Tecno Megamini G1 review: a beautiful mini PC

There aren’t many times where I just stop and stare at a PC, but that’s exactly what the Tecno Megamini G1 made me do. It’s impossibly small, littered with RGB, and despite packing laptop hardware, delivers performance that can rival the best gaming desktops. Most impressively of all, it manages a custom liquid-cooled loop inside the 5.6-liter chassis. And surprisingly, it goes far beyond being a gimmick.

The PC comes from Tecno, and it’s currently knee-deep in a Kickstarter campaign that’s raised close to $700,000. This is one of the most unique PCs I’ve seen, let alone tested, and it managed to exceed my performance expectations. As impressive as all that sounds, I have some reservations about recommending it given the high price and some issues with the PC’s software in its current state.

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Specs and pricing

There are only two configurations available for the Megamini G1. Both come with an RTX 4060 and 32GB of memory, but the storage capacity and CPU are different. The cheaper of the two models comes with the 10-core Core i7-13620H processor from Intel, which comes with six Performance cores, four Efficient cores, and a boost clock speed of 4.9GHz. For this configuration, which is complete with 1TB of storage, you’ll spend $1,699, or $1,599 if you secure a unit during the Kickstarter campaign.

The more expensive model comes with the 14-core Core i9-13900H, which has the same number of Performance cores but twice the number of Efficient cores. It also has a higher clock speed at 5.4GHz, and this configuration comes with 2TB of storage. This configuration will run you $1,899, and once again, you can save $100 if you pick up a unit during the Kickstarter.

These are laptop components, and without a keyboard, trackpad, display, and battery under the hood, Tecno is charging a premium. For instance, the HP Omen Transcend 14 comes with a newer Intel CPU and an RTX 4060, and you can pick it up for around $1,300 at the time of writing. That laptop even includes an 2.8K OLED display. The Megamini G1 is faster than its components would suggest, as I’ll get into later, but there’s no denying that the price is high.

For the desktop comparison, the closest thing you’ll find to the Megamini G1 is the Asus ROG NUC 970, which comes in at $1,629 for an RTX 4060. The Megamini G1 isn’t terribly expensive if you consider the small form factor it’s delivering, and that its unique cooling solution actually works. Still, a chunk of the price is going toward the 5.6-liter size of the PC, and if all you’re after is performance, you can get something much more powerful for less money.

Build quality and design

The Megamini G1 looks insane. Overlay whatever meaning of insane you think fits best — you can see the photos — but there’s no doubting that this is a striking design. This may be a mini PC, but it never sacrifices RGB flair in its construction. This could be a much smaller PC, but there’s something entrancing about looking at the empty space between its clear plastic panels, almost like you’re staring at something locked inside of a display case.

It’s not for everyone, certainly not, but there’s not another PC that looks like the Megamini G1 — even the Corsair One i500 looks like a straightforward design by comparison. The center of attention inside the PC are the four tubes connecting the CPU block to the other parts of the liquid-cooling loop, immediately showcasing why this PC is different from others. Watching the liquid spin up and continue to move through the tubes while you’re working or gaming is a delight.

Each of the three plastic side panels is strung with a diffused layer of RGB lighting, cycling through the spectrum of colors available along with the sole 120mm fan. Two angled fins at the top provide air channels into the PC, which are lit up with two light strips shining with a diffused teal color. If rainbow puke isn’t for you — I personally dig the look — I have bad news; you can’t adjust the RGB lighting or the top light strip. What you see is what you get.

Branding is slapped on nearly every surface on this thing, too. You have the Tecno logo on the top, both sides, front, and even on the power button, and that’s ignoring the G1 badges on each side of the case. The look comes together, so I don’t think the branding is distracting, but it’s clear Tecno wants everyone who sees this PC to know where it came from.

Outside of design, the port selection here is unmatched, even by full-sized towers. There are more ports here than what you’ll find on the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i — a midtower PC with a motherboard similar to a full ATX design. Up front, you get four USB-A ports, split evenly between USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Gen 1, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the left, you get a full-size SD card reader. Around the back, you get two 10Gbps Type-C ports with support for DisplayPort Alt mode, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 Type-A port, and an Oculink connection for external GPUs.

You also get two HDMI ports, but they’re only HDMI 2.0. Considering there isn’t a DisplayPort connection to fall back on, the lack of HDMI 2.1 really stings here. Still, the massive array of ports has me green with envy as I look at the pitiful port selection on my mini-ITX PC.

Driver troubles

I really do love the look and performance of the Tecno Megamini G1, and I’d have to, because there’s no way I’d put up with the hassle this desktop put me through otherwise. You shouldn’t have to go through what I did when trying to set up this PC. I suspect driver work is ongoing, and hopefully everything will be ironed out before the PC launches in November. I still want to make you aware of the state of the drivers for this PC as it stands now.

