Lenovo ThinkCentre Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 Tiny Desktop Review

This tiny desktop has an elite 99th-percentile port selection crammed into a 1.25kg box. But you trade speed for size, with CPU and storage landing in the bottom half of our rankings. Get it only if saving desk space is worth more to you than raw performance.

The Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 Tiny Desktop is a study in extremes. On one hand, its port selection lands in the 99th percentile for a desktop, packing 7 USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, and DisplayPort 1.4a into a chassis that weighs just 1.25kg. On the other, its 256GB SSD sits in the 18th percentile for storage, which is frankly tiny for a modern system. It's a machine built for a very specific job: fitting a lot of connectivity into a very small box. Our scoring system rates it best for compactness (79.6/100) and business use (63/100), while it's predictably terrible for gaming (10.5/100). With a CPU in the 39th percentile and GPU in the 25th, this isn't a powerhouse. It's a tidy, reliable office machine that prioritizes desk space and plug-and-play convenience over raw speed.

Performance is exactly what you'd expect from a 10-core Intel Core i5-14400T. That 'T' stands for low-power, and it shows. Our database puts its CPU performance in the 39th percentile, which means it's fine for office tasks, web browsing, and light development work, but it's not going to win any rendering races. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 770 lands in the 25th percentile, so don't even think about gaming beyond maybe Solitaire. The 16GB of DDR5 RAM is a solid middle-ground at the 58th percentile, and the 256GB NVMe SSD will be fast, but you'll fill it up quickly. The real performance story here is the 90W power supply—this thing sips power, which is the trade-off for that modest speed.

Here's where it gets tricky. This system costs between $1069 and $1370 depending on the vendor, a spread of over $300. For that money, you're paying a premium for the tiny form factor and the business-ready features like Windows 11 Pro. On a pure price-per-performance basis, it's not a great deal—you can get a much faster traditional desktop for the same cash. But if your desk space is at an absolute premium and you need all those ports, the value shifts. Shop around; that $301 difference is significant for what is essentially the same box.

Compared to the gaming desktops listed as competitors, like the HP Omen 45L or Alienware Aurora, it's a different universe. Those machines have dedicated GPUs and CPUs for raw speed. A fairer comparison would be against other mini PCs or small form factor business desktops. The M70q's strength is its port count and reliability score (76th percentile) against those peers. Compared to a Lenovo Legion tower, you're trading all gaming and creative potential for a footprint that's about one-tenth the size. It's not better or worse, just built for a completely different user.

Gamers, content creators, and anyone needing serious horsepower should look elsewhere. With a GPU in the 25th percentile and a gaming score of 10.5/100, this isn't your machine. Developers working with large codebases or virtual machines will also be hampered by the 39th-percentile CPU and the very limited 256GB storage. If your work involves anything more demanding than spreadsheets, web apps, and email, you'll outgrow this tiny box quickly.

We recommend the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 if your top priorities are a clutter-free desk and plugging in a ton of peripherals without a hub. The data is clear: fantastic ports, good reliability, but mediocre speed and puny storage. It's a solid buy for a specific business or office scenario where space is the ultimate constraint. For everyone else—developers needing compile power, users with large media libraries, or anyone on a budget—the performance compromises and cost are hard to justify when larger, faster options exist at the same price.