H3-J6412

At first, when I pulled it out of the packaging, booted it up, it only went into the bios. showed that no NVM-e was installed. Opened to see if there indeed was an NVM-e in there and there was, but because it was jostled during shipment, it backed out of the socket (due to securing screw coming loose on the NVM-e). Once secured, it booted into windows just fine. Upon examination, windows showed up as not being activated. It would not activate over the Net. After writing a poor review, Cassie was on the money and helped out with setting everything right with the purchase and getting windows activated. There is nothing better than a company being on the ball and making sure your satisfaction is realized. This PC is working now and is a nice update to use. It by no means is a power pc but has the performance I need to get the job done. I would recommend this Mini PC as it is everything I needed, and the support is exceptional.

Worked well for about 4 months and then the device wouldn't power up. We lost all the data on the device. Became a paper weight after 4 months.

This is a small but potent little mini-PC ideal for home-office, light productivity work or specialized tasks such as a private server. It is not a gaming machine unless the limit of your gaming is solitaire or similar non-graphically demanding games. Mine is the J6412 model with 8GB of RAM and a small but usable 256GB SSD. It will be used as a personal cloud server for which it’s several storage options will come in handy. The unit has upgrade options for both RAM and storage but while I’ll be adding a couple of SSDs, I probably won’t upgrade the RAM unless I see performance issues once everything is online and working. Windows 11 comes preinstalled and activated though, alas, also loaded with microsoft bloatware. Installing the required updates took a couple of hours in my case which was disappointing. To be fair though, I think this was partially because the system had been preset to go to sleep every ten minutes and I had left it running on it’s own while having supper. After correcting that issue, the remaining updates carried on and completed in about 30 minutes. The unit became quite hot during this process, however and while the fanless design makes that expected it was still a little alarming. Unfortunately, I don’t have a thermometer to capture the temps coming off the massive heatsink on the top of the case but the system kept chugging along with no hiccups or issues. I installed the apps I’ll be using and found the system fast and responsive. One of the reasons I chose this mini-PC is because it uses relatively little electricity and I can leave it running for extended periods without having to pay a lot of attention to it. There are a couple of points I find disappointing about the Venoen mini-PC though. The package includes a basic Mini PC user manual that identifies ports and provides guidance on how to connect your cables, attach it to your monitor if desired and turn it on and off but not much else. The manual is very generic and does not contain specific information about my model such as CPU, storage options, upgrade options or the like. There is a DVD also included in the box but it has a handful of drivers only with, again, no documentation. I did visit the Venoen website but was unable to register or download any supporting documentation or files. This seems to me like a major failing for a tech company and unacceptable when every other website in the world can figure out how to do it. You lose a point for that, putting your support features behind a wall I couldn’t get through. The PC itself, however, is working and doing exactly what I want it to do. Despite the hiccup with the auto-sleep feature, setup was easy and relatively quick. The unit is silent, conveniently small and easy on the electrical bill. Other than the inaccessible tech support, I’m happy with it.