The Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 is a smaller replica of the 27-inch Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i we reviewed recently. Based on a 24-inch display, this all-in-one PC is a mini dynamo for the price, at least as far as computing performance is concerned. At $900, it costs $350 less than its larger 27-inch sibling, and is a step faster. Both models feature the same Intel Core i5-12500H, but our 24-inch test model features twice the RAM of its big sibling. If you don’t have the space for a large-screen all-in-one PC, the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 delivers excellent bang for the buck, with one crucial exception. It suffers from one of the dimmest, dullest displays we’ve tested, making it suited only for dark dens or basements and a poor choice for kitchens and other bright public spaces—an AIO's natural habitat.
Function Over Form
Our Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 test unit's processor is a mobile CPU from Intel’s 12th Geneneration Alder Lake H series. It joins 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel graphics, and a 256GB SSD. We're excited to see 16GB of RAM on board since the 27-inch model we reviewed offers only 8GB. On the flip side, we are disappointed by the 256GB SSD; the 27-inch version has a 512GB one. These days, a 256GB boot drive is undersized for any desktop outside of entry-level PCs.
Our test system (model 24IAH7) is available for $900 at Micro Center. It’s currently out of stock at Lenovo, replaced with a newer model with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, which is $1,074 and features a Core i7-13700H CPU, 16GB of RAM, Intel Iris Xe graphics, and a 512GB SSD. Given the two choices, I’d take our test model for $900 and pick up a cheap external drive if I fill up the system’s 512GB SSD.
The IdeaCentre AIO 5 24’s design is more about function than form. You'll find nothing interesting about its looks—it’s destined to be deployed across a sea of cubicles more so than a reception area. At home, it’s better for a desk in your spare bedroom than a public area, a far sight from design-forward machines like the Apple iMac. Still, you'll find plenty of functionality in the physical design. The IdeaCentre AIO 5 24 sits on a sturdy base that connects to the display via two chrome arms, which form a loop on the back of the system.
This is an all-in-one that arguably is more interesting from the rear than from the front. That's because viewed from the front, it’s a display on top of what appears to be a dark-gray plastic speaker grille on top of a dark-gray rectangular base, with no eye-pleasing flourishes. The base is compact, at only 11.8 by 6.6 inches, but still is able to act as a steady anchor for the 24-inch display. As we saw with the 27-inch model, the IdeaCentre AIO 5 24’s base has a narrow channel that runs along the front. It might be a convenient spot to store a pen (of the ink variety, since the screen lacks touch support), but I worry it’ll just end up collecting dirt and dust, because I found my pen a bit difficult to dig out of the channel. Last note on the stand: it offers only tilt adjustment.
And about that alleged speaker grille below the display: It’s actually just a thick bezel with a corrugated pattern. The speakers face downward from under the display, but their quality is so poor that it wouldn’t matter if they fired toward your eyes and not the PC’s base. The audio output sounds muddied, with no separation between the high and mid tones, and the bass response is tepid at best.
Not Much of a View
The display of the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 is two steps down from that of the 27-incher we reviewed earlier. Not only is the panel three inches smaller, but it also offers only a quarter of the resolution. The 24-inch model has a FHD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) display, instead of the 27-inch unit’s QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) display. The FHD resolution is enough to produce clear text and crisp images on the 24-inch panel, however. Moving up to a 27-inch panel, you’ll see a greater benefit to a QHD resolution.
While it's true that the resolution suffices, the brightness of the panel will leave you wanting. It registered a mere 160 nits at peak brightness in our testing. In three years of running this test, that’s the lowest figure we’ve ever recorded for any all-in-one PC or laptop. To confirm this horrific result, I used a lux meter to measure the brightness of the display. At maximum brightness, the display measured 225 nits. That’s a bit better than our official Datacolor SpyderX test, but still below the PC's already modest brightness rating of 250 nits. Suffice it to say that this display looks very dim. Even in a poorly lit office, I had the brightness slider at its maximum. And even then, colors looked dull and white backgrounds looked dingy.
