Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 2024 Review

A tiny office powerhouse that's all business and zero play. Buy it if you need max productivity in a minimal footprint, but skip it if you ever want to see a decent frame rate.

This little black box is a business workhorse disguised as a paperweight. The one thing to know about the Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 is that it's built for one thing: cramming a surprising amount of office-ready power into the smallest footprint possible. It's not here to win any beauty contests or gaming benchmarks, but if you need a reliable, compact machine that can handle a million browser tabs and a spreadsheet army, this is a serious contender.

The performance story is a tale of two halves. The 20-core Intel i7-14700T CPU is solid, landing it in the middle of the pack for processing power. It's not the absolute fastest, but for general office work, it's more than enough. The real surprise, and a bit of a letdown, is the integrated Intel UHD Graphics. It's a weak spot, ranking in the bottom third of our database. This thing will chug on anything more demanding than a YouTube video. It's a reminder that this is a pure business tool, not a multimedia machine.

Worth it, but only if you buy it right. The price range is insane, from $1250 to over $3000. At the lower end of that scale, it's a good deal for the specs, especially the RAM and CPU. At the high end, you're getting ripped off. Shop around aggressively.

Forget the gaming desktops like the HP Omen or Lenovo Legion listed as competitors; they're in a different league. The real competition is other mini PCs. The MSI EdgeXpert Mini offers more raw CPU power and insane RAM capacity, but it's a different (and more expensive) beast. For most office users, the more relevant comparison is against something like an Apple Mac Mini with an M2 chip. The Mac Mini will be faster, more efficient, and have better graphics, but you'll pay more for less RAM and storage, and you're locked into macOS. This Lenovo wins on pure Windows business compatibility and port selection.

If you're looking for a desktop to do any gaming, video editing, or serious creative work, this isn't it. The graphics just can't keep up. Go get a desktop with a dedicated graphics card instead, even if it's bigger.

We recommend the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 for one specific person: the business or home office user who needs a powerful, reliable, and supremely compact Windows machine and doesn't care about graphics performance. It's a plug-and-play productivity cube. If your needs are that simple, it's a great fit. Just make sure you're getting it for a good price.