Product Review: Lenovo 3000 J205 Desktop

The Lenovo Desktop 3000 J205 comes with a nice set of features and is a very good business and personal computer at a great price with plenty of room for expansion.

Ease of Use, Performance: 21/25, Look & Feel: 22/25,
Features 22/25, How much I enjoy 23/25

Total: 89/100

The Lenovo 3000 Family computer I received for reviewing is the J205 model without a monitor if you were to purchase it but you can purchase a monitor at the same time. I do have a review of the Lenovo L220x LCD Monitor that worked great with this desktop.

The Lenovo 3000 Family of desktop computers from Lenovo are fully configurable from their website with a variety of AMD processors, Windows Vista versions and several other options. The version I received has the 2.3 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ processor with 2 GB of memory and onboard graphics.

The computer comes without a video card but has onboard video that is sufficient to run not only Windows Vista but several games at lower video settings. I tested the Lenovo J205 with and without a video card and it worked well with the onboard graphics and current games. But later on with the testing, now to some features of the Lenovo 3000 series and the J205 in particular.

The Lenovo website has plenty of the things you might be particularly interested in and you can configure the computer to your exacting specifications or buy a prebuilt model. The model I received is one of the more affordable yet ready for upgrade computers that would work very well for a home user. This would be great for someone who wants the immediate use of their computer and be able to surf the web, watch movies and do some word processing or basic gaming.

The computer has 2 Gigabytes of memory for keeping up with current memory intensive games as well as the more demanding programming that Vista requires. The model I received has a fairly decent size hard disk drive but nothing to brag about, I have a few drives I use on my other systems at about the same capacity but do not store many files on them.

The Lenovo Desktop can be configured with a variety of processors from Advanced Micro Devices like the AMD Athlon 64 or the newer dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors. You can change some of the features for the processor and which version of Windows Vista from the configuration options on the Lenovo website.

I had a bit of a difficult time finding this model on the regular Lenovo website and after a bit of searching found the exact model with a few changes. Going to their partner website that sells their line of Lenovo products called lenovo3000direct dot com you can find the J205 if you go to the desktop section.

The Lenovo J205 comes with a good set a basic hardware configurations as well as a good software set that adds to the ease of use with Windows Vista. The software that comes with the Lenovo desktop include a good free trial version of Norton Antivirus and safety software for use till you make up your mind on which virus and spyware you wish to use.

It also comes with a good multimedia package from Lenovo and Cyberlink with a media player that plays a good variety of DVD's, CD's, video and audio files. There is no need to download a new codec to get that DVD to work with the variety of media players that comes with the Lenovo J205. The computer also comes with Microsoft's Media Player so you can choose whichever program and interface you like best for your movie and music enjoyment.

Lenovo has also included Diskeeper Home, PC Doctor and Corel Word Perfect software programs. These are not trial versions but there are also some trial version software of things like Microsoft Office and Quicken Financial so you do not have to download them to try out for your processing and money handling programs.

The Lenovo J205 comes with some very good features inside in the hardware area like tool less access for drives and cards. The hard drive and optical drives can be removed and installed without using tools as they are not kept in place with screws. The tab devices hold the drives in securely and make for easy removal and installation.

The PCI cards are also held in without screws and uses a small door like device with a spring to hold the door shut against the PCI card tabs. The rear fan also is held in place without screws by the use of rubber bushings that allow for less vibration against the case when the fan is running for a reduction in noise.

The Lenovo J205 has two front panel USB connections and the usual front panel headphone and microphone audio connections. It also has a good assortment of rear connections with the Ethernet connection, four USB connections, 2.1 channel audio and microphone, serial and parallel outputs as well as PS2 keyboard and mouse connections.

The Lenovo J205 has a decent onboard audio setup that is capable of running 2.1 stereo audio with high definition. The audio for the J205 was very good without any problems, I had no problem ripping a CD and playing the album on both the Lenovo and Windows Media Players.

The Lenovo J205 has a Lenovo based motherboard that is capable of handling four memory sticks with maximum of 8 gigabytes of memory in the four slots. You can also upgrade your video card with any PCI-express video card as the motherboard has one PCI-e video card slot as well as two PCI slots and one PCI-e x1 slot. The PCI-e x1 slot is for more current PCI devices that have been appearing on the market with the newer PCI-express interface.

One of the two wireless desktop adapters I have reviewed in the past and still use has this PCI-e x1 connection and more computer hardware will be coming out with this new and faster interface. It is simply a smaller connection than the older PCI slot so you can have smaller cards in the computer for a better configuration inside your system.

With the quick upgrade of a video card you can reach new levels of performance with DirectX 10 capable games. Adding a DirectX 10 capable card will bring not only the graphics of gaming to a better performance level but videos and movies will look better. Even though the basic onboard video capability will not run the glass look of Vista Aero you can easily run some games at lower settings. I ran not only some benchmark programs but some games and checked frame rates with the onboard graphics and the added graphics card.

The Lenovo J205 runs Company of Heroes and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare at some low frame rates with high graphics settings but you can definitely play the games at lower settings. Both games play well with the default graphics of letting the game choose the settings which end up being low and medium for things like detail and textures. The games are definitely playable at these settings and the Lenovo computer handles the graphics and audio just fine.

Adding the Visiontek HD 2600 XT graphics card and running the games at high settings I had very playable frame rates and some decent benchmark scores for frame rate testing as well as Futuremark's Vantage and PCMark 06 scores. The Lenovo desktop compares favorably to any other computer with the same processor, memory and graphics card.

Adding a video card to this computer would only take a few minutes and a new video card that is capable of running the current game at really good graphics properties and setting can cost less than a hundred dollars. If you purchase the NVidia brand of card with DirectX 10 capabilities you can be gaming in minutes as the drivers are very easy to load.

I have an ATI video card that can sometimes be problematic with loading drivers but you can still purchase one for less than one hundred dollars and be gaming in no time. I installed a Visiontek HD 2600 XT graphics card that has some very good settings and can play current games at high settings well. The Lenovo J205 does a great job of playing the current crop of video games and scored well in my frame rate tests as well as my benchmark testing using a couple of testing programs for the entire computer as well as video and 3D graphics.

The benchmark scores I received from the Futuremark Vantage program show the Lenovo 3000 J205 gets very good scores for the hard drive and motherboard as well as good scores overall. This computer is a good gaming or general use computer that performs well in gaming, multimedia and productivity.

The Lenovo J205 Desktop received a Windows Experience Score of 3.0 with the following breakdown of the areas:

Windows Experience Index base Score 3.0
Processor

4.9
Memory(RAM)

5.9
Graphics

3.4
Gaming Graphics
3.0
Primary Hard Disk
5.7

Installing the graphics card increases the graphics and gaming graphics but the processor, memory and hard drive scores show this computer is a very good one at its core.

Almost exactly a year ago I purchased my new computer to start reviewing computer hardware on and found the fun as well as economy of purchasing a computer you can customize. For anyone purchasing a computer I think the ideal situation is being able to pick out the major components and upgrades of your computer yourself and not picking a computer off the shelf of some store.

The Lenovo 3000 family of computers and the J205 models are a great way to get an affordable home or business computer with the components and operating system you want at an affordable price. Customization is the way to buy a computer and for an affordable multimedia and gaming system you can't go wrong with the J205 desktop from Lenovo.

If you have a hard time finding the J205 on their site try the Lenovo3000direct dot com website to find the customizable configuration you need for your computing situation. I highly recommend buying a computer from Lenovo for a great gaming and multimedia home or business computer with the features you want.