HP ProDesk 4 Mini G1i AI Jack Black

The HP ProDesk 4 Mini G1i AI is a tiny powerhouse for office work, with a fast Core Ultra 7 CPU and a massive 64GB of RAM. It's completely useless for gaming but excellent at multitasking. Shop around, prices vary by nearly $800.

The Core Ultra 7 265T puts up strong numbers for a mini PC. In our database, the CPU lands in the 79th percentile, which means it's well above average for this category. Paired with 64GB of fast DDR5, this machine chews through spreadsheets, browser tabs, and virtual meetings without breaking a sweat. The RAM sits all the way up in the 96th percentile, so memory won't be a bottleneck for years. Storage performance is solid too, the 1TB PCIe 4.0 drive is quick enough for fast boot times and snappy app launches. The weak spot is the integrated GPU, which sits in the 46th percentile. It's fine for driving a couple of 4K displays, but any 3D work or gaming is a non-starter.

This HP sits in a weird spot compared to the competition. The Lenovo Legion 34IAS10 and ASUS Republic of Gamers GM700TZ are proper gaming rigs with discrete GPUs that will run circles around the ProDesk in any 3D task, but they're also much larger and louder. The Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 is a more direct office competitor, often with similar CPU options but usually less RAM at this price. The MSI EdgeXpert and CLX SET systems lean toward specialty use cases. For pure productivity in a tiny box, the HP holds its own, but if you need any graphics horsepower at all, you'll want to look at those Lenovo or ASUS machines instead.

Pricing on this model is all over the place. We're seeing a spread from $2009 to $2790 across different vendors, which is a $781 gap. That's enough to make you shop around carefully. At the lower end of that range, you're getting a well-built, quiet, and capable office PC with enough RAM to last half a decade. At the high end, it starts bumping into more powerful compact workstations that include discrete GPUs. If you can snag it closer to $2000, it's a fair deal for a no-fuss business machine. Just don't pay the premium price without checking a few stores first.

HP packed a lot into this little box. The ProDesk 4 Mini G1i AI is a compact desktop built around Intel's new Core Ultra 7 265T, and our test unit came loaded with 64GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. It's clearly aimed at offices and home workspaces where desk real estate is tight but multitasking demands are high. The whole thing weighs just over a kilo and can mount behind a monitor, so it basically disappears from your setup.

That Core Ultra 7 chip is the star here. It's a 20-core part with a dedicated NPU for local AI tasks, which is still a niche need but nice to have. HP also left an empty M.2 slot inside for future storage upgrades. Just don't expect to game on this thing, the integrated Intel Graphics are strictly for display output and light productivity work.

Skip this if you need any kind of 3D performance. The integrated graphics are a dealbreaker for gaming, CAD, or video rendering. If you want a small PC that can still play games, look at mini gaming rigs with discrete GPUs instead. Also pass if you just need a basic web browsing machine, a $500 mini PC will do that job just fine.

This is a purpose-built office machine and it nails that job. Buy it if you need a tiny, quiet PC that can handle serious multitasking and you don't care about gaming or 3D rendering. The 64GB of RAM and empty storage slot give it real longevity. It's overkill for basic email and web browsing, but perfect for data analysts, developers, or anyone running memory-hungry business apps.