paying that price. But with a starting price of $1,500, the Horizon wants too much for what it brings to the table.
DISCLAIMER: Joseph Maring used the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horion 27-Inch Table PC for 29 days before beginning to write his review of the device. Lenovo sent us the IdeaCentre Horizon to review, but in no way affected our final score of the computer.
Author: Joseph Maring
DISCLAIMER: Joseph Maring used the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horion 27-Inch Table PC for 29 days before beginning to write his review of the device. Lenovo sent us the IdeaCentre Horizon to review, but in no way affected our final score of the computer.
Author: Joseph Maring
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