Lenovo IdeaCentre A520 review

The most disappointing part of the A520, though, was its 23in touchscreen display. The touchscreen itself was very snappy and responsive, but as soon as we turned it on, the screen looked noticeably yellow and our colour calibrator confirmed this during our colour accuracy test. While its colour accuracy score of 79.1 per cent is around average for an all-in-one panel, the resulting colour gamut showed that its green and yellow coverage was significantly higher than either its red or blue coverage.

This had an adverse effect on our subjective image tests as colours in our high contrast test images looked quite sickly and washed out. Our solid reds, blues and greens looked all right in isolation, but whites looked very dull and grey. Blacks were reasonably deep, though, and we were pleased with its low black level reading of 0.23cd/m².

Its contrast ratio of 882:1 was also encouraging despite the screen’s inaccurate colours, but in practice we found it quite difficult to see the finer detail in our high contrast test photos. This wasn’t helped by the screen’s reflective glossy finish, but tilting the screen back and forward did little to alleviate the problem.

Luckily, Lenovo had the foresight to include two alternative picture modes that adjust the screen’s colour temperature and brightness to suit different tasks. Web browsing mode was little better than the default text mode, as this made the screen appear far too blue, but we found a happy middle ground with its cinema mode. The screen wasn’t quite as bright here, but its strong green and yellow coverage was counteracted by a much healthier blue and purple coverage, which helped colours look more natural and accurate.

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A520 is a decent low-end all-in-one PC, but its aging hardware and lacklustre display feel like one too many compromises compared to the faster and only marginally more expensive Best Buy-winning Toshiba Qosmio PX30t-A-11C.