Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2, Core Ultra 5 225, 8GB, 512GB SSD, Black

The ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2 is a compact office workhorse with great ports and a 4.6-star rating, but 8GB of RAM and integrated graphics hold it back hard. It scores 85.5/100 for compact builds but just 14.3/100 for gaming. Worth it at the low end of the price range for office use, but skip it if you need any real graphics power.

The Core Ultra 225 with 10 cores and a 4.4GHz boost is a solid mid-pack performer, landing in the 66th percentile for CPU. That's enough for spreadsheets, browser tabs, and light multitasking without breaking a sweat. The 512GB NVMe SSD is snappy but sits at the 42nd percentile for storage, so you're getting decent speed without much room to hoard files. The real bottleneck is RAM. 8GB of DDR5 puts this machine in the 18th percentile, which is rough for a workstation in 2025. And the integrated Intel graphics with 8GB of shared VRAM? Fine for Excel, hopeless for anything 3D. The 170W PSU keeps power draw modest, which is nice for a machine that'll likely run all day.

Against the Apple Mac mini M4 Pro, the ThinkStation gets embarrassed on raw performance, especially graphics and RAM. The Mac mini's unified memory and GPU cores run circles around Intel integrated graphics. But the ThinkStation fights back with port selection and Windows 11 Pro, which matters for enterprise IT departments. The HP OMEN GT16-0364 and MSI Aegis ZS2 are gaming towers that crush the ThinkStation in GPU performance but take up ten times the desk space. The Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 is a more direct competitor, offering similar business chops in a larger chassis with better upgrade potential. If you need a tiny Windows workstation with Thunderbolt and don't care about graphics, the ThinkStation holds its own. Otherwise, the Mac mini is the smarter buy for most people.

Pricing is all over the map, from USD 967 to USD 2,799 across six US listings. That's a USD 1,832 spread, which tells me some sellers are charging workstation money for what is essentially a very nice office PC. At the low end, around USD 967, this is a reasonable buy for a compact business machine. At the high end, you're getting fleeced. Shop around and don't pay more than the entry price unless you're getting a spec bump that actually matters, like more RAM or a bigger SSD.

The Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2 is a 1-liter workstation that punches above its weight class for office and compact builds. It's got a 10-core Intel 225, 8GB of DDR5, and a 512GB NVMe drive in a chassis that weighs just 1.40kg. Our compact score of 85.5/100 tells the story: this thing disappears onto a desk or behind a monitor without a fuss.

But it's not a do-everything box. The integrated Intel graphics and 8GB of RAM put a hard ceiling on creative and gaming workloads. Our gaming score of 14.3/100 is one of the worst we've seen in this category. If you need a quiet, reliable office machine with serious port selection, keep reading. If you want to game or render, this isn't your machine.

Skip this if you need any real graphics performance, whether that's gaming, 3D modeling, or video editing. The integrated Intel graphics are a dead end for those workloads. Also skip it if you're a power user who needs lots of RAM, since 8GB will choke on heavy multitasking. And if you're buying for yourself rather than a business, the Mac mini M4 Pro gives you way more performance for similar money.

This is a niche machine for a specific buyer: someone who needs a Windows 11 Pro workstation in a tiny footprint, values port selection over raw power, and won't be doing anything graphically intensive. IT departments deploying dozens of these for office workers will love the size and reliability. Individual buyers should think hard about whether 8GB of RAM and integrated graphics will cut it, because for most people, they won't.