IT Pro Verdict

Despite its neat all-in-one design, the A70z won’t set hearts a flutter. It is, in many senses, thoroughly unremarkable, but it is also an effective office machine with headroom for slightly more demanding uses. The display isn’t the best we’ve ever seen but as long as the tasks are modest this is certainly a machine worth considering for space and power saving reasons. Though we’d recommend at least adding more RAM, changing the keyboard and upping the warranty.

By Benny Har-Even

published 30 December 2009

in Reviews

A speaker grille runs across the front and we were actually quite impressed by the volume levels we obtained from this. Most of the time though this will likely just provide ample room for sticking post it notes.

Down the left hand side of the machine you'll find a laptop-style DVD Rewriter and this means having to place your discs into the vertical tray, which is a little awkward - there's no slick iMac-style slot loading action here.

Down the right hand side you'll find headphone and microphone sockets and a generous three USB ports. There is also another three USB ports at the rear, along with the Gigabit Ethernet socket and an RS-232 port connecter. Unfortunately, there's no wireless included, which seems something of a missed opportunity and limits where you can place the machine.

A Kensington lock connector is set into the rear, which turns the A70z into an easily pickupable machine and makes it easy to relocate in an office.

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Powered by a Dual-Core Pentium E5300 this is no speed demon. It's clearly also not a compact workstation, but for general office tasks, or even modest video editing, it will do a job.

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Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.