PELADN HO-4 Mini PC Intel® Core™ i7 12650H

is this mini PC box something that I can plug into a laptop pc computer?

** Edit **. I have no explanation why but I ran the windows 11 update tool and installed every single update and after it rebooted the 2nd time it suddenly activated itself. Perhaps just some microsoft glitch, I upped my review to 5 stars, this little box is a beast and I'm very happy with it. It did come preconfigured with the language in chinese but a quick youtube video and I managed to click my way to English and its running great.

I received the product, it was well packaged, and the components are as described, processor ram and NIC all good, it is a fast little bugger and the LED lights are very neat addition. The problem I have is that it said windows 11 comes loaded on it, and it *did* have windows 11, but its not active and it will not activate. Not sure what to do with it, may have to return and replace and hope for a better outcome. Needed it to have a legit version of windows on it.

I was skeptical of how much use I'd be able to get out of this little micro PC at first. So far, so good. I've had it for about a month so I feel I have enough to go by for this review:

- Setup would have been simple if you were able to opt out of connecting to the internet to finish the process. I didn't have much luck attempting to connect to my Wi-Fi network during initial setup because the onboard Wi-Fi adapter was turned off by default, with no way to turn it back on. I got around this by using a USB Wi-Fi adapter to set it up and then was only able to turn on the built-in Wi-Fi adapter afterward. Kind of a headache, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

- It includes a preinstalled copy of Windows 11 (I have my own opinions on that) but seems to default to the Chinese language. Later system prompts (such as installation of drivers and whatnot) seemed to default to Chinese as well in some cases, even after switching the system language to English wherever I could. More annoying than anything but not a deal breaker.

I didn't even know mini computers were a thing. I needed a backup computer for my home business so I took a chance on this one and I am blown away at its capabilities. I'm too old to be a computer nerd and articulate its performance numbers, but I can say that for my business needs, streaming and some occasional gaming, this thing is very adequate. It doesn't take up much space at all and is easy to move from room to room. At only 5"x5.25"x2" it can even be mounted right on the back of your monitor or TV, and it comes with a bracket to do just that. Highly recommended.

This has been a fantastic mini PC. While you won't be running 60FPS on the latest AAA games, it does an amazing job with many others. This comes packed with 32GB ram already installed which is fantastic not having to order additional like other mini PCs. It came with Windows 11 installed and was super simple to get set up and configured. I did not see any kind of bloatware installed at all, so quite clean.

Plenty of ports and hooked up to my dual monitors with ease. While I don’t need 2 network ports right now, in the future I can see it being a great opensense or similar box. The mini pc itself is very, very solid and the fan noise is not very noticeable (when it does ramp up). The LED is a neat feature that can be changed with a button on the side.

Inside, you have a 1TB m2 SSD which is a ton of space and also includes an additional m2 slot just incase you want to had additional drive. There is also a spot inside for an HDD ribbon which you might be able to get a 2.5” inside. You would of coarse need to but the connecting ribbon but really nice to have that option.

The Bluetooth/WiFi card is replaceable too if you ever want to. It’s nice to see that the majority of the components inside are not soldered in and can be upgrade or replaced.

So far this little machine has handled everything I have thrown at it with ease. Granted, I am not huge into gaming but did get steam and epic store installed and downloaded and played a few games. Plays videos flawlessly.

Overall, this machine is solid, quick and a fantastic replacement for my old 4th gen intel large PC. I feel the value is really there with this mini PC.