HP 290 G9, Core i5-12500T, 8GB, 512GB SSD, Jet Black

The HP 290 G9 is a business tower desktop with an Intel Core i5-12500T, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It's fine for office work and daily productivity, but the low RAM and integrated graphics make it a poor choice for gaming or heavy multitasking. At around $1,000 USD, you're paying a premium for a machine that feels more like a $600 PC.

The i5-12500T is a low-power variant of Intel's 12th gen lineup, with a 2.0GHz base clock that can boost higher when needed. In our database, this CPU lands around the 37th percentile for towers, which translates to underwhelming compared to the full-size desktop chips out there. It's not slow for office work, but it's not going to impress anyone rendering video or compiling code. The 8GB of RAM is the real bottleneck here, sitting at the 10th percentile. That's one of the weakest memory configs we've seen in this category, and Windows 11 alone will happily eat half of it before you open Chrome.

The 512GB SSD puts storage at the 31st percentile, which is mediocre. Boot times will be quick, and apps will launch fast, but you'll feel the squeeze if you keep a lot of local files or install more than a handful of programs. The integrated Intel UHD 770 graphics land at the 38th percentile, which is about what you'd expect from integrated graphics. It'll drive dual monitors over HDMI and VGA, handle 4K video playback, and that's about it. Don't expect to run modern games at anything resembling playable frame rates.

Stacked against the competition, the HP 290 G9 occupies an awkward spot. The Apple Mac mini M4 Pro absolutely demolishes it in CPU and GPU performance while using even less power, and it's cheaper in most markets. The Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 offers a similar business-focused pitch but typically comes with more RAM and better expansion options. The Lenovo Legion 90YA003GUS and MSI Aegis ZS2 are gaming towers that cost more but include dedicated GPUs, making them the obvious choice if you want to play anything made in the last decade.

Where the HP 290 G9 wins is simplicity and availability. It's a known quantity, easy to find, and the 4.5-star rating suggests buyers aren't running into reliability headaches. But if you're comparing the HP 290 G9 to a Mac mini for home office use, the Mac wins on performance per dollar. If you're comparing it to a gaming tower, the gaming tower wins on everything except maybe power draw. This HP is for people who need a basic office PC and don't want to think about it.

At around $1,000 USD, the HP 290 G9 is a tough sell on paper. You can find towers with 16GB of RAM and a dedicated GPU for similar money, or a Mac mini M4 that runs circles around it for less. The value proposition here is really about the business-ready package: Windows 11 Home pre-installed, keyboard and mouse in the box, and HP's reputation for boring but reliable office hardware. If you're buying for a small office and just need machines that turn on every day and run Outlook, this fits. But for a home user spending their own money, the specs feel thin for the price.

The HP 290 G9 is a business-focused tower desktop that sits in that weird middle ground between budget office PC and something you'd actually want on your desk at home. It's built around an Intel Core i5-12500T, a 6-core chip that sips power instead of gulping it, paired with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD. The listing data is a bit of a mess, some spots say 16GB and 1TB, but the core specs we're working from are the 8GB and 512GB config. That matters a lot for how this thing performs day to day.

If you're searching for a reliable desktop for business or home office work, this HP tower answers the basic questions well. It'll handle spreadsheets, video calls, and a pile of browser tabs without falling over. But if you're wondering whether the HP 290 G9 is good for gaming, the short answer is no. The integrated Intel UHD 770 graphics are fine for pushing pixels to a monitor or two, but they're not built for anything beyond light, older, or very casual games.

Pricing is all over the place depending on where you look. We see listings around $1,000 USD and roughly 37,423 MXN in Mexico. At that US price, you're paying a premium for a machine with 8GB of RAM in 2025, which feels rough. The 4.5-star rating from 45 buyers suggests people who bought it are happy, but we'd argue they probably weren't cross-shopping gaming rigs or Mac minis.

Skip the HP 290 G9 if you're a gamer, a content creator, or anyone who keeps more than a dozen browser tabs open at once. The integrated graphics and 8GB of RAM will frustrate you quickly. If you want a compact desktop with real performance, look at the Apple Mac mini M4 instead. If you need Windows and want to play games, check out the Lenovo Legion or MSI Aegis lines. And if you're just trying to save money, there are cheaper towers with similar specs that won't charge you a business-brand premium.

Should you buy the HP 290 G9? If you need a dependable office tower for email, documents, video calls, and light multitasking, and you find it at a discount, sure. It'll do the job without drama. But at the listed $1,000 USD price, we'd have a hard time recommending it over alternatives that offer more RAM, faster storage, or a dedicated GPU for the same or less money.

The 8GB of RAM is the dealbreaker for us. Windows 11 plus a few browser tabs will have you bumping against that ceiling daily, and upgrading a prebuilt HP tower isn't always straightforward. If you can find a config with 16GB, it becomes a much more reasonable office machine. As configured, it's a solid but overpriced basic desktop.