I just need to express my disappointment, and to caution folk like myself who might not have a lot of money and for whom a purchase like this represents an investment.
I bought this unit August 5, 2022, or about a year and four months ago. Within only a few weeks i was considering to send it back to Amazon since it seemed highly unstable. I mean in terms of applications crashing, and sleep and hibernation functions. I actually disabled the latter because on several occasions, the thing just didn’t want to wake up and i’d have to do stuff like unplug the power brick and/or poke the CMOS button to bring it back to life.
Only, i really liked it and didn’t want to send it back. My bad i suppose, but i really didn’t know whether to blame the hardware or Windows 11. When it was working it was actually pretty astonishing for its size, plenty fast and competent for my multimedia and programming endeavors. And then it seemed, over the course of several months of actual work, to kinda settle into itself. Here again IDK if that was because the hardware breaking in, (kinda like new rings on a piston, or seating valves?), or maybe Microsoft sent some stabilizing patches. But hey… gift horse, mouth, etc.. I was happy for about a year.
It had its issues, like e.g. USB port allocation was unpredictable and sometimes contradictory, and i would routinely need to remove and reinstall drivers to make certain things go. Very occasionally my screen turned all blue, but with no BSOD error. And i never did feel comfortable enough to turn back on any power management. Still on the whole, it served me very well.
Then a few days ago, in the middle of composing a email, it died. It was not working hard at the time.*
And i mean, it died dead. The power button did nothing. The LED was lit blue on the power brick and it was supplying appropriate voltage, but nothing would happen. None of my former tricks worked to resurrect it. So i unplugged it, and went off to be sad.
I’m not the sort who can just only be sad tho, i like to know the why of things and i like to fix what’s broke. So a few hours later i plugged it back in and the power button flashed briefly. Hey, that’s something. So i tried my old tricks again and eventually it booted to Windows. Worked perfectly for all of two minutes, then blinked off again.
So i thought heck, it’s a loss anyway i might as well stick my hands in there and see can i do anything. I took out the RAM and the NVMe and cleaned the contacts good, then securely reinstalled it all. It worked! I think? IDK it booted to Windows and stayed there for a half hour, so i began to have confidence i’d found and fixed the problem. But i’d reset my CMOS (and i’m not entirely sure what all that does), plus Windows 11 remains somewhat opaque to me, so i wasn’t gonna risk some rogue setting somewhere putting it to sleep. So i’d manually shut it down when done for the day.
That worked for nearly a week, cruelly, long enough to restore my confidence.
Now today it doesn’t turn on. I did all the things again to no avail; it is just dead. Bench testing the power supply, it seems to be fine and within its labeled parameters. All peripherals are disconnected so i know there’s no goofy USB or ethernet power stuff going on. It’s dead. It would not surprise me in the least for it to spontaneously come back to life but, i won’t be fooled again. I need a new computer again, already.
Sorry, i’m telling a long story with a boring plot.
TLDR: this is weird. There’s a gremlin in this box, only i have no idea what sort. But my guess is, it’s been there all along.
Of course a year and four months is a long time in computer world so i paid $100 more for this unit than it costs at present, and that was after a significant “coupon” saving. And the thing is, a year and four months is but a blink of an eye relative to the investment this expenditure represented to me. Why couldn’t it do this thing in the first week? Or four months ago?
I know. Stuff happens. But the subtext of all this is, it could happen to you. In the process of trying to rescue my investment i read a lot of unhappy essays like this, saw a lot of folk trying to fix the identical problem, and i conclude there’s a rather good chance it could happen to you. Can you afford it? If i had it to do over again, i would think much harder on that extended protection offered when i put the thing in my cart. And i might weigh that expense against the price of other, more established brands of computer.
E.g. i am typing this review on my ancient iPad. Not sure how ancient but i got it used and it was old then. It has never given me a lick of trouble.
I should reiterate how happy i was with this computer, for the year that it worked. It was a workhorse and after its initial hiccups it was consistent and stable enough i was considering to get another model of Beelink to replace a prehistoric Dell laptop which i use for a media and smart home server. Now i certainly will not do that because, like my ancient iPad, my prehistoric laptop works. As does the 2012 Compaq i5 which this computer replaced.
A curmudgeonly “they don’t make ’em like they used to” might be appropriate here.
It wasn’t easy settling on a rating for this review. I actually put off reviewing this product this long because i wasn’t truly confident what to say. Had i written it last week, it’d probly been much shorter and i’d have had no choice but to give it five stars for price/performance. Just not sure i’d have felt good about it. Please do evaluate the other one-star reviews before making your decision. I wish i had.
*(Side note, you never want to work this thing too hard, because the fan will howl like a banshee. I don’t game on it because i have console for that, but i mean i would absolutely not recommend for anyone to buy it with gaming in mind).
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