Lenovo ThinkCentre M83 Tiny Desktop Review

Our Verdict

While larger than other mini PCs, the M83 Tiny is a powerful desktop for habitation and business, with an optional all-in-one monitor accessory.

For

Desktop-class CPU
Lots of ports
Highly configurable
Seamless integration with 23-inch monitor

Against

Large for a mini PC
Internals hard to access

Tom'southward Guide Verdict

While larger than other mini PCs, the M83 Tiny is a powerful desktop for abode and business organization, with an optional all-in-one monitor accessory.

Pros

+
Desktop-class CPU
+
Lots of ports
+
Highly configurable
+
Seamless integration with 23-inch monitor

Cons

-
Large for a mini PC
-
Internals difficult to access

Whether you're building a kiosk, setting up a bespeak-of-sale organization or just trying to conserve space in your part or home, Lenovo's ThinkCentre M83 Tiny offers desktop-class performance and flexibility in a package the size of a hardcover volume. You can even adhere Lenovo'southward mini PC to the back of a VESA-equipped brandish or i of Lenovo's monitor/dock combos to brand a DIY all-in-one of sorts. With two models, starting at $483 and $694, and lots of configurable options, the M83 Tiny doesn't price much more than than a floor-hogging tower, saving y'all room without sacrificing performance or ports.

Pattern

With a focus on business commencement, the M83'southward humble design wasn't made to attract attention. Instead, this mini PC does a good chore of hiding in the background, featuring a no-frills, matte-black case made from sturdy steel. The front features an angled grille and another fan vent in the back that works with Lenovo'south Intelligent Cooling Engine (ICE) 3.0 to provide an ideal balance between cooling and tranquility operation.

At seven.ii ten 7 x 1.35 inches and two.vi pounds, the M83 is significantly larger and heavier than Intel's NUC (4.5 x 4.four x 1.3 inches and 1 pound) but a tad smaller than the Mac mini (vii.7 ten seven.7 ten 1.4 inches and 2.vi pounds). When compared to a $639 Lenovo M83 Mini Tower Desktop with similar specs (17.4 10 16.3 x half-dozen.9 inches and 24.iii pounds), the M83 Tiny weighs ix times less and takes up near 30 times less space, without much difference in price.

Credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide — (Paradigm credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom'southward Guide)

While not as petite as Intel's NUC or Gigabyte's Brix, the M83 Tiny is more than than small enough to hands disappear behind a display — and with support for standard VESA mounts, information technology's non hard to make that happen. For business users, Lenovo besides touts its partnership with Intel's Stable Image Platform Programme, which promises stable drivers and availability of extra components for fifteen months.

My only complaint about the M83'due south design is that the internals are difficult to access, with tightly cramped corners that crave a special tool to open. Intel's NUC is much easier to service, requiring just a simple Phillips-caput screwdriver to get access to the internals. To get an M83 that's easier to upgrade, y'all'll have to motility up to the M83 Pro (for nigh $100 more), which features tool-less expansion capabilities.

Ports and Connectivity

By making the M83 larger than some other mini PCs, Lenovo has left enough of room for ports. The M83's chassis packs two USB 3.0 Ports upwardly front (one with always-on charging), likewise equally flanking jacks for a microphone and headset. Around the back, the M83 has three additional USB 3.0 ports, two full-size DisplayPorts, a VGA port, an Ethernet jack and a Kensington lock slot.

This gives the M83 out-of-the-box support for up to 3 displays, without requiring a splitter or a dock. The Mac mini fares a fleck meliorate, with one HDMI port and two Thunderbolt ports, but the Mac mini has a full of four USB three.0 ports, compared with v on the M83. (The NUC too tops out at four USB ports.)

The M83 besides comes with Intel'south Dual Band 7260 Ac wireless carte, which includes support for Bluetooth 4.0, Intel Wireless Brandish and Wi-Fi speeds up to 867 Mbps.

More than: Best All-in-One PCs

Performance

While smaller mini PCs like the Intel NUC use depression-ability, mobile processors, the ThinkCentre M83 Tiny has room and acceptable cooling for a desktop-class CPU. With a 2-GHz Intel Core i5-4590T CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB, 7,200-rpm difficult drive, the M83 hands handles typical business computing needs, such as editing large spreadsheets, opening multiple browser tabs and watching high-definition videos. Even when I streamed two 1080p movies from YouTube at the same time, there wasn't a hint of stutter or lag.

To test overall organization operation, we ran the Geekbench 3 criterion, and the M83 scored 8,522. That'southward significantly faster than the Core i5-5250U-powered Intel NUC'southward score of 5,611; the 1.4-GHz Core i5-powered Mac mini's marker of 5,443; and the all-in-one desktop average of 7,013.

The ThinkCentre M83 Tiny finished ahead in real-world situations, too. On our spreadsheet exam, which matches 20,000 names and addresses in OpenOffice, the M83 finished in 4 minutes and 31 seconds. That's xxx seconds ahead of the Intel NUC (v:02), well-nigh 2 minutes faster than the Mac mini (6:17), and 2 and a half minutes faster than the all-in-one average (7:00).

