The good:
Beautiful, neat and compact design.
Solid build.
Licensed Windows 10 Pro OS.
Decent performance.
Lots of connectivity options.
The bad:
No SD card slot.
No WiFi6.
Bottom Line:
The Beelink GKmini is a mini PC designed for basic office workloads, media consumption and light creativity tasks, and it works as designed.
If you have considered buying a mini PC, you must have heard of Beelink, a Chinese brand known for making quality mini PCs and TV boxes with afforable price tags. The all new Beelink GKmini comes with the Intel Gemini Lake Celeron J4125 processor, 8GB DDR4 RAM, up to 512GB built-in SSD, an attractive new design, and a moderate price tag. it is set out to be a strong contender in the race of affordable mini PCs.
Main specs of the Beelink GKmini
Processor: Intel Gemini Lake Celeron J4125
CPU: Quad Core 2.0-2.7GHz CPU
GPU Intel HD Graphics 600
Process technique: 14nm
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit
RAM: 8GB DDR4 2400MHz
Storage: 128GB/256GB/512GB/1TB SSD (256GB in our review)
Network: WiFi5 + BT 4.2 / Ethernet Gigabit
Ports: 4x USB 3.0 / 2x HDMI 1.4 / 3.5mm audio jack / Kensington lock
Accessories: 12V-2A DC adapter/ 2x HDMI Cable (1m & 0.3m) / User Manual
Retail Packaging
The GKmini ships with a very simple retail packaging, with illustration image on the front, and specs of on the back of the box.
As we can see in the specs, the mini PC is powered by the Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core processor, coupled with 8GB RAM. The unit that I received has a 256GB SSD inside of it, but Beelink offers other storage options.
Inside the box we have found a mini PC, a bracket for mounting the mini PC onto the back of a monitor, a 24-watt power adapter, two HDMI cables, a bag of screws, and a user manual.
The GKmini is about the size of a TV box, with a footprint smaller than my already small palm. It'll take up next to no room on your desk. If there’s literally no room for even the GKmini on your desk, you can also choose to mount it onto the back of your monitor with the provided bracket and screws.
The GKmini’s design doesn’t stray too far from previous Beelink mini PC models. It looks almost identical to the Gemini J45, which was released in 2019.
The housing of the GK mini is a combination of plastic and metal, The top side is acrylic plastic, which is, in our opinion, an elegant touch as it gives the GKmini’s top a glossy and reflective look, although it is also more prone to collecting all your fingerprints. There’s a Beelink logo sitting comfortably in the middle. The other sides of the chassis are all made of aluminum.
The front of the mini PC sports a reset hole, two USB 3.0 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack with mic support, as well as a power button which has a status LED built in.
The rear side of the GK mini plays host to some vents, two USB 3.0 ports, a full-size Ethernet, two HDMI 1.4a ports, and a DC-in port.
As the mini PC has an active cooling system under the hood, there are quite a number of vents on the left and right sides of the machine.
There are four rubber feet on the bottom side of the GK mini, each one has a screw in it.
Getting access to the internals is quite easy, just remove these screws and you will be able to upgrade the RAM and SSD.
The GK mini weighs only 256g, not much heavier than some of the latest smartphones. Moving it around in the house is quite easy. The build quality is solid and definitely well above average, as the mini PC looks particularly refined, with no ugly mold lines on the surface. It also feels reasonably robust and sturdy, you won’t really break it without some serious force.
Setting it up
As tiny as it is, the GKmini is still a Windows-based personal computer, and needs to be connected to a monitor (or TV, or projector), a keyboard and a mouse to work as one, and that’s how you should set it up.
During first-time start-up, you will need to go through some of the Microsoft Windows initialization protocols (choosing your region and language, connecting to the network, logging into your Microsoft account, etc), which is easy but definitely takes some time. After that, you are good to go.
System & apps
Most mini PCs run on Windows 10 Home, but the Beelink GKmini ships with licensed Windows 10 Pro, For average consumers, you will probably see no difference, but for power users, Windows 10 Pro offers lots of extra features, the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).
