I found a mini PC that crushes this HP laptop deal at Best Buy

HP vs Minisforum — (Image credit: Future)

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The HP EliteBook laptop has received a huge price cut at Best Buy, dropping from an eye-watering $3759 to $1399, a solid 63 percent discount. For the money, you get a Ryzen 7 PRO 250 CPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and Radeon 780M graphics in a thin 14-inch business laptop.

That still feels expensive once you look at the specs, especially when similar hardware can be found for far less in a desktop-style setup. If portability isn’t that important to you, I’ve found a great mini PC that’s not only cheaper, but more powerful as well.

The Minisforum UM890 Pro is now $855 at Amazon, and it steps things up with a Ryzen 9 8945HS processor. That’s an 8-core, 16-thread chip with higher sustained performance than the Ryzen 7 PRO 250, especially under heavier workloads.

Hp EliteBook laptop vs. Minisforum UM890 Pro mini PC

The mini PC also comes with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, doubling both memory and storage compared to the HP laptop.

Both systems use Radeon 780M graphics, so you’re not losing anything on the GPU side, but the mini PC pulls ahead with better overall performance thanks to higher power limits and improved cooling.

Cooling is a big part of the difference here, with an active system that lowers memory temperatures by up to 60 percent and SSD temperatures by up to 40 percent. The CPU also benefits from improved thermal handling, allowing it to run more consistently at higher speeds.

Power limits reach up to 70W in performance mode, which gives the processor more room to maintain performance over time, something thin laptops struggle to match.

Connectivity is another advantage, with dual 2.5G Ethernet ports, USB4, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort, and an OCuLink port for high-speed expansion. That makes it far more flexible as a workstation setup.

The system also supports up to 96GB of DDR5 memory and includes two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, so there’s plenty of room for upgrades later on.

You do lose the built-in screen, keyboard, and battery, which is where the HP still makes sense for mobile work, but if you’re mostly at a desk and want better performance, more memory and storage for less money, the UM890 Pro mini PC is the smarter buy.

Wayne Williams is a freelancer writing news for TechRadar Pro. He has been writing about computers, technology, and the web for 30 years. In that time he wrote for most of the UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.

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