Lenovo Horison 2 review

• Pros
  Anti-glare screen cuts reflections. HDMI-in port.
• Cons Colors appear dull on display. Only 2 hours of battery life. No SD card slot. Speakers a little low for a larger room. Keyboard and mouse dongle takes up a USB 3.0 port.
• Bottom Line
  The Lenovo Horizon 2 touch-screen all-in-one desktop has a 27-inch full HD display and a battery that allows you to move it from room to room while it's powered up.

The Lenovo Horizon 2 ($1,499 as tested) is a portable all-in-one desktop with a humongous 27-inch screen. It essentially gives you a prime movie-watching seat, whether you're in your den, in the kitchen, or on your backyard patio. Since it's a full Windows 8.1 PC, you can also do real work on it, like writing Word documents or sketching on the touch screen. Some issues, like a short battery life and a color-dulling anti-glare coating, hold it back. That said, it's nice to see large-screen, portable all-in-one models continue to innovate.

Design and Features

The Horizon 2$1,099.99 at Lenovo is a behemoth, measuring about 16 by 26.5 by 0.8 inches (HWD), and weighing 14.6 pounds. While it can be carried from room to room, you'll want to use both hands, due to that bulk and weight. It's about an inch smaller in height and width, and about three pounds lighter, than the last iteration, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon. The Horizon 2 has a black bezel surrounding the screen and a bright-silver back panel that makes it look like a small HDTV. A spring-loaded arm swings down after you unlatch it, and props the system up like an easel.

The 27-inch touch-screen has the same 1,920-by-1,080 resolution as the original Lenovo Horizon. The display is optimal for viewing 1080p HD Netflix and YouTube HD videos. It features an anti-glare coating that fends off stray reflections from lights in the room, so you can watch videos without having to fiddle with the tilt angle. However, critical eyes will notice that the anti-glare coating dulls colors and makes blacks look a little gray in photos and videos. It's not a deal-breaker unless you need a color-calibrated display. There's a Windows button below the display in case you want to get back to the Start screen quickly. The high end all-in-one Editors' Choice Apple iMac with 5k Retina Display£1,999.00 at PC World also has a 27-inch screen, but its 5,120-by-2,880 resolution (as well as the regular 27-inch iMac's 2,560-by-1,440 display) show much smoother text and more detail in pictures and ultra HD videos.

The sound from the speakers is clear, but not loud enough to fill a medium-size room. It shouldn't be a problem in a quiet den, but you may have trouble if you're trying to hear dialogue in a room with children playing in it or on an outdoor patio.

When you push the PC down into a horizontal position, the Aura Windows overlay starts up. A puck-like controller will then appear and give you access to visual media like photos and videos. Aura, which we saw on the original Horizon and the Lenovo IdeaCentre Flex 20$729.99 at Best Buy, simulates a photographer's light table or layout board, and you can view photos and videos by dragging and resizing them on the screen.
The Aura interface also gives you quick access to touch-sensitive games. Lenovo includes a set of joystick controllers and air hockey style paddles for playing these games. An electronic 6-sided die (Lenovo calls it E-dice) lets you roll a physical die in the real world, and the system recognizes it and moves your virtual game piece over the rolled number of spaces. Though it's nice to be able to share and view pictures by flinging them around on a virtual surface, competitors like the Dell XPS 18 (1820)$1,449.99 at Dell, our Editors' Choice portable all-in-one desktop, work equally well when lying flat in front of you while you play games like Monopoly on the screen.

There are three USB 3.0 ports, one of which is occupied by the USB dongle for the included wireless keyboard and mouse. That leaves you only two USB ports for the E-dice controller, your smartphone, and any hard drives or USB sticks you plan to connect to the system. It would have been better if the keyboard and mouse were pre-paired and connected via Bluetooth. The mouse has a touch sensor, instead of a wheel, for scrolling; the overall design is a little uncomfortable to use. You can use the touch screen instead, like I tended to do. There's also an HDMI-in port, which is great if you have a gaming console, laptop, or set-top box you want to use with the Horizon 2's screen. One thing that's missing is an SD card reader. The previous iteration of the Horizon has one, as does the Dell XPS 18. The older Horizon only has two USB ports, so we're guessing that Lenovo traded the SD card slot for that extra USB port.
You're unlikely to need additional storage, since the system comes with the ability to swipe pictures from an Android phone to the system's 1TB hard drive, but if you have an older camera you'll need an external card reader or USB cable to transfer the pictures. An NFC sensor on the front panel of the Horizon will let you sync up your Android phone for file transfers.
Performance

The Horizon 2 has a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-4210U processor, 8GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 840A graphics processor. The system garnered 2,636 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test. That's a little slow compared with the Dell XPS 18 (1820), but that model has a faster Core i7 processor and a solid-state drive in its favor. That said, the Horizon 2 is slower than even comparable desktops, like the Acer Aspire AZ3-615-UR15$844.59 at Amazon and Dell OptiPlex 9030 Touch$1,199.00 at Dell. The system's discrete Nvidia card is a bit better than the integrated Intel HD Graphics in the other all-in-one PCs, though ultimately it returned barely playable scores: 27 frames per second (fps) at the Heaven test and 33fps at the Valley test, both at medium-quality settings. Handbrake (3 minutes 47 seconds) and Adobe Photoshop CS6 (5:51) scores are both on the low side, but passable for light multimedia duties and typical home use.

The system lasted only 2 hours 13 minutes on our battery rundown test, which is barely enough for an average full-length movie. It petered out two-thirds of the way through the first Lord of the Rings, so forget about seeing a sweeping epic on the large screen. In contrast, the Dell XPS 18 (1820) lasted over five hours (5:13) on the same test, and the previous Lenovo Horizon lasted a bit longer (2:44), probably because of its larger battery capacity.
The Lenovo Horizon 2 is a portable system that needs to have its power cable handy at all times. Sure, it has one of the largest screens on a portable all-in-one desktop, but it will still tie you down. The Dell XPS 18 (1820) remains our Editors Choice, because it makes fewer compromises than the Horizon 2, and is much better system both at your desk and to carry around the house. Even though its anti-glare coating tamed reflections, we feel that the Horizon 2's display dulled colors too much, compared with the Dell and the original Horizon. Plus, its battery lasted a half-hour less than its predecessor. Since portability is compromised by the system's short battery life, you might as well get a faster traditional touch-screen all-in-one PC like the Dell Inspiron 23 (2350)$1,541.01 at Amazon, which is ultimately more powerful (and $100 less expensive).