Blog

Mini PCs, akin to Apple’s Mac mini, have all the time held a particular place in my coronary heart. They provide a compact type issue and are an ideal resolution for many who need a highly effective laptop that does not take up an excessive amount of house on their desk or room. Nonetheless, as a rule, they carry a excessive price ticket. This value would not even embrace the extra bills for a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and different peripherals.

That is why when Blackview, the makers of among the finest rugged smartphones, approached me with their MP200 Mini PC for assessment, I used to be intrigued. This Mini PC carries a modest price ticket however packs quite a bit high-end options. It comes with Home windows 11 Professional pre-installed and boasts a processor with a clock velocity of as much as 4.5GHz.

I have been utilizing the Blackview MP200 Mini PC as my day by day driver for the previous week or so, and I need to admit, I am pleasantly stunned by this compact powerhouse. Regardless of a couple of drawbacks, this little field delivers quite a bit for its value. There’s quite a bit to unpack right here, so with out additional ado, let’s dive into our full assessment of the Blackview MP200 Mini PC.

About this assessment: Blackview equipped Pocketnow with a assessment unit of its MP200 Mini PC, which we examined for a few week. The corporate had no enter into the contents of this assessment.

Value & Availability

The Blackview MP200 Mini PC is presently priced at $349 on Amazon. Nonetheless, due to an on-page coupon in and our unique coupon code “AETLF4TV“, you may safe this mini PC for as little as $314. This variant packs an Intel Core i5-11400H processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. As for the colour choices, the Blackview MP200 Mini PC is on the market in two colour choices: Black and Blue.

What’s within the field?

Upon unboxing the field, you may discover the MP200 Mini PC itself, an influence adapter for retaining your machine juiced up, a base stand, an HDMI cable, an SSD mounting bracket, and a few paperwork containing consumer guide and guarantee data.

Design

Beginning with the design, the Blackview MP200 is, effectively, fairly compact. It encompasses a plastic casing with a lined texture on the perimeters and pored grills on the back and front for fan air circulation. Nonetheless, it is value noting that the casing tends to draw fingerprints.

There are two choices for establishing the PC in your desktop. You may both use the included base stand to raise it, tucking it neatly behind your monitor, or place it immediately on the desk. Regardless that the chassis is made out of plastic, it feels strong sufficient. The machine can be fairly light-weight, coming in at simply 680 grams.

The bottom stand is designed with rubber pads, each for the mini PC to take a seat in and on the backside, guaranteeing the entire PC stays in place. The underside of the PC homes two screws that may be opened so as to add exterior RAM and/or an HDD/SSD. The package to open the casing is included within the field.

The design, on the whole, is kind of simplistic with no RGB lighting and really minimal branding — the Blackview brand is tucked away in a single nook of the machine and that is it. All in all, it is a fairly compact PC and you’ll simply be capable of carry it in your bag, ought to you have to.

I/O and Ports

Having a look on the connectivity choices, the Blackview MP200 comes with loads of I/O ports. On the entrance of the machine, you may discover the ability button positioned on the prime. Slightly below it’s the 3.5mm headphone jack for audio output. Additional down, there are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports for high-speed information switch, adopted by a single USB-C port.

On the again of the machine, you may discover two further USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. Alongside these, there’s an HDMI port and a DisplayPort for video output, in addition to a Gigabit Ethernet port for wired web connectivity. The DC energy port, which powers the machine, can be positioned on the again. It is secure to say that this machine would not skimp on ports and will fulfill the wants of most customers.

We’re additionally completely happy to report that the USB-C port can be used for show output and, mixed with the HDMI and DisplayPort, permits for the simultaneous connection of as much as three screens. All three ports help as much as 4K@60Hz, whereas the DisplayPort can go as much as 8K.

Specs

By way of specs, the Blackview MP200 Mini PC is powered by the mid-tier Intel Core i5-11400H processor. This two-year-old hexa-core chipset comes with 12 threads and 12 MB of L3 cache. It operates at a base clock velocity of two.7 GHz, which might turbo enhance as much as 4.5 GHz beneath heavy workloads. It is also value noting that this chipset has a configurable TDP of 45W or 35W, permitting you to steadiness efficiency and energy consumption as per your wants.

Nonetheless, it is value noting that there is no such thing as a devoted graphics card on this machine. As a substitute, graphics processing is dealt with by the built-in Intel UHD GPU, which solely has 16 execution models. As such, whereas it will possibly deal with fundamental duties, you should not anticipate it to ship the very best graphics efficiency (extra on this under).

