Xiaomi Mini PC Hands-On Review: A Refined NUC Alternative

In the PC field, the NUC concept mini host, dominated by Intel, has always been synonymous with compactness and refinement. Unlike the bulky full-size computer host, mini hosts pack a relatively outstanding performance hardware configuration into a small body that occupies only the size of a palm on the desktop, achieving a true “small but complete” design that has captivated many office workers.

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of Intel CPU performance and the demand for home office brought by the pandemic, we have noticed that mini host products following the NUC design rules are becoming more and more numerous. If the share of smartphones and game consoles in entertainment continues to rise, then mini hosts may even establish a three-way balance between desktop computers and laptops.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

On December 11, Xiaomi held its winter new product launch event, bringing us the flagship Xiaomi 13 series while also introducing its first desktop computer—the Xiaomi Mini PC. This product adopts a design similar to Intel’s NUC Pro series, boasting a compact size and complete interfaces, along with the support of the 12th generation Core mobile platform, striving to create a compact yet high-performance productivity tool.

Recently, Lei Technology received the carefully designed first mini host product from Xiaomi.Next, let’s take a closer look at this Xiaomi Mini PC, exploring its overall configuration, performance release, and what kind of user experience it offers.

Xiaomi Mini PC Hands-On Review: A Refined NUC Alternative

Unboxing

Let’s start with the unboxing. The Xiaomi Mini PC comes in a simple black-themed packaging box. The front of the box features a simple programming code along with the text “Hello Xiaomi Mini PC” indicating the product’s attributes; the left side has Xiaomi’s Chinese and English trademarks; the back of the packaging lists the product type and detailed hardware specifications.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

Upon lifting the top cover, the main unit of this review sits firmly in the center of the base, with the manual and power adapter underneath. It can be seen that the power adapter for the Xiaomi Mini PC is significantly smaller than other NUC products in the same category, with an output specification of 20V 5.0A and a power output of 100W, sufficient to ensure stable operation of the entire system.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

Taking out the main unit, the Xiaomi Mini PC is designed to be very compact, with dimensions of only 112×112×38mm, allowing it to be easily held in one hand. To provide a more intuitive understanding, we compared this product with the Xiaomi 12s, and it can be seen that this product is even smaller than the Xiaomi 12s, which is known for its “compactness”, ensuring it occupies minimal space on a desktop or behind a monitor.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In terms of appearance, the overall design of this machine is basically consistent with NUC products on the market, featuring a flat square chassis. The outer shell is made of metal material, using CNC cutting technology to enhance the texture, with perforated metal mesh on both sides for airflow and heat dissipation, while the top features Xiaomi’s glossy logo, resulting in a compact and business-friendly design.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In terms of interfaces, the Xiaomi Mini PC features 2 USB 3.2 ports, 1 3.5mm headphone jack, and a power button on the front, while the back includes two HDMI ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, one power interface, and one 10 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet port, which is an excellent level for a mini host, capable of supporting up to 4 displays simultaneously.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

Performance Testing

The Xiaomi Mini PC is powered by the i5-1240P processor, which is quite common in this year’s thin and light laptops. As a second-generation product of Intel’s 7 process technology, this processor features a big.LITTLE design with 4 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores, totaling 16 threads, with a base frequency of 1.7GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.4GHz, 12MB L3 cache, a default power consumption of 28W, and a maximum power consumption of 64W.

As is customary, we ran a benchmark test on the Xiaomi Mini PC. First, we used CPU-Z, achieving a single-core score of 698 and a multi-core score of 5558, significantly surpassing the processor, demonstrating the immense improvement brought by Intel’s 7 process technology. The new big.LITTLE design allows for personalized and refined power consumption management while maintaining performance, but it requires Windows 11 for proper core scheduling.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In the traditional Cinebench R23 test, the i5-1240P achieved a single-core score of 1675 and a multi-core score of 9578, outperforming even higher-end i7-1260P laptops, successfully demonstrating an “underdog” story. In my opinion, Xiaomi’s performance tuning for the i5-1240P is evidently aggressive, and the mini host indeed has an advantage over laptops in terms of heat dissipation and power consumption.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In terms of graphics, the Xiaomi Mini PC is equipped with the i5-1240P, which integrates an 80EU Iris Xe GPU. It scored 4200 in 3DMark FireStrike and 1308 in 3DMark TimeSpy. From the score curve, this Iris Xe GPU can almost run at a high frequency of 1500MHz throughout the tests, but DDR4 memory evidently has a negative impact on the performance of the integrated graphics.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In terms of memory, the Xiaomi Mini PC is equipped with 16GB DDR4 3200MHz memory and a 512GB SSD. We used AIDA64 for memory cache testing, achieving read, write, and copy bandwidths of 47031MB/s, 46759MB/s, and 43714MB/s, respectively, with a latency of 91.2ns. Using CrystalDiskMark for read and write tests, the SSD achieved sequential read and write speeds of 3951/2906MB/s.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