Unfortunately, on our transfer test, our configuration of the ThinkCentre M83 Tiny, with its sometime-school hard drive, couldn't keep upwardly with systems equipped with SSDs. When we duplicated four.97GB of mixed media files, the M83 took 2 minutes and 37 seconds to consummate the transfer. Its rate of 33.3 MBps is similar to that of the Mac mini (34.4 MBps), slightly slower than the all-in-one boilerplate of 58 MBps, and far curt of the Intel NUC (308.eight MBps) and its PCIe x4 SSD.

Graphics

Even though the ThinkCentre M83 Tiny is on the larger side for a mini PC, information technology all the same doesn't have enough room for discrete graphics. Instead, information technology relies on Intel's integrated Hard disk 4600 GPU, which can handle media editing and some light gaming, but not much more. Even at 1920 x 1080 pixels and medium settings, casual online card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft encountered occasional bouts of lag, which caused frame rates to stutter and dip.

When playing World of Warcraft at 1920 x 1080p and auto settings, the M83 Tiny managed just 23 frames per second, brusk of our 30-fps playability threshold. However, the competition didn't fare much meliorate: The NUC and the Mac mini reached 26 and thirty fps, respectively, on the same settings.

In 3DMark'due south Fire Strike graphics test, the M83 scored but 608. That's 40 percent lower than Intel's NUC (888), and more than seventy pct behind the all-in-1 average of ane,053.

ThinkCentre Tiny-in-One 23 Accessory

When yous buy an all-in-one PC, the components usually get outdated long before the display does. This means you have to jettison a perfectly good screen merely to upgrade the CPU. Lenovo's $279 ThinkCentre Tiny-in-I 23 eliminates this problem, giving you a 23-inch monitor with a built-in dock that transforms the M83 into a system with all of the benefits of an all-in-one and none of its downsides.

Setup is dead simple, thanks to a custom designed enclosure on the back of the monitor that allows y'all to securely attach the M83 without any tools. Just drib the M83 into the opening at the height (don't forget to remove the Wi-Fi antenna first), and connect it to the display using the 3-port, pass-through connector. Lenovo says future Tiny PCs will also fit in the dock, allowing you to proceed the monitor through several upgrade cycles.

Using this monitor ups the total USB port count to 6 (although one is blazon B), while still using just a unmarried power cord. Doors on the left and right sides provide admission to the remaining ports, with the door on the left too doubling every bit a slot for a USB optical drive.

The screen itself is a 23-inch 1920 ten 1080p TN brandish with a max brightness of 169 nits, although the 77-nit out-of-the-box brightness was a little dim. Based on our testing, the Lenovo monitor covers 101 percent of the sRGB colour spectrum and accomplished a Delta-E color-accuracy rating of four.iv (closer to nada is all-time).

MORE: Best Gaming Desktops

Keyboard and Mouse

The M83 comes with a bare-bones mouse and keyboard combo. These are the kinds of basic peripherals that get tossed in every package to ensure you have something to utilise out of the box, but frequently these peripherals should be replaced as presently as possible.

The keyboard features a standard 104-primal layout with iv millimeters of key travel and a typical actuation weight of 70 grams. Typing felt mushy due to the keyboard's rubber dome switches, and the actuation weight varied up and down by ten grams due to the variances in each individual rubber switch. However, I did like that the condom domes have the dainty side issue of making key presses almost silent. Fifty-fifty with the squishy keystrokes, the keyboard's familiar layout let me surpass my typical average of 75 to 80 words per minute after merely a couple of attempts (with only a unmarried fault) on 10fastfingers.com.

The mouse is a simple 2-button device with a red coil cycle to remind you that it's part of Lenovo's business line. The infrared sensor works fine in most situations simply doesn't take the power to track on glass like you lot see on more expensive mice. Unlike the keyboard, the mouse buttons take a nice clicky actuation, although they are just a bit on the loud side.

Configurations and Warranty

Lenovo offers two starting configurations of the M83: an Intel Core i3 model with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB, 7,200-rpm HDD for $483, and an Intel Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD for $694. Using Lenovo's online configurator, both models tin be upgraded to a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The real difference is that the i3 model comes packaged with a slim SATA DVD burner, while the i5 model features a costless downgrade to Windows vii.

Every M83 comes standard with a three-twelvemonth express warranty, which includes weekday on-site service for parts and labor. This tin can be extended to a max of 5 years with 24/7 phone support, on-site service and adjacent-day repair for $149.

Lesser Line

For business organisation users, the combination of Lenovo's enterprise support, service and compatibility with accessories like the Tiny-in-One monitors makes the M83 Tiny a very attractive mini PC. At $649 for an Intel Core i5-4590T CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD, you get better performance than you'll find on a similarly priced Intel NUC or Mac mini, and if you need the extra storage speed, Lenovo offers upgrades to solid-state drives as well. The plethora of ports likewise makes it a cinch to attach multiple peripherals, which, when combined with its size, makes the Tiny a adept choice for use equally a bespeak-of-sale device or a marquee display auto.

Tech-savvy dwelling users or small-scale businesses that don't demand the aforementioned level of support should consider the Intel NUC ($390), which is smaller but requires you to bring your own RAM, storage and operating system. Yet, if you need a powerful, space-saving desktop that's ready to roar out of the box, the ThinkCentre M83 Tiny should be at the peak of your listing.