You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.
Fortunately, the Windows 10 Pro here is a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. I don’t feel like digging into the main features Windows 10 offers. For those who is still unfamiliar and curious with this dominant PC operating system, we highly recommend you to watch some tutorial videos on YouTube.
Performance
The GKmini is powered by the Intel Gemini Lake Celeron J4125 quad core processor (2.0-2.7GHz). This chip isn’t a powerhouse and won’t match the latest Intel Core processors found in mainstream laptops and desktop PCs in terms of performance, but it is still capable of dealing with normal everyday tasks with ease. There is 8GB DDR4 RAM under the hood to take care of multi-tasking.
First, we ran Maxon's latest CPU-crunching Cinebench R23 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The GK mini scored 447 in single core, 1442 in multi-core.
We also ran the Cinebench R20 test on the GKmini, and it scored 170cb in single core, and 556cb in multi-core. These scores are by no means impressive, but still way ahead of the Pentium N4200 powered Chuwi Gbox, or Beelink’s very own Gemini J45, which comes with an older Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 processor.
In the cross platform Geekbench 5 test, the GKmini scored 460 in CPU single core, 1479 in in multi-core, and 1590 in OpenGL.
The GKmini did relatively well in the Fritz Chess Benchmark, acheiving 5342 kilo nodes per second.
PCMark simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and video conferencing. 1791 is the score the GKmini notched in the standard PCMark 10 test,
In the more graphics-focused 3DMark, the GKmini scored 1446 in Sky Diver, 425 in Fire Strike, and 141 in Time Spy.
The GKmini offers a SATA-standard m.2 SSD, which definitely lags behind those NVMe drives found in mainstream laptops, but is still faster than the eMMc or HDD found in more basic models. In CrystalDiskMark test, the sequential read and write speed are 451.39mb/s and 456.58mb/s respectively, not impressive, nut still decent.
In the real world use, the GKmini provides ample oomph for basic office tasks and even for a bit of light media editing. I experienced no lags or delays editing my review materials or work presentations in Microsoft Office apps.
Doing some relatively complex video editing in Power Director is also surprisingly smooth, although filters and animations may take longer to be applied to all layers of clips.
As for multimedia entertainment, the mini PC has no problem streaming 4K YouTube videos in Microsoft Edge, or decoding different formats of local video clips. I streamed an entire season of the Spanish sitcom “The Innocent” on the GK mini, with it connecting to my 75-inch TV.
The Intel UHD600 Graphics in the GKmini is definitely not designed for AAA titles, but it is capable of running older titles in moderate settings, and almost all games installed from Microsoft Store without issues. “Asphalt 9” and “Battle Tanks” (Microsoft Store Variant) are both quite smooth, but the graphics are simply not comparable with their desktop variant.
Also important for a mini PC that sits on your desk or behind your monitor (where it's nearer to your ears), the GKmini runs fairly quietly. It's not a completely silent, fanless design, but I almost never felt distracted by its noise. The computer is also amazingly stable, as it passed the 3DMark stress test with flying colors.
When the GKmini is running in full load in the AIDA64 stress test, the temperature of its four CPU cores was always quite stable. Once we stopped the test, the temperature dropped immediately.
Connectivity
The GKmini supports 2.4GHz/5.8GHz dual-band WiFi, but not the latest WiFi6. It also has Bluetooth 4.2 on board, thus can connect to wireless input devices and audio systems. It would have been nice to see Bluetooth 5.0 instead of 4.2, but that’s not going to add much the overall experience.
As there are two HDMI ports, you can hook the GKmini up with two monitors at the same time, this can be extremely useful if you have some serious producitivity tasks at hand.
Verdict
Creative pros and enthusiastic gamers will need to look elsewhere for a larger PC with dedicated graphics, but office workers who mainly rely on everyday creativity apps, or consumers who need an HTPC for media consumption, or shop owners who want a smaller computer for illustration of their products, will find a lot to like in the Beelink GKmini.
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