Lenovo C300-3012

Lenovo C300-3012 (Atom 230 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, Vista Home Premium)

If we to adopt a relativist approach and consider Nettops apart from the larger desktop market, we might actually recommend the $549 Lenovo C300. It includes an uncommonly large 20-inch wide-screen display and performs better than many of its peers because of a slightly faster Intel Atom CPU. Standing in the way of such a recommendation, as usual, is the compelling price-performance of traditional budget desktops, as well as the cheap portability offered by Netbooks. The primary advantage of the Lenovo C300 is that it offers a large screen in an affordable, self-contained package. That certainly has some appeal, but with such abysmal performance, and better alternatives available for the same price, this system offers further proof of Nettops' poor value. Lenovo sells a few versions of the C300 with various CPU, memory, and hard-drive configurations. However, each model has a 1,600x900-pixel resolution, 20-inch screen and the display is clearly the series' highlight feature. However, it's not quite as crisp as Averatec's all-in-one PC that has an 18-inch, 1,680x945-pixel resolution screen. We also found that the Averatec's black levels made for a much more vibrant DVD image than the Lenovo's screen.