HP EliteDesk 8 Mini G1i AI Review

HP's mini office champ has all the ports you'll ever need but asks for more money than it deserves. Unless you're buying for a corporate fleet, the Mac mini M4 does almost everything better for way less.

The HP EliteDesk 8 Mini G1i AI is a puzzling little box. On one hand, it crams a capable Intel Core Ultra 7 265T and a frankly ridiculous number of ports into a chassis you can mount behind a monitor. On the other, it asks for a premium price that's hard to justify when you're stuck with integrated graphics that can't even break a sweat in light photo editing. The real head-scratcher? The price can swing from $1,549 all the way to $236,313 depending on the listing, which makes us think someone's keyboard got stuck. If you can snag it at the low end from Newegg, it's a solid business PC. If not, run away.

What really surprised us is the connectivity. This thing has more ports than some full-sized towers, including Thunderbolt 4, a 2.5GbE Ethernet jack, and Wi-Fi 7. It's a LAN party's best friend, even if the integrated GPU means the party stops before any game launches. The CPU itself is no slouch, handling office multitasking and even some AI-assisted tasks via the onboard NPU without breaking a sweat. The 16GB of RAM is adequate for Windows 11 Pro but feels stingy at this price, and the 512GB SSD is just about average. Gaming performance, as our 14.4 out of 100 score suggests, is a non-starter.

Value is where this thing stumbles hard. At the $1,549 price you'll find at Newegg, it's a tough sell when Apple's Mac mini M4 with a much faster processor and 16GB of unified memory starts at $599. The HP justifies its existence only if you absolutely need a stack of physical ports and a Windows Pro license in a tamper-proof corporate fleet. For everyone else, the price spread alone makes this mini PC feel like a gamble.

The elephant in the room is the Apple Mac mini M4. It's smaller, sips power, and its integrated GPU embarrasses Intel's while costing a fraction as much. For creative pros, the Mac is the clear choice. If you're chained to Windows, the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny series offers similar specs with less sticker shock, and you can find models with even more RAM for the same money. The HP's only real standouts are its Thunderbolt 4 plus HDMI 2.1 port combo and Wi-Fi 7, which may matter in niche AV setups.

If you're a gamer, a video editor, or anyone who wants decent graphics on a budget, this is not your mini PC. Go buy a Mac mini M4 or build yourself a small-form-factor AMD rig for half the price and twice the frame rates.

The HP EliteDesk 8 Mini G1i AI is a well-built, feature-packed mini PC that would be an easy recommendation at $800. At $1,549 or more, it's simply outclassed by Apple's Mac mini and even other Windows-based mini PCs. Buy it only if your IT department is writing the check and you need that exact port layout.