Minipc wifi

On the front, you get a headphone jack, two USB 3. First, you peel back the edges of the grippy rubber strips on the bottom to expose four Phillips-head screws. And the pricing, compared with that of our other picks, gets even better if you want more storage or memory—buying these parts yourself is always cheaper than paying Lenovo, HP, or Dell for the same upgrades.

But you can find a Ryzen 3 version for a bit less money that will still work well for schoolwork, working from home, or basic browsing. And you can find a more expensive Ryzen 7 version with a bit more power for editing high-resolution video or running other professional apps.

It also has USB Type-C ports on the front and the back whereas most of our picks have one or the other and a microSD card slot, which is handy for photographers or others who use microSD cards regularly. Compared with most of our other picks, the PN50 is taller but has a smaller, 4.

That additional height leaves room for a 2. Because the first thing you need to do to a bare-bones mini PC is open it up to install components, Asus has made the PN50 easy to get into; remove four Phillips head screws from the bottom of the device, and then slide the bottom off to expose both memory slots and the M.

The bottom of the PN50 also doubles as the tray where you install the 2. Fan noise in the PN50 is more or less comparable to that of the other mini PCs we tested. The M1 Mac mini does have fewer ports than Intel Mac minis, all of those ports are on the back of the computer, and it can connect to only two monitors instead of three.

Despite its larger size, the Mac mini actually comes with fewer ports than most of the Windows mini PCs we tested and fewer than the old Intel Mac mini had.

The Mac mini is one of the larger mini PCs we tested, at 7. It also lacks VESA-mounting options, so it needs room on a desk unless you want to try a third-party mount. In laptops like the MacBook Air, that manifests as a few extra hours of battery life. Most of the Intel systems in our tests consumed between 50 W and 60 W of power when encoding a video, a task that stresses all the cores on a processor at once. The M1 Mac mini, in contrast, used about 24 W of power to do the same task in a similar amount of time.

The version with a Ryzen 5 Pro GE should offer about the same processor performance as an Intel Core i5—based mini PC but much faster integrated-graphics performance, which is better for Fortnite and other less-demanding and older games. These systems, which come both as preconfigured PCs and as build-your-own bare-bones models, have louder-than-normal fans but offer good performance and all the ports and expandability that most people need.

We expect to recommend NUCs in the future, but this is a bad time to buy one. We think those newer models will be worth buying when you can get them, but one of our other picks will serve your needs better in the short term. Gaming mini PCs are considerably pricier than the models in this guide, and buying one is usually much more expensive than building a larger PC yourself.

A prebuilt gaming desktop from Dell, HP, Lenovo, or other, smaller PC builders will be larger, but it will also cost about the same amount, perform as well or better, and age more gracefully. A handful of other powerful bare-bones gaming mini PCs exist, but most of them come from smaller companies like ASRock and Zotac and have shorter warranties and worse support. The M90q Tiny also offers Intel processors that use more power and run faster than the T-series Intel chips in most of the mini PCs we recommend.

The main difference is that they have faster USB ports on the back, they have two M. Those upgrades make a big difference in the day-to-day usability of the computer. Asus also offers a fanless version of the Chromebox 4 FCU. Apple still sells the Mac mini with Intel processors. Skip it unless you need Windows support for a specific reason. We tested it with a USB-C monitor that put out 60 W of power, and it seemed to work fine, but giving the PC less power than it needs could result in slowdowns or shutdowns.

Andrew Cunningham is a senior staff writer on Wirecutter's tech team. He has been writing about laptops, phones, routers, and other tech since Before that he spent five years in IT fixing computers and helping people buy the best tech for their needs.

Major stores and manufacturers sell refurbished, refreshed, and used laptops and desktops that sometimes perform as well as new ones, but for much lower prices. Our pick. Budget pick. Also great. Everything we recommend. What about gaming mini PCs? What to look forward to The competition Footnotes Sources Why you should trust us.

Who this is for. How we picked. Specs: Processor: A mini PC needs a processor powerful enough to handle basic web browsing, light photo editing, and any office programs you use. With the exception of our budget contenders and the Mac mini, all the mini PCs in our test group have a 10th- or 11th-generation Intel Core i5 processor or a series AMD Ryzen processor.

If you spend lots of time in heavy-duty apps such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Premiere, or if you regularly edit several large spreadsheets or databases at a time, you may benefit from 16 GB; aside from the Mac mini, any of our picks allow you to upgrade the RAM if you decide you need more.

Storage: A spinning hard drive can bog down an otherwise speedy computer, so a solid-state drive is a requirement here. A GB SSD should be available as a standard feature, and upgrading the storage or adding a second drive later should be easy. Preinstalled operating system: For our main pick, we focused on PCs running Windows Size: A mini PC should have a footprint no larger than 8 by 8 inches and should be no more than 3 inches tall.

Any larger, and you might as well get a Mini-ITX computer , which has more room for expansion. Because mini PCs fit almost anywhere, many clever mounting options are available. Ease of upgrades: You should be able to upgrade the memory and storage on any mini PC without much technical know-how. Fan noise: Like laptops, mini PCs cram a lot of power into a small case. Warranty: Most mini PCs come with at least a one-year warranty, but the best have a two- or three-year warranty.

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