Although Qualcomm canceled its Snapdragon Dev Kit, that hasn’t stopped a few desktop manufacturers from introducing mini PCs built around its Snapdragon X processors. Lenovo, for one, has embraced the platform, and the IdeaCentre Mini x ($899.99) is the first mini PC we’ve reviewed with a Snapdragon X chip inside. (We’ve tested quite a few of the laptops, of course.) It’s far from a perfect mini PC, being larger than some and not as fast, but it performs well enough that it’s worth a look. Just make sure you pick it up on sale; otherwise, we point to the Geekom A6 Mini as our Editors’ Choice award holder for budget-priced mini PCs.
The Lenovo web store lists just one configuration of the IdeaCentre Mini x mini PC, costing $899.99 and packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon Plus X1P-64-100 processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. At the time of this review, we saw this model on sale for $665. (It wavered around the high $600s in recent weeks.)
That pricing makes the IdeaCentre Mini x more attractive; it’s not quite as alluring at the list price. Some other Windows mini PCs, like the Asus NUC 15 Pro+, are around the same price, so the Lenovo isn’t especially expensive for its kind. But it’s a much better value at the sale pricing when you match up component for component. Apart from that, the Geekom A6 Mini sits well below this Lenovo desktop’s sale price and packs a comparable or better configuration.
Lenovo’s designs for its mini PCs tend to be a bit larger than some others. The IdeaCentre Mini x measures 1.7 by 7.7 by 7.5 inches (HWD). Meanwhile, the Asus NUC 15 Pro+ comes in at 1.6 by 5.7 by 4.4 inches, and the Apple Mac mini measures 5 inches in width and depth, and is tall at 2 inches. Lenovo’s business-oriented ThinkCentre Neo 50q is a bit smaller, at 7.1 inches by 7.2 inches, and 1.4 inches tall.
All that said, the IdeaCentre Mini x is still small enough to fit comfortably on most desktops — but keep the larger size in mind. (You can also position the Mini x vertically with the included stand.) Part of the reason it’s a bit larger than the pack is that the system’s 150-watt power supply is built inside, rather than as a brick on the power cable.
The chassis uses a mix of materials — including aluminum for the sides, plastic on the bottom, and a soft-touch material on the top — with a dark gray color that’s attractive enough and doesn’t call attention to itself. The design feels solid, and the materials make it comfortable to move around. The vents — located in the rear and on the bottom — create a cohesive look, but they don’t sound quite so lovely. Even though the IdeaCenter Mini x is built around the efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor, the fans sometimes spin up and can get quite loud. That’s a departure from the also-Snapdragon-based ThinkCentre Neo 50q, which I’m testing alongside this model; that one remained whisper-quiet during testing, thanks partly to its more aggressive venting.
The IdeaCentre Mini x provides access to the internal components, but it takes some detective work to get inside. The specifications list support for up to two SSDs, but at first, I couldn’t find a way to access the slots or the interior. A web search, though, unveiled the secret. A well-hidden button above the IO panel is the key: Press it, and that releases the plastic top of the chassis, which pops off. That reveals a metal plate that doesn’t seem to promise much, but if you hunt around there, you’ll see another button that you press to release the case bottom…
Once, that’s off, you’ll see the blower-style cooling system for the CPU, and the power supply. Lift the black lever at the bottom of the power supply, and that allows the supply’s body to move. Sliding the power supply down and lifting it out (carefully; it’ll be tethered on a cable) enables you to access the Type-2280 M.2 slots for SSDs (two of them) and a shorter M.2 slot for the Wi-Fi card.
As with all Qualcomm Snapdragon X systems, the Mini x’s Snapdragon SoC includes a speedy neural processor (NPU) that supports the entire Microsoft Copilot+ PC AI initiative. Remember, though, that this is somewhat less relevant for a desktop than a laptop, since an NPU is intended to provide efficiency and performance to offload AI tasks onto the more efficient NPU and conserve battery. A desktop with a discrete GPU can still provide faster AI results in many cases, and saving battery life isn’t a concern.
The IdeaCentre Mini x has plenty of hardwired connections. On the front, you’ll find the power button, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port (both USBs are 10Gbps), and a 3.5mm audio jack.
On the back are three more USB-A ports, another USB-C connection, a 10Gbps Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.1 output, and a DisplayPort 1.4a connection. In the image below, you can also see the lid-release button mentioned earlier, just above the HDMI port.
Our test model came with fully up-to-date Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. According to Lenovo’s specs, some configurations have the older Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, but we didn’t spot any on sale at this writing. This connectivity suite should cover most users’ needs, with some caveats. The biggest one: The Mini x provides no Thunderbolt support, even with the Qualcomm chipset. And it can only support up to three independent displays — a bit skimpy compared with full-size desktops.
Mini PCs equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Arm-based processor aren’t common, so direct comparisons will be tricky here. The Lenovo ThinkCentre Neo 50q ($626 as tested) comes with the slowest version, the Snapdragon X X1-26-100. Other relevant comparison machines include the Geekom A6 Mini ($499 as tested) with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H, the Asus NUC 15 Pro+ with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H ($1,199 as tested), and the Apple Mac mini (a much pricier $2,199 as tested) with the M4 Pro.
Our primary tests for Arm-based laptops are CPU-centric or processor-intensive. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we see how long the freeware video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 takes to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Other tests we usually use on Windows systems, namely UL’s PCMark 10, aren’t available for Arm-based CPUs in a way that we can use, so they’re excluded from this comparison. Windows on Arm has far better app compatibility than before, but it can’t run everything that x86-based PCs can.
In our benchmarks, the IdeaCentre Mini x was significantly faster than the slowest mini PC in our comparison group, Lenovo’s own ThinkCentre Neo 50q. It was also quicker than the Geekom A6 Mini, sometimes significantly faster, though Geekom’s desktop is much cheaper. The fastest mini desktop was the Mac mini, particularly in single-core benchmarks. Overall, the IdeaCentre Mini x came in third, demonstrating that it’s peppy enough for demanding productivity workflows.
It’s worth noting again that the IdeaCentre Mini x wasn’t as quiet as the other mini PC with an Arm-based chipset. In some of our tests, it didn’t make a peep, but when the fans spun up, they could get loud. The worst came during the Cinebench 2024 multi-core test, which means that if your tasks require all cores to fire up at once, you’ll have to contend with some noise.
We challenge each reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next two, Steel Nomad’s regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing. (This system could not complete the Solar Bay test, so we’ve removed it from the charts below.)
Even though the IdeaCentre Mini x uses a reasonably fast iteration of Qualcomm’s Adreno integrated graphics, it fell behind the leaders in just about all of our graphics tests. Once again, the only mini PC it could beat out was the ThinkCentre Neo 50a with the slowest Adreno graphics. As such, don’t look to the Mini x for gaming; you’ll also have to contend with and scout out Snapdragon X compatibility with specific games.
