Despite its diminutive size, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 (57327830) ($249.99 as tested) is a fully functional Windows 8.1 desktop PC that will run your basic everyday computing and home theater PC (HTPC) apps. About the size of a hardcover book, this Celeron-powered mini PC is small enough to attach to the back of your HDTV and offers 500GB of storage and plenty of I/O ports for connecting peripherals. It's not as powerful as the Apple Mac mini (2014), our Editors' Choice small-form-factor PC, but it is half the price and is a good choice for Windows users.

Design and Features
At 0.87 by 7.6 by 6.1 inches (HWD), the Q190 is slightly thinner and smaller than the Apple Mac mini (2014). The glossy-black top and bottom panels and brushed aluminum sides are a stark contrast to the Mac mini's matte-aluminum finish, but the Q190 is a good-looking system nonetheless. It comes with a matching stand that lets you position it vertically on your desktop, and a snap-on VESA mount and screws that let you attach it to the back of an HDTV or monitor.

To access the interior, you have to remove the four rubber legs (they pop right out) and undo the screws behind them. With the bottom panel off, you can get to and replace the hard drive, memory, and Wi-Fi components, but there's no room to add new components, and the system can only accommodate up to 8GB of RAM. There are plenty of external I/O ports, however. Behind a panel on the front edge are two USB 3.0 ports, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and a 6-in-1 card reader slot. Around back are four USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI video output, a VGA video output, a digital optical audio output, and a LAN port. The Q190 also offer wireless networking via an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi card. In comparison, the Mac mini offers the newer 802.11ac Wi-Fi, as well as Bluetooth 4.0 networking.

The 500GB hard drive offers ample storage for multimedia files, such as videos and photos. It comes with Windows 8.1 with Bing, trial versions of Microsoft Office 365 and McAfee LiveSafe, Skype, and Lenovo Companion, a one-stop portal for drivers, diagnostics, updates, and other system information.

The Q190 comes with a one-year warranty. It ships with a USB keyboard and mouse, which is more than what you get with the Mac mini, but a wireless keyboard and mouse would be better suited to an HTPC that will likely be controlled from a couch.

Performance
Powered by a modest 1.66GHz Intel Celeron 1017U processor, integrated Intel HD Graphics, and 4GB of DDR3 memory, the Q190 turned in mediocre scores on our performance benchmark tests. Its score of 1,912 on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test didn't come close to that of the AMD-powered Maingear Spark (3,293) or our Editors' Choice for entry-level gaming desktops, the Gatweway DX4885-UR2D (3,097), but it did outscore the Zotac Zbox CI320 nano Plus (1,496). Its score of 109 on the Cinebench R15 test, which measures raw CPU power, is the lowest of the bunch, trailing the Apple Mac mini (235) by more than 100 points and the Acer Aspire AXC-605-UR11 (330) by more than 200 points. The Q190 needed a whopping 10 minutes 4 seconds to complete the Photoshop image manipulation test and 6:58 to finish the Handbrake video encoding test. The Mac mini finished both tests in almost half the time (3:13 and 5:27, respectively). The Maingear Spark led the pack in terms of gaming performance; it delivered playable scores of 42 frames per second (fps) and 31 fps on the medium-quality Heaven and Valley gaming tests, respectively, while the Q190 could only manage 6fps on both tests. The Mac mini scored 17fps on the Heaven test and 18fps on Valley, both at medium quality.

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If you're looking for a compact PC to control your home entertainment system or just need an affordable secondary Windows PC, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 is a good choice. Its tiny footprint lets you locate it just about anywhere, and it comes with a generous amount of hard drive storage and a variety of connectivity ports. Upgrade potential is limited, but that's true of just about every SFF PC we've reviewed. A wireless keyboard and mouse would be nice, but would undoubtedly drive the price up. If you require more computing power and aren't thrilled with having Windows run your home-theater setup, consider our Editors' Choice for SFF PCs, the Apple Mac mini (2014). It's twice the price of the Q190, but it offers a more powerful Intel Core i5 processor, a slightly faster GPU, and a nice selection of free apps.