Lenovo ThinkCentre 50q Gen 4 Black 2023

The Lenovo ThinkCentre Neo 50q is a tiny, well-built office PC that's perfect for cramped spaces and basic tasks. Its port selection is a highlight, but the 8GB of RAM and small SSD are major drawbacks that will frustrate anyone trying to multitask. Only buy it if you find it for a low price and your needs are extremely simple.

The 13th Gen Core i5-13420H is a decent mobile chip, but it's held back hard by the measly 8GB of RAM and integrated Intel UHD graphics. In our database, the CPU sits in the bottom half of the pack, and the GPU is even weaker. You can browse the web, run Office apps, and stream video without much fuss, but multitasking with more than a few tabs open will make this thing sweat. The 256GB SSD is fast for booting, but it's tiny by modern standards and ranks near the bottom of our storage charts.

Stacked against something like the Apple Mac Studio M4 Max or the HP Omen 45L is a joke, those are in a completely different league for creative work and gaming. A more realistic rival is a Dell OptiPlex Micro or an HP Elite Mini. Those often come with better base specs for a similar footprint. The ThinkCentre's port selection is a standout, but the 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD are a real handicap out of the box. You'll likely need to factor in the cost and hassle of a memory upgrade just to get it to a comfortable baseline.

Pricing on this model is all over the map, with a spread of over $17,000 across vendors, which is frankly absurd. The sweet spot seems to be around the $705 mark from Newegg, where it makes sense as a basic office terminal. At that price, you're getting a compact, reliable machine for simple tasks. If you see it listed for anything close to four figures, walk away. You can get a much more capable mini PC with 16GB of RAM and a bigger SSD for the same money.

The Lenovo ThinkCentre Neo 50q is a tiny PC built for a very specific job: sitting on a desk in a cramped office and running spreadsheets. It's not flashy, it's not fast, and it won't play games, but it sips power and takes up less space than a hardcover book. For basic business tasks, it gets the job done quietly and reliably. Just don't ask it to do anything more demanding than a video call.

If you need to run any creative software, keep more than a dozen browser tabs open, or want to play even the simplest games, look elsewhere. The integrated graphics and paltry RAM will leave you staring at loading screens. You should also skip this if you store a lot of files locally, as the 256GB drive will be full before you know it.

This PC is for IT managers who need to deploy a fleet of simple, secure, and space-saving terminals for a call center or front desk. It's not for a power user, a student with a heavy workload, or anyone who wants to do more than one thing at a time. If you just need a reliable machine to run a point-of-sale system or a single business app, and you find it for the right price, it's a solid little box.