
Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 (6072-ADM)
Pros
- e-SATA and legacy ports, tool-free chassis
Cons
- Mid-range performance, little to no upgrade potential
Bottom Line
It may not be one of Lenovo's more interesting units, offering the standard chassis and mid-range performance, but the inclusion of e-SATA as well as legacy ports like serial and parallel gives this unit a broad range of connectivity that will suit some offices to a tee.
-
Price
$ 1,399.00 (AUD)
Monitor not included
Red and black are back. The Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 (6072-ADM) uses Lenovo's standard form factor chassis, unlike the small form factor ThinkCentre A61e we reviewed recently, and dons the tried and tested black and red colour scheme. It isn't a great performer, but it does offer some extra connectivity, such as e-SATA, making it a good choice for users with large local backup needs.
It's a medium level system, offering basic performance and simple, but useful functionality. This unit has an Intel E6550 2.33GHz CPU installed, which offers a 1333MHz front side bus and a 4MB L2 cache, and there's 1GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM to play with. The system has a 160GB hard drive which should be plenty for the average user, plus a DVD re-writer is included, too.
The ThinkCentre M57 combines the old with the new. On one hand it has an e-SATA (external SATA) port, which is likely to become more and more important to the business world as large amounts of data need backing up. It is also quite helpful when trying to move quantities of data too large to be sent easily over the ether. However, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 also includes serial and parallel ports for backwards compatibility with older devices you may still have in the office.
Excellent for external storage, e-SATA allows data to be transferred at a theoretical maximum of 3Gbps, rather than 480Mbps on USB 2.0 or 800Mbps using FireWire, a huge improvement. Although more and more motherboard manufacturers are including e-SATA ports on their boards, it's a fairly rare site on pre-built PCs like the ThinkCentre M57. The slow adoption of e-SATA's can be laid, in part, on the shoulders of external hard drive vendors, who have only recently started to release e-SATA external hard drive enclosures en masse. The growing uptake of e-SATA will surely make it a more valuable and viable external storage option for everyone, especially in a business environment.
As usual the Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 offers one of the most manageable chassis in the business. A tool-free button release allows you to swing the chassis open like a Mach-truck cabin, exposing the inside in seconds. This is great for IT administrators who need quick access to multiple computers, saving valuable time with desk-side visits. What it's lacking in this regard, however, is room to upgrade. Although Lenovo is probably aiming for a lease-and-replace approach towards large fleets of ThinkCentres, the ability to upgrade, even the amount of internal storage, would be good. The chassis is so neatly packed that there's no room for any additions, except perhaps some more RAM.
In our benchmarks it performed with expectedly mid-range results. Although the E6550 is a good CPU, it's not running at a high default frequency. In WorldBench 6 it scored just 75, which will suffice for the average swathe of tasks like word processing and photo editing, but it's not a power machine so don't expect to do any video editing or other taxing tasks on this rig. In our MP3 encoding test, the ThinkCentre M57 performed reasonably well, taking just 75sec to encode 53 minutes worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files in iTunes. Using Cdex, which uses just one of the two available CPU cores, took 98sec.
Brand Post

Most Popular Reviews
- 1 Asus TUF Gaming VG28UQL1A review: This 4K monitor plays nice with consoles
- 2 Firewalla Gold review: Powerful home network security in a tiny box
- 3 Alienware AW3423DW review: Quantum dot OLED renders rival monitors obsolete
- 4 Acer Aspire 5 review: An affordable laptop that’s enjoyable to use
- 5 Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 review: This gaming laptop oozes luxurious power
Latest News Articles
- Razer really benchmarked asses to make its new Enki gaming chair
- How the Alienware Aurora R13's chassis boosts performance
- Revealed: The first Intel 12th-gen ‘Alder Lake’ gaming rig
- PC sales soar, Apple has a big quarter
- Dells new XPS Desktop looks to be a premium powerhouse PC
Resources
Business Centre
The latest business news, reviews, features and whitepapers

Videos
Watch our video news and reviews from around the world

Guides
Comprehensive buying guides, features, and step-by-step articles

PCW Evaluation Team
Pedro Peixoto
Aruba Instant On AP11D

Set up is effortless.
Cate Bacon
Aruba Instant On AP11D

The strength of the Aruba Instant On AP11D is that the design and feature set support the modern, flexible, and mobile way of working.
Dr Prabigya Shiwakoti
Aruba Instant On AP11D

Aruba backs the AP11D up with a two-year warranty and 24/7 phone support.
Tom Pope
Dynabook Portégé X30L-G

Ultimately this laptop has achieved everything I would hope for in a laptop for work, while fitting that into a form factor and weight that is remarkable.
Tom Sellers
MSI P65

This smart laptop was enjoyable to use and great to work on – creating content was super simple.
Lolita Wang
MSI GT76

It really doesn’t get more “gaming laptop” than this.
Featured Content
- Best Unlimited Internet Deals in 2022
- Microsoft’s universal ‘One Outlook’ client just leaked out
- Liquid Retina vs. Liquid Retina XDR: Which display is better?
- Which flagship TV is best? Sony 4K HDR Bravia 2016 versus LG 4K HDR OLED 2016
- 10 Blu-ray movies / Best looking Blu-ray movies