Xiaomi Mini PC review: Small and easy-to-use cost-effective productivity tool

With the further subdivision of corporate PC office, many people find that they do not need a high-performance conventional computer for PC office work, but the compact and easy-to-use mini pc is sufficient to meet daily office needs. Xiaomi realizes the market potential of mini pc. While launching the Xiaomi 13 smartphone at the end of last year, it also brought its first mini pc. Now let’s take a look at how the Xiaomi Mini Host PC performs.

Xiaomi Mini Host PC specs and features:

  • Windows 11 operating system
  • Intel i5 1240P processor
  • 16GB DDR4 + 512GB/1TB SSD
  • Support Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.3
  • Weighs only 437g
  • $711 – Check latest price on AliExpress


Appearance and Interface

Xiaomi Mini PC is small in size, only slightly larger than the palm of your hand, and the weighs only 437g. The shell is made of aluminum alloy, with the Xiaomi brand logo printed in the middle of the top, and the corner area adopts CNC chamfering cutting process, so that the mini pc has a slightly mirror-reflective visual effect.

Interfaces are located on the front and back of the mini pc. The back area provides a power port, 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, two HDMI ports, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a USB 2.0 Type-A portand a 2.5Gbps wired network port – obviously this is a mini pc that supports simultaneous use with multiple monitors.

The front of the mini pc provides two USB 3.2 Type-A ports (the Type-A port with the lightning icon on the right supports power-off charging function) and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The indicator light and power button are on the leftmost and rightmost areas.

Both sides of the Xiaomi Mini PC are covered with honeycomb-shaped cooling holes, so that the device can dissipate heat better when it is running. There are four non-slip feet on the bottom of the mini pc, and the rated input power is marked as 100W. In terms of accessories, only a power adapter integrated with the data cable is provided. If you want to use the non-power port on the mini pc, you still need to prepare the relevant data cable yourself.


Performance and Configuration

In terms of performance, we can see from the CPU-Z test software that the Xiaomi Mini Host PC is equipped with an Intel i5 1240P processor. The processor is a 10nm process technology, 12 cores and 16 threads, with a main frequency of 1.7GHz, a turbo frequency of 4.4GHz, and a TDP of 28W. This CPU is also used in some thin-light notebooks. The single-core score of CPU-Z is 690.5, and the multi-core score is 5366.8, which can still provide good performance in daily use.

The teardown of the mini pc is still very simple, just remove the four non-slip feet at the bottom and unscrew the four hidden screws. The internal design adopts the Intel NUC solution, so the motherboard inside the device is NUC12WSBi50Z. It turned out that the in-depth cooperation with Intel is not only the CPU hardware, but also the NUC solution is a key part.

Since the Xiaomi Mini Host PC is a full version, it is equipped with dual-channel Crucial 8GB DDR4 memory sticks inside. It also provides a B-Key M.2 expansion port, which can install a solid-state hard disk that supports the SATA protocol 2242 specification. Inside the Xiaomi Mini PC is a 2280 specification FORESEE XP2000 PCIe 4.0 SSD.

The main control chip of XP2000 SSD is SiliconMotion SM2269XT, which is mainly designed for small size SSD. With 12nm process technology, it supports four-channel transmission and HMB technology. At the same time, the SM2269XT main control chip is also equipped with NANDXtend technology, combined with 4KB LDPC error correction code, to provide excellent performance and reliability for the slow-down designed XP2000.

In addition, XP2000 is equipped with 176-layer 3D NAND Flash, which greatly reduces the latency compared with the previous generation. The official said that the theoretical performance of XP2000 SSD can reach 5200MB/s read speed, 4400MB/s write speed, and 900,000 IOPS and 440,000 IOPS for 4K random read and write. XP2000 supports many data encryption including TCG OPAL 2.0 and Pyrite 2.0, and has also passed multiple platform certifications such as Intel Modern Standby and AMD. However, as the system hard disk of the mini pc, the actual test performance cannot reach the theoretical peak performance. We found in the CrystalDiskMark test that the actual read speed of XP2000 is 4017.17MB/s, and the write speed is 2646.08MB/s.

In terms of network connection, in addition to wired network port, Xiaomi Mini Host PC also supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. The wireless network card is the Intel AX211GNW, the third Intel element on the Xiaomi Mini PC.

The operating system that Xiaomi Mini Host PC runs is Windows 11. The startup speed is very fast, and there is basically no obvious noise when running. Office applications can run smoothly.

Next, look at the office test. In PCMark 10’s standard test, the Xiaomi Mini Host PC scored a productivity score of 5221. The productivity score in PCMark 10 Extended is 5455 points. It is worth mentioning that the content creation score exceeds 6000 points, which means that if the color gamut performance of the display is also good enough, it can also be competent for some image post-processing tasks in Photoshop.


Conclusion

Xiaomi’s first mini pc still delivered a good answer, which can meet the needs of many users in terms of light office work.


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