Dell OptiPlex 7000-MICRO 2022, Core i7-12700, 32GB, 1TB SSD, Black

A shockingly capable tiny office PC that will make your desk feel huge. Just don't expect it to do anything fun.

What surprised us most is how much raw CPU power Dell crammed into this little box. The 12th-gen i7-12700 sits in the 66th percentile for its class, which translates to genuinely snappy performance for any office task you throw at it. App launches are instant thanks to that speedy NVMe drive, and 32GB of RAM means you can be aggressively irresponsible with your Chrome tabs. The weak spot is obviously the Intel UHD 770 graphics, landing in a disappointing 35th percentile. It'll drive a couple of 4K displays for productivity just fine, but even light photo editing feels a bit sluggish.

This OptiPlex lives in a completely different world than its listed competitors. The HP OMEN and Lenovo Legion towers are full-sized gaming rigs with dedicated GPUs that will run circles around it in any graphical task, but they're also massive and power-hungry. The real comparison is against other mini PCs like an Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, which absolutely demolishes the Dell in GPU performance and efficiency but costs significantly more and locks you into macOS. If you need Windows in a tiny box for pure productivity, the OptiPlex makes sense. If you need any graphical muscle at all, look at those gaming towers or the Mac Studio.

Value here is a moving target. The price spread across vendors is a wild $1609, so you absolutely cannot just grab the first listing you see. At the low end around $1356, this is a solid deal for a compact, powerful office PC with a 90-day warranty. At nearly three grand, you're getting ripped off. Shop around and don't pay a cent over the low end of that range.

The Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro is the office PC that disappears behind your monitor and just handles business. It's a tiny, refurbished workhorse packing a 12-core i7, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB NVMe drive into a chassis that weighs less than a MacBook Air. The one thing to know is this isn't a machine for fun. It's a serious productivity tool that will chew through spreadsheets, code compiles, and a dozen browser tabs without breaking a sweat, but the integrated graphics mean you should forget about gaming the second you unbox it.

If you're looking for a machine that can game, edit video, or do any 3D rendering, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion Tower or an HP OMEN with a real dedicated GPU instead. This OptiPlex is for spreadsheets and code, not frame rates.

The Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro is a purpose-built office machine that excels at being invisible and competent. Buy it if you need a powerful, tiny Windows PC to hide behind a monitor for serious work. Just make sure you're paying a refurbished price, not a brand-new premium, and don't even think about installing a game on it.