Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 Tiny review: A small format desktop PC with a potent CPU

Lenovo's range of M Series Tiny small desktops is not the easiest to navigate. At the moment it sells boxes in M70, M75, M80 and M90 configurations and four different generations. What you need to know is that machines with odd numbers use AMD chips and those with even, Intel. Gen 4 and 5 boxes all use thirteenth and fourteenth-generation Raptor Lake CPUs.

The model we have been sent to review is a ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 Tiny with an Intel i7-13700T CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD and is broadly typical of the Fourth and Fifth generation machines.

A point worth clarifying at this early stage is that none of Lenovo's Tiny range of mini PC can be specified with a discrete GPU so anyone after serious graphics performance is recommended to look at a machine like the HP Z2 Mini G9.

In the UK the M70q Gen 4 is only available direct from Lenovo with a 13th Generation Intel Core i5-13400T CPU for £850 (£708.33 ex-VAT) but you can find both it and the Core-i7 model in retail channels for substantially less.

ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 Tiny : Design

Lenovo's "Tiny" ThinkCentre Mini PCs eschew the usual near-square box design favored by the likes of Asus for one that's as deep as it is wide but also very thin. In the case of the M70q Gen 4 Tiny, this means a device that's 175 x 180 x 35mm and weighs 1.16Kg.

All the external panels are made from metal giving the whole unit a very solid and sturdy feel and that's not just a matter of perception: The M70q Gen 4 meets the US Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810H standards so it should prove resilient to drops, knocks, vibration and changes in pressure and humidity.

For a device with such small end panels, the M70q Gen 4 manages to squeeze in a lot of ports. Our review machine came with four 10Gbit/s USB-A ports (two on the front and two on the back), single 5Gbit/s and 2.0 USB-A ports, one HDMI 2.1, and two DisplayPort 1.4 video outputs, a 10Gbit/s data-only USB-C port, an RJ-45 Gigabit ethernet port and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The second DisplayPort connector was in one of the two available "punch out" port spaces. These can be specified with either VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, serial, or USB-C with DisplayPort and 100W PD charging connectors at the point of purchase.

One thing the M70q lacks, and that you cannot specify, is a memory card slot of any description. Wireless communications are handled by the ubiquitous Intel AX211 modem which delivers 6Ghz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

To get inside the M70q, you simply undo the large single Philips head screw at the back and then slide the front/top section of the casing forward. That gives you easy access to the fan for cleaning and the plastic 3.5-inch HDD bracket. Two plastic clips hold the fan assembly in place, making removing it a very straightforward operation.

With the front/top section out of the way, you can slide the access panel in the base out to access the two PCIe 4 2280 SSD mounts and two SODIMM slots. Unquestionably the design of the M70q is extremely effective as a simple and quick way of accessing all the internal components.

Accessories in the box with our review unit included a basic but perfectly useable keyboard and mouse, a screw-on WAN antenna, a 75/100mm VESA-standard mounting bracket for the PC box that can be fitted to a monitor and a cage mount for the 135W PSU.

Unusually the M70q has a built-in speaker. Lenovo's specification sheet mentions a "Premium" single speaker rated at 2W and a basic speaker with the same rating. We can only assume that our test model came with the latter because it was very quiet and wholly lacking in bass. It's better than nothing, but only by a small margin.

ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 Tiny: Specs and performance

The Core i7-13700T CPU inside the M70q may not be the latest word in Intel chippery but the 4.9GHz 16-core – 8 Performance, 8 Efficiency – 24-thread chip has more than enough performance to chew through productivity tasks quickly and without breaking into a sweat.

In ITPro's 4K multi-media benchmark the M70q scored 303 points while in the PCMark10 test, it scored 6,066 points. Those numbers easily match what we'd expect from the likes of an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H even if they can't quite equal the scores we've seen from AMD's latest Ryzen 9 HX370 CPU.

Turning to the CineBench R23 rendering text the M70q returned a multi-core score of 12,914 and a single-score of 1,849 while in the Geekbench 6 test, it scored 10,941 multi-core and 2,585 single-core. All those results are higher than the ones we saw from the Asus PN53 mini-PC running on AMD's Ryzen 6900HX CPU.

Performance from the Core i5-13400T model on sale direct from Lenovo in the UK won't be quite as good because it's only a 10-core, 16-thread chip running at a maximum of 4.4Ghz but it shouldn't feel noticeably slower in everyday use.

With Intel's UHD 770 integrated graphics chip moving the pixels about rather than the latest Intel Arc integrated GPU graphics performance is not surprisingly a bit of an M70q weak spot.

The GXFBench off-screen Car Chase and Manhattan tests scored 61 and 133fs respectively while the Geekbench 6 OpenCL test turned in a score of 7,995. Those scores don't preclude a little light gaming at lunchtime but we do mean light, even a lightweight 3D shooter like Serious Sam 4 only ran at 38fs at FullHD.

The SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modeling test did at least run on the M70q unlike the MSI Cubi NUC 1M although the result was a very pedestrian 11.43fs.

Prolonged high-stress activity didn't trip the M70q up as it managed to run flat out without showing any signs of thermal stress. Running the FurMark and Prime95 stress test programs side-by-side, the CPU and iGPU ran a 100% utilization range for six hours.

The price for there being no drop-off in performance is fan noise. We wouldn't describe it as intrusive but it is certainly audible when the system is running flat out.

Our review machine came with a 512GB Western Digital SSD, which proved to be a decent performer, recording sequential read and write speeds of 4,065MB/s and 2,470MB/s, respectively.

ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 Tiny: Is it worth it?

There's no point in judging the M70q at Lenovo's selling price of £850 inc VAT (£708.33 ex VAT) because both the Core i5 and i7 models can be found in retail channels for a lot less, under £500 ex VAT in both cases.

For that sort of money, it's hard to argue with the M70q because you are getting more ports than you can shake a stick at, good levels of performance and an easy way to add more memory and storage including a traditional 3.5-inch hard drive.

We also like the form factor which makes the M70q easier to mount on a monitor or conceal than the more boxy shapes favored by some mini PC manufacturers.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 4 specifications