[Device Reviews and Information] Jupit3r:
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Small form factor PCs are gradually taking over from conventional desktop computers, as their compact size and low power consumption are attractive to lots of consumers. The recently released Beelink SEi12, which rocks an Intel i5-1235U processor, plenty of RAM, a fast PCIe4.0x4 SSD and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro operating system, may be a perfect choice for consumers looking for a compact personal computer for their everyday computing chores.

The good:

Premium design and compact size

Wi-Fi 6 and plenty of connectivity options

Performance better than higher-priced competitions

Easy to add memory and storage

Works with two 4K displays

Quiet even under heavy workloads

The bad:

No built-in card reader.

The Type-C port is data-only.

Specifications

OS: Windows 11 Pro

Processor: Intel Core i5-1235U

CPU: 10 cores, 12 threads @3.3-4.4GHz, 12MB Intel Smart Cache

GPU: Iris Xe Graphics EU80

RAM: 16 DDR4 3200MHz (dual-channel)

Storage: 1*m.2 2280 PCIe4.0*4 NVMe SSD (up to 2TB)

1* SATA3 2.5-inch HDD/SSD (up to 2TB)

Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2

Ports: USB 3.0*2, USB 2.0*2, USB-C (data only)*1, HDMI 2.0*2, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, Gigabit Ethernet*1, DC-in*1

Dimensions: 126*113*42mm

Weight: 455g

What’s in the box

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Beelink SEi12 Mini PC * 1

120W Power Adapter * 1

User Guide * 1

VESA Mount Bracket * 1

HDMI Cable * 2 (1m and 0.2m)

The retail packaging of the Beelink SEi12 is more attractive than ever. Along with the mini PC, you get a 19V-6.25A power adapter, two HDMI cables, a user guide, a bunch of screws, and a VESA mount bracket for attaching the mini PC to the back of a monitor.

Design: it’s one of a kind

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Beelink continues to work on improving the design of their products. The SEi12 a simply gorgeous. Its plastic chassis is vented on four of its six sides, allowing efficient airflow to keep the mini PC cool and stable. Most of the perforated top panel is covered with high-quality felt cloth, giving it an interesting and premium look.

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The fabric material used here is not only waterproof, but also immune to fingerprints. There Beelink branding and the SEi model name on the bottom-right corner are very subtle, blending in extremely well with the rest of the housing.

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On the front of the SEi12, you will find the following: a power button with status LED, a 3.5mm audio jack with mic support, a Clear CMOS pinhole, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports.

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The rear side plays host to two HMDI 2.0 ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a DC-in port. As keen eyes might have noticed, the SEi12 doesn’t come with an SD card slot, you will need an external card reader if you transfer photos and video footages from your cameras frequently.

Both HDMI 2.0 ports support 4k@60Hz video output, allowing you to connect the SEi12 to two displays simultaneously. Unlike other high-end Beelink mini PCs, the Type-C port on the front of the SEi12 only supports data transmission. It’s a letdown for those who prefer to work with more than two monitors.

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The bottom cover has four rubber feet, texts showing how to enter BIOS and boot menu, and the screws that allow you to open the SEi12 and access the insides.

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Compared to previous Beelink mini PC models, the SEi12 features an additional 4007 OS fan and an aluminum heat sink to keep the SSD cool. As a result of the improved cooling, the internals are more difficult to access than before. Older Beelink mini PCs only require you to remove four screws on the bottom panel to get to the motherboard, with the SEi12, you will need to unscrew 3 extra screws on the SSD cooling panel, which also serves as the bracket for a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD.

The hardware expansion in the SEi12 consists of an M.2 Type-2280 slot for PCle4.0*4 NVMe SSDs, a traditional 2.5-inch SATA3 drive bay, and two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots for the RAM. The M.2 2230 wireless card is also accessible under the pre-installed M.2 SSD.

Housing two storage drives in a system this compact is rather impressive. Beelink sells this PC as a ready-to-use system, you get either 16GB or 32GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory (in the form of Crucial brand memory sticks), and a super-fast 500GB Kingston PCIe4.0 NVMe SSD, onto which a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro is preinstalled.

To access the CPU, and other components of the PC, you will have to remove even more screws, but there's really no need to do that since nothing else is replaceable or upgradable. In terms of wireless connections, the SEi12 supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

OS and Software

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The Beelink SEi12 ships with a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro which, compared to Windows 10, brings more aesthetically pleasing UI, improved multiple desktops, built-in XBOX gaming, and better security features. Since this is the Pro Edition of Windows OS, you also get a few extra IT and business features.

The Windows 11 Pro here is also very clean, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. Besides regular Windows software, you can also load the Android subsystem on the SEi12 and run Android apps on the SEi12. If you are interested in open-source operating systems, the mini PC is also compatible with Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and many other Linux distributions.

Performance

The SEi12 comes with the Intel Alder Lake Core i5-1235U processor, which runs at a 3.30 GHz base frequency and can increase its speed to 4.40 GHz in turbo mode. It bundles as many as 10 CPU cores (2 performance cores and 8 efficient cores), 12 threads, 12MB Intel smart cache, and has a TDP of 15 Watts. The SoC handles the graphics part too, you’ll get a very capable Intel Iris Xe EU80 iGPU with a dynamic frequency of up to 1.2GHz. There’s also 16GB/32GB dual-channel memory, and a 500GB PCIe4.0x4 NVMe SSD under the hood.

Benchmarks

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In terms of CPU performance, the SEi12 is a huge step up from mini PCs with Intel Tiger Lake quad-core processors. In Cinebench R23, it completely blew the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro out of the water, scoring 11% higher in single-core and 42% higher in multi-core. It also handily beat the Apple Mac mini and the Beelink SER5 Pro in both subtests.

