Lenovo’s Horizon 2s: A real advance in portable, tabletop computing - hunsuckermilitaidele1997

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Unique 360 degree port
Easy moved about
Unique cocktail table gambling abilities

Cons

Somewhat noisy devotee
No SSD pick
Less than 2-hour batter biography

Our Verdict

The Horizon 2s is a marvelous concept–a mechanized desktop that you can move about the household, as well as use of goods and services a board-game replacement for the coffee table. But it's expensive, there's no SSD option, and it has a swishing fan. Regardless, IT's considerably worth checking out for its Aura 360 degree port unaccompanied.

What coiffure you call a tablet that's ample enough to serve as your desktop computer? A Lenovo Visible horizon 2s. What do you call A battery-supercharged all-in-one that's small enough to carry? A Lenovo Horizon 2s. What do you call a computer that lies on the table and offers an engaging experience for two or more people? Atari Pong! Or, the Lenovo Horizon 2s, of course.

Atari Niff, the archetypical commerically self-made arcade game, was available in a cocktail table version. Two people Sat around it, sipping aperitifs while wiggling a thickening that moved a virtual paddle about the screen to whack an natural philosophy pip. That socialise-around-the-table, board game-like functionality and interaction is part of what Lenovo's aiming for with the Horizon series, and in exceptional—the 2s. The company provides a 360-degree interface called Air that makes a Horizon operational when it's lying flat, bundles special games, and will sell you striker paddles (suppose air hockey), joysticks, and e-Dice as options. The whole pot is pretty slippery. Really.

The Horizon 2s, different its rather large and lumbering 27-inch Apparent horizon 2 cousin and others of its like, might strike users as a goliath tablet. Though it's astoundingly lighting for the transportable each-in-one it actually is, at 5.45 pounds and with a 19.5-inch, 1920×1080 touch screen, it's not in working order as a pad by a normal-sized homo. However, once you start thinking of information technology as a desktop-to-go, the appeal is clear. Keep it in your office for work, and then transmit IT at need to the kitchen, garage, Beaver State yes—cocktail table. Recipes, DIY videos, Parcheesi, whatever.

lenovo horizon1 — The Horizon 2s is far more portable than its 27-edge in sibling.

The Celestial horizon 2s has an integrated kickstand to prop it improving at a fixed fish, though the optional charging stand, which leaves the surrounding area unobstructed, is a far better solution for long-term practice. Sadly, said handsome stand doesn't attention deficit disorder some ports to the mix, and at $90, it sends the $949 Horizon 2s (our Best Buy SKU) over the $1000 mark. Gulp.

Getting back to the multi-user synergistic role… The aforementioned Aura interface, which launches from Windows, features a wheel (retrieve digital Lazy-Susan) in the center of the screen door that you keister rotate to bring out any element (music, games, photos, etc.) in line with your physical visible horizon (no pun intended). You can tear sour elements, puff them around, and turn out them as healthy. It raises some extremely interesting possibilities for games and even design, and some of the 21 games that Lenovo provides take good advantage of the metaphor. Aura U runs Android apps, so you there's very much of block you backside play with on the Horizon 2s. It's especially nice to see a computer function Eastern Samoa something other than an electronic cocoon.

As much as I like Aura, when IT comes to the Windows 8.1 operating system the Horizon 2s ships with, Lenovo, as do early vendors, pigswill on the "prise-added" software utilities. Remove them. You don't want a bunch of stuff working in the background or popping up checking your hardware while you're in the middle of something else. Windows takes manage of most everything you require, including opposed-virus/malware protection, meet fine—and more politely.

lenovo horizon kickstand — When you're not docked, a bug out kickstand keeps the Horizon plumb.

Hardware

I'm not a huge fan of glossy displays, but they make some sense when there's trace involved. Lenovo must finger my pain, because the company employs an anti-glare coating. It works decently well at reducing reflections and doesn't highlight fingerprints, notwithstandin, it likewise makes the unlit video display facial expression A if it hadn't been cleaned in a patc. A small price to pay, simply don't go scrubbing information technology thinking it's hostile.

The Horizon 2s has solitary a few ports, though the selection is adequate for the intended use. In that location's a docking port happening the bottom; a card reviewer, volume rock 'n' roll musician, and power shift happening the correct; plus a headset knave, two USB 3.0 ports, and the power jack on the left. Wireless communications are top-notch: 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC. Both the keyboard and mouse are radiocommunication. The keyboard types recovered, and the mouse is religious music, but the visible extrusion on the latter, while attractive, feels awkward.

lenovo horizon ports — You get two USB 3.0 ports, plus the Lenovo combo jack up and and an analog audio port.

I wasn't a fan of the fan—or the crossbreed drive

I very bought into the portable desktop/tabletop construct after just few transactions with the Horizon 2s, but it was a little troubling to see Lenovo drop the ball on two fronts. The first was an irritatingly noisy fan. I eff there's a Congress of Racial Equality i5 4210U and 4GB of memory in there, but the first unit Lenovo sent me whined ceaselessly at varying pitches—especially when a heavy computing load such as PCMark was practical. Lenovo sent me some other which wasn't quite as noisy, on the other hand my office was quite a a little cooler with a Holocene low temperature snap.

The irregular issue was the miss of a fast, shock-immune SSD option. The Unexceeded Buy SKU I tested had a 500GB Seagate ST500LX012-SSHD-8GB Hybrid (SSD/HD). Hybrid drives are marginally faster than hard drives, so I'd instead pay another $50 for an SSD. At $749, I wouldn't complain about a hybrid drive. At nearly a thousand bucks, I am.

Carrying into action

During my subjective testing there wasn't a lot to complain about with the Horizon 2s. Different the of late reviewed HP Beats AIO, Windows and programs spread ou the right way fast. Objectively, PCMark rated it at 2779 in the Work test and 2077 in the Fictive test. It scored well in 3DMark's Ice Rage Extreme, a tablet test, but information technology performed as you'd anticipate from Intel HD 4400 graphics at higher resolutions and detail settings—not very well. Encoding a 30GB MKV file to pill format took astir 2 hours and 13 minutes. Slap-up. Non great. By compare, PCWorld's reference scheme, with its quad-core Core i7 4770K chip, takes about 36 minutes. That's not a desktop system you can carry with you, though.

A minor issue is the Purview 2s's little 1-hour, 43-minute bombardment life. TRUE, it's not that rough to wa in an AC adaptor, and the Horizon 2s isn't really a travel computer, but social gaming arse be addictive. Just saying—there's a chance for annoyance there.

Not to beat on the lack of an SSD, but CrystalDiskMark rated the hybrid drive at 116MBps reading and all but 106MBps writing. it illustrates the marginal benefit of hybrid drives, and it's only one-3rd the carrying out you'll see from even a trashy SSD. Tests can sometimes personify misleading, but it definitely lacks that SSD rush.

Conclusion

I didn't carry to like the Horizon 2s as much as I did. Mostly because I was thinking of it As an oversized lozenge alternatively of a svelte, portable all-in-extraordinary. Forgive me, Lenovo. Now I can easily see it functioning at need about the house and yard, and along the coffee table in the den or surviving room. If my apartment had a den or sustenance room.

And so conceptually, the Horizon 2s is a winner. Lenovo damaged the reality slightly with a noisy fan and bean plant-counter nonsense like the hybrid drive. Still, major kudos for going someplace new with Aura—steady if that place is really quite old.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/431047/lenovos-horizon-2s-a-real-advance-in-portable-tabletop-computing.html

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