Small and mighty but with an old processor, is this a mini workstation to remember or forget?
It’s the first time that we’ve been introduced to Geekom, an up-and-coming brand that’s looking to make a splash with two products: the weirdly-named Bookfun laptop, a $1,999 mobile workstation with a Core i7-11800H, Windows 11 Pro and an RTX3070 and the more anonymous IT8 mini PC, which is the subject of this review. Geekom did a great job to produce a tiny workstation PC that delivers great value for money in a very small form factor; it comes with Windows 11 Pro out of the box with plenty of ports and can drive a quartet of monitors. It performs reasonably well for what it costs and while there are a couple of issues, they are minor ones. That said, delivering business-grade after sales like some of its much bigger rivals is something that Geekom will not be able to match. The IT8 looks like one of the many Intel NUC mini PCs that have appeared over the past decade. At 117 x 112 x 48mm, it is almost the size of the NUC 11 Performance Mini PC, so much so that you’d be mistaken from afar (ed: makes us wonder if they share some common DNA). Geekom’s mini PC surprises by its heft; it feels and looks heavy (it weighs nearly 600g). The top is made of glossy plastic so prone to greasy fingerprints and hairline marks. The rest of the body is solid metal with two grills on the side to help with air flow (and cooling the 28W CPU inside).