Out of the box, the PC would lock itself to 768p, even after I installed every graphics driver and Windows update. After an hour or two of troubleshooting, I decided a fresh Windows 11 install would be best — it certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve reinstalled Windows — and considering the complete lack of bundled software, I wasn’t worried about disturbing the out of box experience.

That was a mistake. After going through the Windows installation process half a dozen times, I finally gave up on getting everything working properly. In particular, the PC doesn’t recognize the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth card, nor the audio card, so Windows wasn’t able to grab drivers for those devices. Tecno sent over a driver package, and everything is working properly now.

Elsewhere, I’m not as confident in fixes. There’s a complete lack of software on the system, so you can’t adjust your fan curve or change power modes. Thankfully, the power modes in Windows still work. In addition, the display on the front of the device doesn’t work most of the time. It would pick up proper CPU and GPU utilization, but it has consistently said I’m using 11% of 70GB of RAM since I unboxed the device. Obviously that’s wrong. And, looking at some other reviews of the Megamini G1, it looks like I’m not alone in that issue.

Tecno says that it’s working on updates for some of these issues now. For instance, you can change power modes by pressing the F7 key during startup, but it plans on furthering optimizing power modes as the release nears. In an email sent to me, Tecno said the following: “The final products on the market will come fully optimized, requiring no manual updates from consumers and users.”

Performance

This is a desktop using laptop components, so comparisons aren’t easy to make when looking at performance. I had originally planned on throwing in the ROG Nuc 970 and a few gaming laptops, but after seeing the performance of the Megamini G1, the more accurate comparison is to full-sized desktops.

A quick look at my productivity benchmarks above shows why. Although the Megamini G1 isn’t leading everywhere, it competes surprisingly well against the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i and HP Omen 40L, both of which are using desktop-class components in midtower cases. The Megamini G1 wins in CPU performance in Geekbench 6, and it trades blows in Cinebench R24. In real applications, it managed to beat both the Lenovo and Asus machines in Premiere Pro, despite packing weaker hardware on paper.

If you needed any convincing that thermals play a significant role in performance, the Megamini G1 is a testament to that fact. The CPU performance on display here punches far above its weight class, matching midrange desktop components and often beating newer, more powerful Intel mobile CPUs. That’s the power of liquid cooling.

This is a gaming desktop, though, and gaming isn’t as rosy. You can get a taste of that in 3DMark below. The Megamini G1 is clearly behind the ROG Nuc 970, and it takes a beating compared to the desktop-class RTX 4060 Ti inside the Omen 40L. That shouldn’t come as a shock. The specs of the Megamini G1 are behind both of the other machines, so it makes sense that it would trail.

Similarly, in actual games, the Megamini G1 is behind, but not by much. It’s shockingly close to the RTX 4070 mobile GPU inside the Asus ROG Nuc 970, and it even manages to get close to a desktop RTX 4060 in the Legion Tower 5i. The clear winner here is the Omen 40L, but the fact that the Megamini G1 is even in the same conversation is a testament to how much performance it’s able to squeeze out of the hardware inside.

This is a powerful PC, and it’s surprisingly quiet given how much performance it’s able to pump out. However, there is no way to control the fan, so you’ll have to settle for the machine getting louder as you throw more demanding workloads at it. A third-party app like Fan Control can help you there.

I’ll take higher fan noise for the performance and thermals here, though. Even in a multi-core run of Cinebench R24, the CPU hovered around 60 degrees Celsius, allowing it to actually exceed its maximum boost clock speed — my measurement tools reports 104% utilization. It might be easy to stick your nose up at liquid cooling in mobile devices like the Lenovo Legion 9i, but the results don’t lie here. The Megamini G1 is absolutely faster because of its cooling solution.

A powerful novelty

The Megamini G1 is a novelty. It’s an expensive novelty, sure, but a novelty nonetheless. It’s small, it’s splattered with RGB, and aspects like software support take a back seat to aesthetics. What’s shocking is that the device still manages to deliver on performance, often delivering results that are far above what the hardware inside would suggest.

Although the price is high, it’s not out of line with other small form factor options, and even more so considering the exotic cooling solution. My main reservations come down to software support and the HDMI 2.0 ports. This definitely calls for HDMI 2.1 in a time when upscaling and frame generation are so prevalent, and the complete lack of software sticks out when you’re dealing with mobile components.

If don’t mind tinkering with tech, the Megamini G1 is remarkable. For everyone else, it’s good for a look, but not as a daily companion.