Above the display resides a 1080p webcam in a pop-up module. It presents a better picture than you’d get from a 720p camera, but its image quality was still below average for a 1080p webcam. I found the image to be too dark and a bit dull. Bumping up the brightness and saturation levels in the camera settings helps to a degree, but it still didn’t look at good as the picture from other 1080p webcams. When you aren’t using the webcam, you can push the module down and hide the camera to thwart online snoopers.
Other than a side-mounted USB-A port on the left edge, all of the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24’s ports are located in a neat row on the back panel: HDMI-in and -out ports, a pair of USB-C ports, two more USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The USB-C ports lack Thunderbolt support, and only one of the USB-A ports supports the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard. The other is a slower USB 2.0 port. That's a strange mix of older (read: slower) and newer (read: faster) USB connectivity. As for audio output, I’d like the headphone jack to be located on the side, rather than in the back where it’s harder to reach, since the poor speaker quality will likely necessitate external speakers or headphones.
Lenovo bundles a wireless keyboard and mouse with the system. They are both functional and preferable to a wired set.
Testing the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24: Plenty of Oomph
As mentioned, the Core i5-12500H in the IdeaCentre 5i is a member of Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake H series of 45-watt mobile chips. The H series is the high-powered chip in Intel’s mobile lineup, with the 28-watt P series in the middle and the efficient 15-watt U series at the other end. Mobile chips are typically intended for laptops and are less powerful than their desktop equivalents. The Core i5-12500H features Intel’s latest hybrid architecture, with Performance and Efficient cores; it has four P-cores, eight E-cores, and support for a total of 16 processing threads.
To see how the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24’s performance stacks up to the midrange all-in-one PC competition, we compared its benchmark results to those of a Dell AIO, a pair of Acer AIOs, and the 27-inch version of the IdeaCentre 5i. The last has the same CPU as our 24-inch test system. Meanwhile, the Dell Inspiron 27 All-in-One features a 12th-gen Core i5 from Intel’s efficient U series of chips, and the Acer Aspire C24 features a 12th-gen U-series Core i3 processor. The Acer Aspire C27 features a Core i7 CPU from Intel’s previous 11th Generation family. The Aspire C27 is also the only system with dedicated graphics, boasting a low-end GeForce MX330 GPU. The IdeaCentre AIO 5i 27 and Aspire C24 feature only 8GB of memory, while the Inspiron 27 All-in-One and Aspire C27 have twice that amount.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a PC's storage drive.
Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our last productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 started its impressive showing in labs testing by finishing first among this group on PCMark 10. It edged the similarly equipped 27-inch IdeaCentre AIO and easily outpaced the other systems. It also took the gold on all but one of our multitasking benchmarks, finishing narrowly in second place on Cinebench, behind the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 27.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for machines with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
Among AIOs with integrated graphics and even the one outlier with a low-end MX330 CPU, the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 was a star. It finished at the top of the charts on both of our 3DMark tests, and at considerable margins. Like many PCs with integrated graphics, the IdeaCentre AIO 5i was unable to complete the 1440p GFXBench Aztec Ruins test (only the Aspire C27 could finish it), but it acquitted itself well on the lower-end GFXBench 1080p Car Chase test, averaging 84fps. That’s one frame more than the Acer Aspire C27 and its GeForce MX330 could manage.
Display Tests
We use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
We’ve already discussed the IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24’s record-breaking-in-a-bad-way score of 160 nits at peak brightness. It wasn’t the worst we’ve seen on our color gamut or palette measurements, however, covering 96% of the sRGB, 74% of the Adobe RGB, and 77% of the DCI-P3 color spaces.
Verdict: Doomed by a Dim Display
The Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i 24 is a peppy 24-inch all-in-one. It’s a well-rounded performer for the price, using its 12th Gen Core i5 H series CPU and 16GB of RAM to great effect. It’s a step faster than competing midrange all-in-one PCs, but not to the point that it’s worth having to stare at the dimmest of displays. If you can stretch your budget above $1,000, we suggest you size up to the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i 27 instead.
