If you’ll remember a few months back, we did a feature on the “The Best Mini PCs That Won’t Break The Bank” that featured a number of tiny computers that will cover the needs of most people looking for a new computer or secondary PC to work from home. Well, one of the companies on that list reached out to send us a machine to check out in person. The lovely people at WO-WE sent over their WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400.
We said a lot of good things about the machine in that writeup, mostly because it was the only machine in the $100 price print that featured an AMD chip and not the aging and sluggish Celeron processor. It also features an actual graphics chip in the form of the R5 series and not the almost unusable Intel HD graphics line. It also was the only machine to feature 8G of RAM with an upgrade path, something that will become important in a bit. That’s a lot of power and versatility in a machine currently sitting at only $107 over on Amazon and other online retailers.
The first thing that we need to note is that this is not a beast of a machine that you are going to be gaming on or rendering tons of video content with. The WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 is a budget workhorse machine that fits in a very particular need for office and home use. The entire reason for our list on budget mini PCs was for my retired father. His old OptiPlex was running like a slug and there was no way he needed an expensive all-in-one from a big box store or being sold on a gaming machine in order to milk some money out of him. His screen, keyboard, and mouse were all fine and just needed a PC.
What he needed was a solid machine that he could use to check his emails daily, read his news every morning over coffee, play Hearts or Spades before bed, and watch the occasional YouTube video about home projects and current events. He isn’t going to be playing Call of Duty, he isn’t going to be editing huge YouTube videos, and he isn’t going to be doing anything outside of maybe having a couple of tabs open in a web browser. The WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 check all those boxes, boxes that will be checked for most people looking for a PC.
You see, the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 is the perfect secondary machine for the home. In fact, I’m currently at my dad’s place writing this review on the very machine we are talking about. I’m even considering picking one up for myself to become a dedicated garage machine so it can be used to run my little small business that’s currently running off Linux on a machine from 2010. It would also make for a great first PC for you kids as it’s easy to monitor while allowing them to play most MOBAs and mobile ports of online only games that they want to play. It’s also so small that you can easily take it from them when they break the rules. But enough about why you might want the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400, let’s talk about what’s under the hood.
The WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 is based on the AMD platform. This little chip can reach clock speeds of 3.2GH allowing for a smooth user experience for office and other tasks. This chip is still used in several laptops that are two or three times the price of this WO-WE Mini PC. It packs 8GB of RAM which is currently the bare minimum for modern tasks. The other machines in this price range feature 4GB of RAM which makes for a painfully slow experience at times. Even with 8GB you’ll see some stuttering in things like YouTube, especially with Chrome as it’s a resource hog even on machines with more RAM. I suggest running a lighter browser to help minimize this is it becomes an issue for you.
The WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 also features a really nice 128GB M.2 hard drive for speedy access and enough space for most every use. If you are doing a lot of work in Word or handling PDFs, chances are you’ll never fill up the drive anytime soon, even if you load up on games from the Windows Store. If you want to upgrade you can, something that isn’t an option with other machines. Open up the box and you can add a SATA drive inside to increase storage. If you are thinking about turning this into an emulation machine on a Linux build that’s an option here. Run Windows on the main drive and have you Linux emulation build on the internal drive that you add.
Now, we love a lot about this little machine, but we really see this as being a great office machine, especially for smaller businesses that are running on a tight budget. The machine is small and can easily be hidden away, but not tiny, and that’s because of the number of I/O ports included. You get the Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7265 802.11ac Network Card built in that can handle 2.4G and 5G bands for a strong and fast connection. The back of the machine includes ethernet if you plan on turning the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 into you home media server. Turning this into a cheap PLEX server would be a really cool project for most people!
As an office machine the benefit of the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 is the fact that it supports dual displays. Most machines in this price range, and even at higher price points, don’t feature dual displays, at least not HDMI. We’ve seen machines with DVi and even VGA as a secondary option, but the WO-WE Mini PC features 2 HDMI ports for the best viewing experience. This is important for office settings as it’s common to have an Office document open on one and data on the other. My mother works in translations and noted that a machine like this would make her workflow much nicer across two high-end monitors.
But what about those people that want to play games other that Hearts and/or Spades? Well, the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 handles the basics well. If you want to run League of Legends and most other MOBAs, then you are all set. If you want to run shooters from the Windows Store (see Modern Combat) it’ll also run well with little issues on low to medium settings. I spent some time playing the latest Asphalt racing title and it was a smooth and fun experience with a controller attached via bluetooth. Sure, you aren’t going to be playing DOOM Eternal or Cyberpunk but remember that this machine is really poised as that work or secondary machine and not a gaming rig by any means.
And while the specs indicate it can handle 4K content, that’s only partially true. It totally can handle it, but not well. That’s not a huge knock for this price point as everything says it can do 4K today, but nothing runs it well on these types of chipsets. The included Radeon R5 does help a lot but remember that Chrome is going to be a hungry bugger and will make 4K a less than fun experience. It you want to stick to 1080p you’ll be fine and that should be more than enough for the people looking at a PC in this price range as long as you have good Wi-Fi. I don’t know all that many people that need 4K when they are editing Word documents and reading news with the occasional video embed.
All of this really makes the $107 price point pretty stunning. And I haven’t even mentioned the included USB-C port on the front of the unit, something we have yet to see on other mini machines in the same price point. You also have the included card reader slot so the amount of transfer points for your content is pretty nice. I can plug in my phone while also downloading photos off an SD card all at the same time. It also features 4 USB ports so you can hide away your mouse and keyboard along the back and have two open ports on the front for other peripherals.
The WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 is a fantastic budget PC regardless of its miniature status. It’s a great work/office PC but one that can be upgraded to grow with your needs. RAM can be boosted to 16GB (some users report 64GB working fine), and you’ll want to upgrade as its shipped in single channel mode making the PC a little slower than it should be. If you are short on space or looking for a clean wire free experience (outside the power cord) the WO-WE Mini PC with AMD Excavator A9-9400 should be one you consider.
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