Audio & Video Performance

I was surprised when I heard audio coming from the M75e tower - I assumed I'd hear silence until I connected a pair of speakers or headphones, but there's a tiny speaker inside the chassis as an optional upgrade. Not surprisingly, the speaker doesn't get very loud or sound very good - I was unable to get any information from Lenovo about the wattage, but if I were to guess I'd say 2-3 watts at most. That's the good news - it's loud enough in a quiet environment to hear the dings and beeps of using your computer, and at 100% volume you can get away with watching a YouTube video, or even listening to music here and there...if you care nothing for the quality of the music.

The bad news? The speaker distorts extremely easily, with most audio causing distortion at around 80% of maximum volume - and, strangely, certain types of audio cause it to distort like crazy at lower volumes. For instance, my Apple Macbook 13 review video distorts at anything above 20% audio. This built-in speaker might do in a pinch, but you'll want real speakers if you want to hear much of anything.

The CPU and GPU hold up quite well when it comes to video performance. 1080p Flash video full screen uses up around 37% of the CPU resources, and playback is smooth under Internet Explorer 8. I tested 720p h.264 videos (20% CPU usage) and 1080p h.264 videos (25% CPU usage) and all of them played back without an issue. DVD playback was equally flawless. The M75e should be able to handle any video thrown at it - even a 4K video on YouTube played back OK, though the CPU was ramped up to 80% usage to play it back and as a result the system lost a bit of responsiveness.

Performance, Benchmarks, and Noise

Boot time was a reasonably quick 36 seconds from hitting the power button to being at the Windows 7 logon screen. Shut down occurs in 11 seconds. Both are within the realm of what I'd expect from Lenovo - they're renowned for the fast boot times on their systems. I used FutureMark's PCMark Vantage suite to benchmark the system, and it clocked in at a very respectable 6086 PCMarks.

Figure 8: The PCMark Vantage score.

Figure 9: The PCMark Vantage break-down of each benchmark.

I find myself repulsed by loud computers, so I was curious to see how quiet the M75e really was. My office is around 30dB with nearby computers in sleep mode and the M75e turned off. With the M75e powered up and idling, logged into Windows, I measure the volume at 33dB with a sound metre placed six inches off my desk and about six inches away from the front of the tower. How loud is that? Well, if you were the place the M75e on the ground under a desk, you wouldn't hear it at all. However, given the small form factor nature, it's likely to be placed up on top of your desk - especially if you have it laying horizontal with a monitor on top. In that placement, you'll hear the M75e. It's not loud, but in the absence of other noise in your workspace, you'll hear the fans. When I put all four CPU cores under 100% load, the volume level rose to 38dB. This isn't "leave the room while your video is rendering" loud, but it's loud enough. I'd say that, overall, Lenovo did a fairly good job at keeping the volume levels of the M75e in check.