Finally, in a comprehensive test, the Xiaomi Mini PC scored 5398 in the modern office test of PCMark 10. Except for video editing and model rendering capabilities being somewhat affected by the performance of the integrated graphics, the overall performance is quite good.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

User Experience Testing

In actual use, the experience of the Xiaomi Mini PC is very comfortable. During office work, it perfectly meets my daily work needs, showing excellent performance even in some moderately high-load office scenarios, such as using Photoshop for post-processing product photos needed in the article, and using Adobe Premiere for simple video rendering, previewing, and exporting.

Thanks to the i5-1240P, the Xiaomi Mini PC can almost be considered a perfect “set-top box”. As shown by the DXVA Checker hardware decoding test, the integrated Iris Xe GPU supports HEVC, VP9, AV1, and other formats comprehensively, allowing for perfect hardware decoding of both Blu-ray originals and online videos like YouTube.

(Image source: Lei Technology)

From actual testing, the decoding efficiency of the Xiaomi Mini PC is indeed outstanding. While using PotPlayer, my collection of 4K/60fps and 8K/30fps demo clips played smoothly without any decoding failures or lag issues; as for 4K HD videos on various domestic platforms and 8K AV1 videos on YouTube, they also played smoothly.

(Image source: Lei Technology, 4K/60fps video)

(Image source: Lei Technology, 8K/30fps video)

(Image source: Lei Technology, YouTube 8K AV1 video)

In addition to office and video experiences, we also tested the gaming capabilities of this product. Here, we chose three mainstream online games: “Dota 2”, “League of Legends”, and “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” for frame rate testing.

1. Dota 2

(Image source: Lei Technology)

At a resolution of 1920*1200 with the second-highest preset quality, “Dota 2” can achieve 60-70 FPS during replay and maintain around 55 FPS during actual game team fights.

2. League of Legends

The Xiaomi Mini PC runs “League of Legends” at 2K resolution and ultra-high quality, maintaining around 120 FPS during the laning phase, occasionally dropping to 80-90 FPS during team fights before recovering, allowing for smooth gameplay.

3. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

(Image source: Lei Technology)

At a resolution of 1920*1200 with low quality settings, “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” can achieve 125 FPS in benchmarks and maintain around 90 FPS during actual gameplay.

In summary, the Xiaomi Mini PC is not only a good office machine but also an excellent multimedia computer that can meet light gaming needs. The 80EU Iris Xe integrated graphics is sufficient for simple image/video editing tasks and can handle some mid-sized 3D games, but it struggles with heavy demands like model rendering, engineering drafting, and AAA gaming.

Conclusion

Pros:

1. Compact and exquisite design;

2. Good performance;

3. Excellent interface configuration;

(Image source: Lei Technology)

In fact, the power supply method reveals that the Xiaomi Mini PC is essentially a laptop without a screen, keyboard, and battery: both use the 12th generation Core mobile processor scheme, and even the memory used is SO-DIMM memory. However, unlike laptops, the “removal of the battery, hard disk, and screen” operation greatly reduces the size of the NUC, further enriching the use scenarios of the Xiaomi Mini PC.

For instance, in daily use, thanks to the compact size of the Xiaomi Mini PC, we can purchase a mounting bracket to directly hang this product on the back of a monitor, freeing up space on the desktop. Additionally, large screens for building facades, electronic signage in stations, or large screens for meetings can also be directly connected to the Xiaomi Mini PC, further enhancing space utilization—something traditional PC hosts cannot achieve.

Personally, I believe that for users with mobile office needs who do not prefer laptops, using the Xiaomi Mini PC is a viable solution: it offers performance that surpasses ordinary laptops, is priced significantly lower than similarly configured laptops, and has a compact size that truly allows for portability. If you do not have frequent travel needs and have monitors and peripherals like keyboards and mice at home and in the office, then the Xiaomi Mini PC with a 12th generation Core processor could also be a choice for mobile office.