[Device Reviews and Information] Jupit3r:
Performance

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This mini PC is powered by an Intel Core i3-8109U processor (3.0-3.6GHz), which is built on 14nm process, has two CPU cores, 4 threads, and integrated iris Plus 655 Graphics. It is clearly not a powerhouse and won’t match the latest mobile processors found in mainstream laptops and high-end mini PCs, but it is capable enough for basic office tasks, media playback, and even a little bit of gaming. My review unit has 16GB dual-channel DDR4-2400MHz memory under the hood to take care of multi-tasking, that’s a hell lot of RAM for a budget mini PC.

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In Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R20 test, the SEI8 8109 scored 358 in single core, 756 in multi-core. Because of the dual-core CPU structure, it fell behind the Pentium N6005 powered NUC 11 Essential, and Beelink’s very own Celeron N5095 powered U59, in terms of multi-core CPU performance.

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Again, in the cross-platform Geekbench 5 test, the SEI8 8109 easily beat those Celeron and Pentium based systems in CPU single-core score, but was slightly edged out by the NUC 11 Essential and Beelink U59 in CPU muti-core score.

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PCMark 10, which simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows, should be a better benchmark for assessing overall system performance. The SEI8 8109 scored 3453 in the standard PCMark 10 test, ranking above the NUC 11 Essential this time around.

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The SEI8 8109 features an m.2 2280 NVMe SSD, which is rarely seen on budget mini PCs. However, numbers in the CrystalDiskMark test aren’t all that inspiring, at least not by the NVME standard. Still, it is almost twice as fast as a SATA SSD so it does guarantee the speed of booting up Windows and installing big applications.

Daily computing

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In my everyday use, the SEI8 8109 was quite efficient in all kinds of office workflows, web-browsing, and multi-media. The system didn’t really slow down while loading a dozen image-heavy webpages in Chrome and running a few apps side by side.

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Editing videos should be challenging for budget systems like this, but to my surprise, the SEI8 held its own nicely. Adding filters to multiple clips simultaneously, I could notice that the SEI8 slowed down a little bit, and it did take a lot more time than the GTR5 while converting a 1080P video clip, but there were never system halts, or significant delays.

Gaming

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The Intel Iris Plus 655 Graphics GPU in the Core i3-8109U is a much better integrated GPU than the Intel HD or UHD Graphics found in Celeron, Pentium, and even some later Core processors, and test results of 3DMark told the story. The SEI8 8109 scored 6161 in Sky Diver, 1684 in Fire Strike, and 654 in Time Spy, easily blew the NUC 11 Essential out of the water.

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League of Legend was smooth in 1080P and medium settings. There were no noticeable frame drops even in those intense battle scenes. GamePP recorded an average frame rate of 66 fps, and that’s fairly decent.

Genshin Impact and Spell Break were barely playable in 1080P and medium settings, there were serious stutters and delays in some of the fighting scenes. Turning the resolution and settings down to 720P, and the smoothness will be improved a lot.

More demanding titles such as “Conqueror’s Blade” are simply not meant for budget systems like the SEI8 8109, unless you don’t mind the frame rate being as low as 17 FPS in 720P and low settings.

As the results suggested, even though this machine isn’t really built for gaming, you can run some less graphics-intensive games at moderate settings. And if you are a fan of simpler, casual games like Plant vs Zombies or logical games that don’t need high frame rates, they should run perfectly fine. For example, I tested quite a few games installed from Microsoft Store, and didn’t notice any frame drops or lags running them.

HTPC

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It’s easy to turn the SEI8 8109 into Home Theatre PC, just connect it to your HDTV or projector via HDMI, install some video and music streaming apps, and you are ready to go.

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If you have a collection of high-res movies and shows, you are in for a treat! According to DXVA, the Iris Plus 655 GPU can decode most video formats of up to 4K and 8K. I played many 4K and 8K local videos on the SEI8 8109, and enjoyed perfectly smooth playback. Also, because it always uses hardware decoding, the CPU usage is always quite low while I am watching movies and shows.

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Streaming online videos in the browser was also a smooth experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that neither the SEI8 8109’s CPU nor its GPU usage exceeded 60% when playing an 8K@60fps YouTube clip in Chrome. That was a much better performance than what I experienced with the GTR5, which features the mighty AMD Ryzen9-5900HX processor.