My review of the Beelink S13 Pro N150 Mini PC

I just purchased a new Beelink mini PC on Amazon for $180. I'll add a link below. It has an Intel Celeron N150 processor, 16 GB DDR4 Ram and a 500 GB M.2 SSD - more on the SSD later. I also have another brand N95 mini-PS for a couple of years.

I have it connected to a 65" Samsung TV and use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I mostly use it for watching YouTube videos, general browsing, office apps, and email. I am not a gamer nor to I need to do video processing. For what I do it works very well and is an improvement over the N95.

Pros:
-Small, lightweight and low power. It runs on a 25 watt power cube and runs cooler than my older mini PC.
- It has 4 USB 3 ports, 2 HDMI ports so you can run dual monitors, 1 GB Ethernet port WiFi 6 built in and Bluetooth 5.2
- The fan is very quiet. I have never noticed running
- The memory is up-gradable but you would have to remove the 16 GB DIMM
- Has a second M.2 NVME slot for adding another SSD
- Easy access through the bottom by removing 4 screws. You don't have to remove the feet or anything
- The bottom has heat sinks for the SSD's.
- Easy set up (well should have been) Comes with Windows 11 Home fully licensed
- Windows activated even though I replaced the SSD and did a completely fresh installation.

Cons:
- No USB-C port
- A 2.5 GB Ethernet port would be nice
- I tried to set it up connected to the Internet and by logging into to my Microsoft account. That was a mistake. It took forever and stuck in the final reboot after upgrading Windows. I made a Windows bootable USB stick with Rufus and configured it to boot into a local account. That worked.
- The supplied SSD is an M-2 2280 mm SATA. The slot will also handle an NVME PCI 3rd gen. The SATA supplied would only test at 500 MB sequential read, typical SATA speeds. The description on Amazon says that it includes an NVME PCI drive or an optional SATA drive. They shaved a few bucks off the cost I guess. I ordered a 500 GB NVME PCI 3rd gen drive and installed it in place of the SATA drive. My speeds on Crystal Diskmark went up 5 or 6 times on the sequential read test.
- The second SSD slot is PCI only so I cannot move the SATA drive that was supplied over as a second drive. It is single lane PCI so not very fast if I wanted to add another PCI drive.

General comments:
- I might regret later not spending a few more bucks and getting an AMD Ryzen processor. I think I might have shopped around and gotten something like a GMK in same price range but with a USB-C port and a PCI drive.
- My existing M95 mini has been a workhorse for two years. I moved it to another TV and it still works fine. I hope to get good performance and reliability from the Beelink mini.
- It is amazing you can get this kind of performance that you used to have to pay $800 or more for a desktop with this capability for not much more than the cost of a Windows license.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5QXTFHH?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title