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Geekbench 5 measures the computer's single-core and multi-core power, for everything from checking emails to taking pictures to playing music, or all of it at once. The results reveal how close the tested system is to the cutting-edge. What makes the Geekbench special is that it allows us to compare system performance across devices, operating systems, and processor architectures. The SEi12 scored 1619 in single core, 7475 in multi-core, way above systems with the Intel Tiger Lake mobile CPUs.

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PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). We use it to assess overall system performance in different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score, and higher numbers are better. The 5284-point finish from the SEi12 is well above the 4,000 points we consider excellent, and it's a very respectable showing for a PC this small.

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3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. Like always, I ran three different 3DMark subtests on the SEi12: Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy, which are suited to different types of systems. Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark which tests how well a system can handle DirectX 12 games. The other two are both DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to slim laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The SEi12 scored 1343 in Time Spy, 3686 in Fire Strike, and 12443 in Sky Diver, falling behind the Intel NUC 11 Pro and Beelink’s very own SER5 Pro.

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According to CrystalDiskMark, the 500GB PCIe4.0x4 solid-state drive in the mini PC has excellent reading and writing speeds. It allows you to boot into Windows 11 Pro in only a few seconds. Launching big creativity applications and 3D games is also incredibly fast.

Content Creation

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With such a beefy processor inside, the SEi12 has absolutely no problem of seeing us through common home and office duties. It is also quite capable when dealing with relatively demanding creativity tasks.

The SEi12 stayed smooth and responsive even when I was adding complex effects and renders to 4K video footages, it almost felt as fast as my desktop PC, which features an AMD Ryzen5-5600G CPU and an Nvidia GeFore GTX1660 Ti GPU. Encoding a 3-minute 1080P/30fps video in Handbrake, the SEi12 took 1 minute, 51 seconds, which was a lot shorter than the 2 minutes, 36 seconds the Intel NUC 11 Pro took to finish the same task.

Gaming

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Even though the SEi12 is using an integrated GPU for graphics-intensive tasks, its gaming capability is on par with PCs with entry-level discrete graphics cards. Running League of Legend at 1080P and medium quality setting, the average frame rate was 131 fps, the visuals are extremely smooth on my 144Hz gaming monitor. Even when I switched to 4K and high settings, LOL still averaged 71 fps, good enough for an enjoyable gaming experience.

Genshin Impact was playable at 1080P and medium setting, I saw an average of 41 fps, and didn’t notice any dips even in intense fighting scenes. Switching to lowest quality setting will improve the average frame rate to 56 fps.

Most of the other games ran fine at moderate settings, but somehow, I failed to launch Conqueror’s Blade on the SEi12, as the game constantly got stuck at the animation in the very beginning.

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These are the results of all the games I tested on the Beelink SEi12, quite promising for a mini desktop PC with such a small footprint. However, if you want to enjoy the most graphics-intensive titles at higher settings, you will probably be better off with the Beelink GTR6, which rocks an even more powerful AMD Ryzen9-6900HX processor and a 12-core Radeon 680M iGPU.

Video Playback

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Intel iGPUs are known to have amazing video codec support. According to Bluesky DXVA checker, the Iris Xe Graphics EU80 iGPU can support most video formats of up to 4K and 8K. When I was playing an 8K video clip, the CPU utilization was only 1%-2%, while the GPU usage also stayed below 50%. Streaming YouTube videos in Chrome was also no problem for the SEi12, including 8K/60fps videos.

Networking

The SEi12 has a Wi-Fi 6 compatible network card that works well with my TP-Link Wi-Fi6 router. However, if you want even higher speeds, you can use the Gigabit Ethernet jack on the back of the mini PC and connect it through a cable to the network.

Stability, power consumption and noise

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Although the 12th generation Intel processor inside is extremely fast and can reach high frequencies when necessary, the dual cooling fans, heat sinks and copper pipes under the hood are super effective in keeping the SEi12 cool and stable. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the mini PC scored a solid 99.7%, ranking above most mini PCs I've tested. In the AIDA64 Stability Test, the temperature of the CPU never surpassed 90 degrees in one hour of running in full load.

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The SEi12’s higher performance does result in high power consumption, though. The power draw was around 13 watts at idle, and around 73 watts at maximum. In comparison, the Intel NUC 11 Pro draws around 8 watts at idle, while the Beelink SER5 Pro draws only 3.5 watts. Fortunately, the included 120W adapter never needs to work too hard to keep the mini PC going as mighty as it could be.

As long as I did not stress the processor inside the SEi12, the mini PC was perfectly quiet. Even in demanding tasks such as benchmark testing, where the hardware was pushed to its limit, the noise made by the fans was still rather tamed. I used to be bothered by the fan noise picked up by my Creative Live! MIC when dubbing the review videos on the Intel NUC 11 Pro. After switching to the Beelink SEi12, that problem was gone.

Verdict

The Beelink SEi12 is a well-rounded mini desktop PC. Its small footprint allows it to fit almost anywhere. There are plenty of ports for all kinds of external devices. The mini PC also offers solid performance for dealing with common computing duties without lag, as well as efficient cooling to keep it running stably for all day long.

The price of this mini PC starts from $459, which includes 16GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory, 500GB PCIe4.0x4 SSD, and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro. In comparison, the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro with the same amount of storage will cost you $815.99, even though it is powered by a much weaker processor. The Beelink SEi12 is obviously missing premium features like dual Thunderbolt ports, a built-in SD card reader, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, but its price will probably compel most of consumers to question the necessity of these features.