KAMRUI AK2 Plus Mini PC, Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake- N100(up to 3.4GHz) Micro Computer, 16GB DDR4 RAM 500GB SSD Mini Desktop Computer Support 4K HD/WiFi 5/BT4.2/Gigabit Ethernet for Home/Office

This mini PC is fantastic, out of the box it was running a little slow. Video was a little choppy even though it should have played fine. I watched a review video on how to turn up the turbo boost on this machine in the bios and it has been solid ever since. No more choppy video, just smooth as silk performance.

This computer is one of the most customizable computers I have ever purchased. I added a 1 TB SATA SSD for $50. It was so easy. The lid has a slidable lock and you just use that to open the space for the spare SATA drive. Now it has plenty of space for music and video downloads. The SSD is fast and this computer runs Windows 11 pro very well.

It is a great PC that can be moved around the house as needed. I use it for office work and also as a media box for my HDTV. It runs 1080p video silky smooth and will run 4k, but I would get a higher end model if you consistently play higher resolution videos. I just watch streaming TV on mine and the picture quality on this machine is outstanding. It beats every other streaming device that I have owned hands down. I also use this for Spotify and hook it to my stereo receiver and it works awesome.

So far I highly recommend this PC and I might buy another one to have a spare as my other computers are starting to show their age and need to be replaced with something modern and these are definitely cool little machines that exceeded my expectations so far.

Update: After several months of use this computer has become my daily work computer and also my media center. I have an 8 TB external hard drive hooked to this beast using the Blue USB 3.0 port and I can send my media files to every other computer in my house. This computer is a straight up champ and so quiet I barely notice when it is running. These computers are an unbelievable value for the price.

Special shoutout to Kin in Kamrui support. I have contacted Kamrui support with questions and they have been very helpful and friendly. Best customer service of any PC brand that I have worked with so far.

I have had this about a week and have had no significant issues that would merit its return. Its a good buy for the money.

There are two things I would caution potential buyers about that may come up:

First, with Windows 10 as the default operating system, once its up and running you are going to be forced to login every time you turn the unit on by either a password or a pin number. There are several places in Windows where you are supposed to be able to disable this, but they don’t work. You can read several variations on the instructions online about how to do it, so you don’t have to enter this BS every time you turn the unit on, but you are going to be frustrated. Even if you create a separate, new user to bypass this, it won’t work, and then you will lose administrator privileges to Windows in the process.

I made the mistake of trying to shut off the Pin/Password requirement entirely and its essentially impossible, no matter what anyone tells you and no matter what you read in “Settings” about it being turned off. (You can eliminate one or the other, but not both. You can eliminate them for a particular user, but then Windows will give you an error on login and you will have to login under another user, without admin rights).

The only solution if you get trapped in this cycle of nonsense with Windows is to reset the Kamrui unit to default (by holding down the shift key and hitting restart). – Otherwise you can’t even reset to the default the unit came with, because you will no longer have admin rights to do that.

You don’t want to lose admin rights on this unit because then any software that alters the system will have to ask for admin rights to do so, which you no longer have… So my advice is just to live with the annoying task of having to enter a pin every time you turn the unit on.

This is all a problem with Windows 10, not the Kamrui unit itself. Microsoft products continue to persist as mediocre crap no matter how many operating systems they release, always having annoying bugs they never seem able to fix entirely.
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A secondary issue I found is the following (and I believe this is also a persistent issue with Windows that goes all the way back to Windows 95 and they have never completely fixed):

When you start loading files onto the Kamrui hard drive/solid state storage, it will not be able to accept various files with long file names (which is the case for instance with many website design files – if you have entire websites saved locally, as I do).

Large numbers of files that I have had no problem transferring around on a Vista system just can’t be loaded on this drive because Windows can’t deal with the long file names, ONCE AGAIN, after supposedly they fixed this BASIC problem over twenty years ago…

So in the process of moving some of your files to this unit from another PC you may find that large numbers of them simply won’t transfer over.

The drive seems to stall on particularly large folders of files and the transfer process just shuts down.
(This is anywhere over about 5,000 files in a single folder tree). Sometimes the only way around this is to transfer individual folders one at a time, which is tedious.

I have never had any issues on Vista transferring multiple gigabytes of files with up to 25,000 plus files in a folder/sub folder section. Doing it on this Kamrui is problematic. It will make you want to scream.

Again, I think that is a Windows 10 problem, not a hardware issue.

You have to ask yourself how Microsoft continues to release products like this with ongoing issues like this. Every time they come out with a new OS, you hope it actually works without major hiccups…and then…

So even if you bought this with Windows 11 installed or went to the trouble of booting into BIOS to upgrade to 11 from a USB port, I wouldn’t hope for it to be free of any major bugs. You may end up losing admin rights along the way. Then you are stuck resetting to default.

My advice would be to try all these things out as soon as you get the unit, so if you have to reset to default, you haven’t lost much work in the process (with any added software erased that you will have to reinstall or any added personal files you will have to reinstall again also).

I was going to get rid of a 13 year old Vista laptop after buying this unit. Now I intend to keep it around.

Microsoft never ceases to amaze me. How do they stay in business?

In terms of gaming, to give you an idea, I loaded Steam on this unit and tried playing Left For Dead 2. It actually played fairly well to my surprise, with some lag once in awhile on swinging melee weapons… So where you might not expect this unit to be able to handle graphic intensive games, its more capable than you might think it would be.

First off, these are not gaming computers and thats fine. Thats not what they are designed for. What they are designed for is – Document editing, web browsing and physically having a small foot print. They excel at their intended job. They are quick at tasks, take less room and less power and are very affordable.
Highly recommend for most office tasks. I rated the tech support at 3 stars because I’ve never needed tech support for these units. EDIT: Needed so tech support for a missing Windows license. The support was fast, to the point and fixed our issue.

I have purchased a total of 10 Kamrui Mini PC’s over the last 1.5 years, I have 7 of them in my office, 3 of them at home, They are quiet, powerful, fast & reliable, They offer the ability to install additional SSD drives if needed, If you’re searching for a PC then I suggest you take a serious look at the Kamrui Mini PC line. They are the best bang for your buck.

You will be 1000% satisfied with your purchase hands down