Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny 2021, Core i5-14500, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Black

A 14-core workhorse in a shoebox, but the graphics and storage are stuck in 2015. Great for spreadsheets, terrible for anything fun.

The CPU is the headline act. That 14-core i5-14500 lands in the 68th percentile, which means it outmuscles most desktops we've tracked, not just other minis. Multitasking feels effortless. But the UHD Graphics 770 is a wet blanket. It sits in the 38th percentile, and our gaming score of 11.5 out of 100 is basically a polite way of saying don't even think about it. The 16GB of DDR5 is fine for now, but the 512GB SSD is the real bottleneck. That's a 31st percentile storage score, and you'll feel it the second you install a few large apps.

The obvious alternative is the Apple Mac mini M4 Pro. It's in a similar size class but absolutely destroys this thing in graphics and storage speed, though you'll pay more and lose Windows if that matters. The Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 and HP OMEN GT16-0364 are both traditional desktops that'll give you way more GPU muscle for similar money, but they're huge by comparison. The Acer Nitro N60 and iBUYPOWER Slate are gaming-focused, which makes them a different species entirely. If you want a tiny Windows box for office work, the P3 Tiny makes sense. If you want any graphical capability at all, look at the Mac mini or a mid-tower.

At $648 to $702, you're paying for the form factor and the CPU, not the storage or graphics. That's a fair price for a compact workstation with this processor, but you can get a lot more raw performance from a traditional tower at the same money. If you need the tiny size, it's reasonable. If you don't, you're leaving performance on the table.

The ThinkStation P3 Tiny is exactly what it sounds like: a proper workstation crammed into a box you can hide behind a monitor. The i5-14500 is the star here. 14 cores in a machine this small is genuinely impressive, and it'll chew through spreadsheets, code compiles, and a dozen browser tabs without breaking a sweat. But the integrated graphics and that 512GB SSD tell you exactly who this is for. Office work, yes. Anything creative or game-adjacent, absolutely not.

If you want to play games, edit video, or do any 3D work, this isn't it. The integrated graphics are a dead end for that stuff. Go get a Mac mini M4 Pro if you want small and capable, or a mid-tower like the Dell Tower Plus if you want raw performance per dollar. This is a business machine, full stop.

The ThinkStation P3 Tiny is a niche machine that nails its niche. If you need a compact, quiet Windows workstation for office tasks, coding, or business use, the i5-14500 makes this a genuinely capable little box. But the weak graphics, small SSD, and that concerning 2.9-star customer rating mean you should know exactly what you're getting into. Buy it for the CPU and the size, not for anything else.