New products tested by our experts
Beelink GTR7 7840HS
MINI PC ❘ £749 from Beelink www.snipca.com/47875
Wee powers
Cheaper mini PCs tend to be perfectly fine at Windows tasks, but aren’t that great at jobs requiring more processing muscle, such as gaming or video editing. While this will never rival a desktop PC with a standalone graphics card, Beelink’s £750 GTR7 7840HS offers significantly more power and is therefore a better all-rounder than any mini PC you’d get for less than £500.
The last time we got this excited about a small-form PC that could hold its own with a bit of gaming was the Beelink SER6 Pro 7753HS (reviewed in Issue 661, www.snipca.com/47879). At the time it cost £699, but has now dropped to £559, which is £190 cheaper than this model. The SER6 is built around an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor, which is one of AMD’s latest models.
Some of this price differential is down to the inclusion of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor in the GTR7. This came out at the same time as the SER6’s chip, but is definitely a step up. It also comes with twice the storage (a 1TB SSD), though it matches it for RAM with a very respectable 32GB.
This all adds up to significantly better performance levels. In benchmark tests that measure raw processing power, the GTR7 is 60 per cent faster in single-core tests and nearly 30 per cent faster in multi-core tests. This makes little impact on the relative Windows outcomes of the two, with the GTR7 just six-per-cent quicker. It was streets ahead in gaming tests, however – up to 25 per cent.
Overall, then, the GTR7 is a better all-rounder than the SER6, though it ought to be for the price. If you’re looking for a mini PC that lets you play a few games, the GTR7 is certainly a better bet. However, if you mostly stick to Windows tasks – browsing the web, managing emails or using office tools – you won’t see a huge benefit for your extra spend.
It’s worth stressing that you should be able to go for a spin in Microsoft Flight Simulator on this PC, but high resolutions and detailed graphics will still take their toll.
However, if you like to crank up the settings for a more realistic experience, you’ll need to opt for a desktop gaming PC equipped with a separate graphics card. Unusually for a mini PC, this comes in a choice of four colours – green, blue, grey and orange – so you can more easily match it to an existing colour scheme.
It has plenty of ports, including USB-C and USB 3.0 on
