For the home office, a mini PC can be a great option instead of a big tower that takes up space. These small computers are capable of handling the basic tasks like mailing, office applications, video conferencing, PDF editors, and web browsing. In this article, we tested six mini PCs from 370 to around 1500 Euros under both Windows and Linux. We also provide individual reviews and a summary table of the test results.
The first PC we tested was a used Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny with a six-core processor Core i5-8400T from Intel. It is capable of running Windows 11 and we paid 370 Euros for it at the commercial PC processor AfB. We also tested a new Medion Akoya S23004, which costs 399 Euros and has Intel’s Core i5-1035G1 quad-core processor from the Ice Lake generation. It is the cheapest in our test and has the smallest SSD.
The Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Gen 2 Tiny costs around 570 Euros in online shops and comes with a Ryzen 5 Pro 5650GE six-core CPU from AMD. The HP Pro Mini 260 G9 is priced at around 800 Euros and comes with the 15-watt CPU Core i5-1235U from Intel’s mobile portfolio. It has eight efficiency cores and two performance cores with Hyper-Threading.
The entry-level version of the Mac mini, which has just been refreshed with the M2 SoC, is available from 700 Euros. It has eight CPU cores, ten GPU cores, but only 8 GB of soldered, non-expandable RAM. We bought the variant with 16 GB of RAM for 930 Euros since the lower variant looked not very future-proof.
Finally, we tested the fanless Cirrus7 nimbus v5 with the 14-core CPU Core i5-13500T, 16 GB DDR5 RAM, and 500 GB SSD. It is the most expensive but also the most modern and powerful x86 computer in the test field.
In conclusion, for basic tasks in the home office, a mini PC can be a great option, and we have presented six of them in this article. However, the choice ultimately depends on the specific needs and the budget of the user.
