Beelink Mini PC review

Ideally I would like to use my Mi Box to stream all my favourite shows. I do watch most of them on the Android box except for Astro which does not offer an official Astro Go app for Android box yet. So here’s where a mini PC comes in handy. It’s not as big as a full-fledged PC and consumes much less power. It’s an ideal media centre player for your living room.



Unlike an Android box, a mini PC has all the capabilities and ports of a modern PC, complete with a Windows operating system. The one that I got, called Beelink has 3 USB ports, one gigabit ethernet, full-sized HDMI, VGA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and SD card slot. An Android box usually has one or two USB ports and Wi-Fi only. Powering this PC is an Intel Atom Z8350 processor which is good enough for all your streaming needs and then some. This version that I got has 4Gb of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Inside the box you get a nifty little bracket case to attach the mini PC at the back of your TV.



Windows 10 runs pretty well on the Beelink. I don’t even bother trying out games on this one because I doubt the Atom processor can support graphics-intensive games. It’ll probably run a few simple games available on the Microsoft Store but that’s it. I use this mini PC mainly to watch Astro Go on Chrome which runs smoothly as expected. Plugging in an ethernet cable does help to get maximum speed from my fibre broadband compared to Wi-Fi. Other than that, I use this PC for time-consuming download and uploads which I can just set to start and then leave it to finish. Turn on Remote Desktop connection and I don’t even have to connect the display cable to use the PC. Like I said, this little computer uses much less power than their bigger cousin. The fanless build also helps it to run real quiet.



For less than 500 ringgit, you don’t expect a powerhouse performance from this Beelink PC. One of it’s biggest advantage over say a Raspberry Pi is simply its ability to run Windows 10 out of the box. That alone opens up an almost limitless potential of what you can do with a full-fledged computer. However it is not without some drawbacks. For starters, the boot time is relatively long compared to an Android TV box for example. Furthermore, you don’t get a dedicated remote like the Android TV box so it’s either a wireless mouse or a mouse app on your smartphone.

iPhone 6 for scale

Although the positives outweigh the negatives, the convenience of having a dedicated remote to switch channels on a media-centric UI (like the Android TV) made me ultimately switch back to the Android TV box as my preferred media centre computer. Ain’t nobody got time to find a mouse or fire up a mouse app whenever I want to watch Netflix. The boot time alone feels like forever.

In a nutshell, the Beelink makes for a decent media centre PC but a dedicated Android TV box is far more superior in term of speed and convenience. If you want to turn it into a print server or networked storage, the Beelink PC is a perfect candidate. Otherwise stick with a trusted Mi Box.