HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Tiny 2015

A refurbished, ultra-compact desktop that's perfect for basic tasks thanks to a generous 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The old 6th-gen Intel CPU is the main bottleneck, making it unsuitable for gaming or heavy work. Priced around $450, it's a great value for a tiny Windows 11 Pro machine if you understand its limits. Buy it for a clean office setup or a dedicated utility PC, not as your main powerhouse.

Let's talk about that CPU, because it's the heart of the story here. The Core i7-6700T lands in the 13th percentile in our database, which is frankly pretty low for a modern desktop. This isn't a surprise, it's an eight-year-old mobile-focused chip. In practice, this means it's fine for bursty tasks like opening programs and loading web pages, but it will absolutely chug if you throw sustained workloads at it. Video encoding, large data set crunching in Excel, or compiling code will feel slow. The 32GB of RAM is a massive help for multitasking, though. You can have dozens of Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, and Office apps open without the system grinding to a halt. The memory is doing a lot of heavy lifting to mask the CPU's age.

The integrated Intel HD 530 graphics sit at the 96th percentile, which sounds amazing until you realize that's a ranking among other integrated GPUs from the same era. It's the best of the worst, basically. It'll smoothly run a 4K monitor at 60Hz for desktop work and handle video streaming without a hiccup. But our gaming score of 19 out of 100 tells the real story. This is not a machine for games, period. The 1TB SSD is a solid middle-of-the-pack performer, landing in the 59th percentile. It's not the fastest NVMe drive on the planet, but it's a huge leap over any spinning hard drive and makes the whole system feel snappy and responsive in day-to-day use.

The elephant in the room is the Apple Mac mini M4 Pro. It's in a completely different universe of performance and price, but it's the benchmark for tiny desktops. If you have the budget, the Mac mini will run circles around this HP in every conceivable task while using less power and making zero noise. But it also starts at three times the price. The HP is for those who need Windows on a shoestring budget. The Lenovo Legion Tower and iBUYPOWER Slate are gaming-focused towers that are massive in comparison. They'll obliterate the HP in gaming and GPU tasks, but they're not even playing the same sport. They're big, loud, and power-hungry.

A more direct comparison is the Dell Tower Desktop ECT1250. It's another business-class machine, but in a traditional tower form factor. You'll likely get a similar CPU generation and performance tier, but you lose the tiny size that makes the HP special. The HP's real competition is other refurbished mini PCs from Lenovo and Dell, like the ThinkCentre Tiny or OptiPlex Micro series. They all offer the same basic recipe: an old office CPU in a tiny box. Your choice will come down to which one you find with the best combination of RAM, storage, and price at any given moment. Right now, this HP's 32GB/1TB combo is a standout in the refurbished market.

Pricing on these refurbished units bounces around between $440 and $477, and for that money, you're getting a very specific value proposition. You're not paying for raw performance. You're paying for the form factor, the generous 32GB of RAM, the 1TB SSD, and a legitimate Windows 11 Pro license. A new Windows 11 Pro license alone is a $200 expense. When you factor that in, the hardware itself is practically a steal. You'd be hard-pressed to build a similarly tiny, quiet PC with this much memory and storage for less.

Compared to buying a new mini PC with a modern Celeron or Pentium chip for the same price, the HP's older i7 will actually feel faster in short bursts and handle multitasking better thanks to all that RAM. The trade-off is power efficiency and warranty support. You're getting a machine that's already lived a full life in some office, so there's an element of risk. But if you need a cheap, tiny, capable Windows box right now, the value is hard to argue with.

The HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Tiny is a bit of a time capsule, and that's exactly the point. This is a refurbished office workhorse from roughly 2016, shrunk down to a chassis you can hide behind a monitor or tuck under a desk without anyone noticing. It's not trying to be a gaming rig or a creative powerhouse. It's a straightforward, affordable Windows 11 Pro machine for people who need a real desktop but don't have real desktop space. Think front desk kiosks, digital signage, or just a clean home office setup for email, spreadsheets, and way too many browser tabs.

The spec sheet here is a fascinating mix of old and new. You get a 6th-gen Intel Core i7-6700T, a chip that sips power at 35 watts, paired with a very modern 32GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB SSD. That's a lot of memory and fast storage for a machine in this price bracket. The integrated Intel HD 530 graphics are, well, they're there. They'll drive your displays just fine, but don't expect to do any 3D rendering or gaming beyond Solitaire. This is a pure productivity box.

Who is this for? It's for the budget-conscious buyer who understands what "refurbished" means and is okay with a CPU that's several generations old in exchange for a tiny footprint and a fully loaded Windows 11 Pro experience. It's a perfect second PC, a dedicated machine for a workshop, or a reliable terminal for cloud-based work. Just don't expect it to break any speed records outside of booting up, which the SSD handles in a flash.

Anyone who needs to do serious work should look past this machine. If you're editing video, working with large datasets, compiling code, or doing any 3D modeling, the 6th-gen mobile CPU will be a constant source of frustration. It's simply not built for sustained heavy lifting. You should also skip this if you need modern connectivity. The lack of any USB-C ports means you'll be living the dongle life for many modern peripherals and external drives.

Gamers should obviously run the other way. Even the best integrated graphics from this era are a joke for modern gaming. If you want a small PC that can game, you'll need to spend significantly more on a mini PC with a dedicated mobile GPU or a recent AMD chip with powerful integrated Radeon graphics. This HP is a one-trick pony, and that trick is being a cheap, tiny office box. If that's not your act, find a different show.

For a dedicated home office PC that lives on email, web apps, and Microsoft Office, this HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Tiny is a fantastic little machine. The 32GB of RAM means it'll stay snappy for years of basic use, and the tiny chassis keeps your workspace clean. It's also a no-brainer as a media server, a dedicated machine for a 3D printer or CNC, or a reliable terminal for accessing a more powerful remote desktop. In these roles, its age is completely irrelevant, and its size and price are perfect.

But if your workflow involves anything more than basic productivity, you need to look elsewhere. Content creators, programmers compiling large projects, and anyone who wants to play games should skip this entirely. The CPU is simply too old to be a daily driver for demanding work. You'd be better off saving up for a modern mini PC with a recent AMD Ryzen chip or an Intel NUC. This HP is a specialist in being small and cheap, not a generalist that can do it all.