A mini PC is typically seen as a less-powerful solution for incredibly simple tasks. For personal life, they are best for simple stations where things like checking your email are going to be the worst of it or hidden behind the TV as a media center for all of your favorite apps and personal libraries.
That doesn’t seem to be the case for the Beelink U55 Mini Windows 10 PC. This system does things right by starting off at the proper amount of resources for Windows 10. Unlike some of these 2GB or 4GB (RAM) alternatives that we’ve played with, this model features 8GB of RAM memory, which is exactly what we like to recommend as the minimum amount of memory for a stable Windows 10 system (regardless of use).
Given, the 8GB of memory isn’t that fast as it falls around 800MHz or so, so it won’t be a jaw-dropping performance, but it at least gives Windows and apps plenty enough space to flex when it comes to general multitasking.
This is also plenty enough if you decided to go with Linux instead of Windows (although we’d recommend dual-booting at first just in case Linux runs into any driver issues).
This is a great option for users at home looking for a media center for all of your favorite apps and personal libraries. It would also work great in the corporate world as well for digital signage, as it can easily be hidden/mounted behind a TV and the resources are enough for just about anything you want it to loop through.
The drive inside is indeed M.2, however, it is SATA and not PCIe. Not much of a surprise given the price of everything, but it would have been a neat surprise to see an NVMe solution in there. Either way, the drive is quite speedy. It’s a generic option which is fine in this case, and the design of everything inside seems neat and not sloppily thrown together like some other boards we have seen with other smaller brands.
It does support 4K and dual display, however, it is HDMI 1.4. So the best you will get is 4K@30 and sub-stable at best if you plan to watch 4K videos, given the resources. When you start playing with 4K, it is best to have a system with a dedicated video card or onboard chipset (in other words, not a mini PC). To squeeze the most out of this, I would recommend at most, a single 4K screen only (don’t try going dual display at that resolution). That being said, dual display at 1080p works great. Thankfully, if you had the budget for two fancy 4K monitors, you’d likely have a larger budget for what’s driving them too.
Again, this would make for a wonderful solution for digital signage for both in-office installations as well as convention atmospheres. This PC could loop video, PowerPoint presentations, and more, all day long. It could work to power a touch-screen map system or another form of a customer interaction point.
For at home, it would make for a wonderful solution to have near or behind the TV for taking streaming beyond what your TV can offer with the apps it has to choose from. Add a small wireless keyboard with a built-in trackpad (Logitech has a good one) and you’ll have full control from your couch that will extend far beyond what any app on the TV could possibly accomplish.
The build of the PC is pretty decent. There is a lot of plastic to it, but it doesn’t look like anything is going to fall apart. It isn’t a fanless build, so you do have a small fan in there (in case keeping things extra quiet is a requirement of yours). The fan isn’t really noisy that we can tell from our use of it.
For inputs/outputs, you get a decent collection. There are two USB 3.0 ports on the front and two USB 2.0 ports on the back. Sadly, USB 2.0 offers very little for modern use, so you’ll want to reserve those ports on the back for peripherals like mice/keyboards. The ports on the front (3.0) should be used for anything powerful, like external drives, thumb drives, and so forth.
On the front, you also get a USB 3.0 Type-C port, which is quite useful for mobile devices and hubs. Next to that is a 3.5mm headset/headphone connection. On the back, you have the before-mentioned two HDMI 1.4 ports, as well as a gigabit Ethernet connection for going wired. Of course, it does offer built-in WiFi support, so you’ll likely avoid using Ethernet unless you feel you absolutely need a wired connection or your router/hub is close enough by.
On the left side, there is a small slot for microSD cards for expanding your storage with or simply transferring files back and forth. Due to the speed of the microSD slot vs USB 3.0, if you are looking to expand capacity, we’d recommend going with an external HDD drive like a Western Digital Passport Black and just stick it nearby or double-stick tape it to the top of this PC.
They do give you two different HDMI cables, one short and one long, depending on if you mount it behind a TV close to an HDMI port or sitting flat somewhere. You also get a VESA mount adapter to make it easy to just make use of the VESA holes on the back of a TV to mount it to (if the TV isn’t mounted to a wall of course, else you’ll have to find another way of getting it to the back of the TV using something like velcro).
Our Conclusion
All-in-all, we really like this mini PC. We have come across many 4GB solutions (unlike this model) within the same price range, and all of them didn’t fare so well by us. This one hits the nail right on the head and marches forward as you’d expect. A very nice surprise coming from a smaller company. This mini PC proves to be quite versatile.
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Our Rating | Average Price* $289.90 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
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