While the smaller AMR5 is suited only for lightweight home office tasks, the AM08 Pro is a better option for students wanting a more well-rounded PC for tackling assignments during the day and enjoying some games in the evening. It typically drew around 30 to 40 watts of power during web browsing and up to 70 watts during more demanding gaming and video exporting. Photo editing in Lightroom CC was fine as well. It also handled 4K video editing in Premiere, allowing me to scrub through the timeline with little delay and export the project in a reasonable 25 minutes. Elden Ring played well enough for more casual gamers on low settings, so those of you looking to enjoy lighter titles on Steam will be perfectly well catered for here. It's little surprise then that it performed better on our benchmark tests and turned its hand to more-demanding tasks too. The bigger brother to the AMR5, the AM08 Pro comes with a slightly larger body size and somewhat beefed-up internal specs that include a higher-powered AMD chip. It's best suited for those of you who need a small machine for home office and web browsing tasks. It typically drew around 40 watts of power during web browsing and general use, going up to about 50 watts during gaming and video exporting. Though it handled image editing in Lightroom CC fine, 4K video editing in Adobe Premiere wasn't as smooth, but it exported my test project faster than others on this list. It scored low on our benchmark tests, however, and more demanding games like Elden Ring were sluggish and choppy, even on low settings. Its older AMD Ryzen 5 chip allows for swift general office and web browsing tasks and it runs lightweight games like Dredge without any issues. Its two USB and one USB-C port on the front make it easy to plug in devices, while the magnetic side panel makes accessing internal components a breeze. With its upright form factor and tiny footprint, the AMR5 sits very comfortably on a small, home office desk. The AS6 is one of the more expensive options on this list, but that extra cash does result in higher performance. Its power draw was around 60 watts while web browsing, which is higher than most others on this list, and went up to around 75 watts during more intense tasks like video exporting. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery played fine at recommended low settings too, and while I got a warning about incompatible hardware when I changed the settings to medium, the game still played well enough, at least for more casual players who aren't obsessing over frame rates and draw distances.Įditing 4K video in Adobe Premiere was smooth, and the AS6 exported my test project in a little over 16 minutes - a long way behind the Mac Mini, but the fastest of all the Windows-based PCs on this list. It might be small, but it packs some decent specs, producing solid results on our benchmark tests and allowing Elden Ring to run smoothly enough at medium graphics settings. It's upgradable, but that requires unscrewing and removing the outer casing, rather than just simply popping off a cover like with the AMR5. But that makes it an ideal mini PC for hiding away, perhaps on a nearby bookshelf or even mounting behind your monitor, tucked out of sight entirely. Geekom's AS6 is the least visually appealing of the models we tested, being just a dull, plain black box. Still, those are arguably more-minor concerns given the superb performance and low power usage the Mac Mini offers. Its one-piece aluminum body is attractive, too, though it's frustrating that all the ports are hidden around the back, with no quick access to any on the front. That's a significant amount less than every PC on this list, which will make the Mac Mini a more economical choice over time. During web browsing, the Mac Mini used only around 8 watts of power, and it averaged around 40 watts when exporting video. Though gaming still isn't much of a thing on the Mac (Elden Ring wasn't installable on Steam), it easily handled my sessions of The Elder Scrolls Online on high settings.īut the most impressive aspect for me is the power draw. Its benchmark results far exceeded the Windows-based models, it coped with 4K video editing with no issues whatsoever and exported my test project from Adobe Premiere in only seven minutes, less than half the time of any of the other models. Apple's Mac Mini is the most expensive model on this list by far, so you'd expect it to offer performance that outshines other tiny desktops - and it really does.
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