As talked about earlier, the Blackview MP200 Mini PC is on the market solely in a single variant, that includes 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. When you discover the built-in storage inadequate, you may simply broaden it with a 2.5-inch SATA HDD or SSD as much as 2TB. The RAM can be elevated as much as a whopping 128GB utilizing the dual-channel SO-DIMM slots. The package to open up the Mini PC is offered within the field.

By way of connectivity, this Mini PC is supplied with a built-in Wi-Fi 6 module and Bluetooth 5.2. Blackview guarantees downlink speeds of as much as 1.3 Gbps. Lastly, the MP200 runs on Home windows 11 Professional out of the field — the most recent model of Home windows — so you’ll run most of your work-related and faculty apps on this machine.

Setup

After you have all of the cables in place and energy up the field, you are greeted with the acquainted Home windows setup display. Though Blackview warns you may not be capable of use the Wi-Fi module throughout setup, I confronted no such points. Nonetheless, when you do face this challenge, you all the time have the choice to attach your machine to the web through Ethernet.

The setup course of is customary, prompting you to hook up with Wi-Fi, check in to your Microsoft account, amongst different steps. One factor you may discover instantly upon powering up the machine is the fan. It kicks in as quickly because the machine is powered on and is kind of audible, particularly when in comparison with my M1 MacBook Professional, which is silent 99% of the time.

Nonetheless, as soon as the setup is full, you are welcomed by the standard Home windows display. As with most Home windows units, there are millions of updates able to be put in out of the field. You may also discover some icons that are not usually seen on different Home windows laptops, akin to Instagram, Fb Messenger, and Prime Video. Nonetheless, these are merely commercials and clicking on them initiates an app obtain.

On a constructive notice, although, the software program is essentially freed from bloatware, which is a refreshing sight. This implies you get a clear, clutter-free consumer expertise proper from the beginning.

Efficiency & Benchmarks

After every week of rigorous testing, I can safely say that the Blackview MP200 is a extremely succesful Mini PC. It handles mild to medium utilization duties with ease and is a perfect machine for workplace duties, internet looking, video calls, and even a little bit of photograph modifying.

In actual fact, I used the Blackview MP200 as my major work PC for every week, throughout which it dealt with a wide range of duties very effectively. This included in depth internet looking, doc writing, utilizing messaging apps like Slack and WhatsApp, a little bit of graphic design work in Figma, and video conferencing. The Blackview MP200 breezed via duties with ease. The machine additionally runs Home windows 11 Professional easily, with apps loading pretty shortly, and there have been minimal system slowdowns.

To check out the true efficiency, I carried out numerous benchmark exams, together with the highly-acclaimed PCMark10, Geekbench 6, and BrowserBench. The benchmark scores for the MP200 had been spectacular, being on-par with different Mini PCs just like the Beelink SER5 PRO and Blackview’s personal MP60 Mini PC. This is a comparability of how the MP200 fares in opposition to different Mini PCs (scores through MakeUseOf and Fundamental-Tutorials):

When in comparison with the Mac Mini 2023 within the Geekbench check, the Blackview MP200’s single-core CPU efficiency was barely decrease, which was anticipated. Nonetheless, the Mac Mini considerably outperformed the Blackview MP200 within the multi-core check and the GPU check, however it additionally comes with a considerably larger price ticket. We additionally ran the BrowserBench check utilizing the vanilla Microsoft Edge browser, and the outcomes had been promising:

On the entire, the Blackview MP200 affords nice worth for its value. When you’re an informal consumer whose utilization primarily entails internet looking, utilizing messaging apps, writing paperwork, studying PDFs, utilizing spreadsheets, and even mild photograph modifying, you may be proud of this machine.

Blackview MP200 Mini PC: Ought to I purchase it?

Because the title says, the Blackview MP200 Mini PC is a compelling alternative for these on the lookout for an reasonably priced computing resolution. The one actual competitors is from Beelink’s SER5 Professional, which is powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H processor and affords related specs, however it prices barely extra — on the time of writing, anyway. In order for you a sub-$300 Home windows 11 desktop PC for informal day-to-day duties, you will not doubtless discover a higher machine than the MP200.

It’s no method a gaming PC, because it says on the Amazon itemizing web page, however it’s ok to deal with day-to-day media consumption, mild photograph modifying, and even creating some graphics to your shows. One other nice use case I see of a tool like that is utilizing it as a house NAS or media heart. The {hardware} is highly effective sufficient, and you would be hard-pressed to discover a extra versatile streaming gadget.

All in all, the Blackview MP200 Mini PC affords wonderful worth for its value. Its efficiency, versatility, and compact type issue make it a worthy consideration for these on the lookout for an affordable Home windows 11 laptop for his or her residence.