My first experience with a Geekom mini PC was a fairly positive one. The Mini IT13 performed really well in my tests and it's been powering my setup ever since I got it. I was very excited to try the company's A8 model, since AMD's newer Ryzen 8040 series processors have much better integrated graphics.

Unfortunately, the Geekom A8 is a PC that's hard to recommend unless you plan to upgrade its internal hardware, specifically the Wi-Fi card.

About this review: Geekom sent us the A8 for the purposes of this review. The company had no input in its content.

Pricing and availability

The Geekom A8 was launched in May 2024, and it's available through Amazon or by buying from Geekom directly. You may be able to find it at other resellers, too.

Pricing starts at $749 for the configuration with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and a 1TB SSD. The model I received has a Ryzen 9 and a 2TB SSD, and it costs $849 on Amazon, or $899 on Geekom's website (though it's listed as a discount). Through July 10th, you can also save an extra 5% by using the code XDAA8 on Geekom's website, or XDADEGA8 on Amazon.

Design and ports

Tiny and sleek

Right off the bat, I really like how the Geekom A8 looks. It's a basic silver box, but I think that's okay. It looks sleek and it's super compact, even compared to the Mini IT13 I reviewed earlier. That one was larger because it has a slot for a 2.5-inch HDD, but I still like having something so tiny. This is also much smaller than a Mac Mini, measuring under 12cm in width and length. It's slightly taller than a Mac Mini (by about 1mm), but that's nowhere near enough to offset its smaller footprint.

It feels more premium than Geekom Mini IT13, too. The Geekom A8 feels much more solid since its chassis is actually made of metal, whereas that one had an external plastic cover that made it feel cheaper (even if I did like the color).

Plenty of ports to boot

Despite its tiny size, the Geekom A8 still has a ton of ports, pretty much the same as the Mini IT13. That includes two USB Type-A 10Gbps ports on the front, along with a headphone jack.

The bulk of the ports is on the back, though, with a USB4 40Gbps port, a USB-C 10Gbps port, two USB Type-A ports (one at 10Gbps, one at 480Mbps), two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet connection. There's also an SD card slot on the left side of the chassis. It's really impressive how many ports can be shoves into such a tiny body, and I really love being able to connect all my peripherals without any worries.

Since the Geekom A8 does have removable storage and RAM, there's room for upgrades here, though unlike other Geekom models, you have to remove the rubber feet to see the screws to open up the computer. The Mini IT13 had a clever design where the rubber feet were a circumference with the screw in the middle, so it was a bit easier to get into. That being said, the rubber feet do have small inserts that help keep them in place, so you don't have to rely on just glue.

Performance

Wi-Fi performance is extremely finnicky

Let's get this out of the way right now. This PC is barely usable over Wi-Fi if you're not immediately close to the router. It comes with a modem that's identified as a MediaTek MT7922, which seems to be officially known as the Filogic 330 Wi-Fi 6E modem. Looking into this, it seems a few AMD-based PCs include this modem, sometimes also labeled as RZ616, and the internet problems seem to be commonplace.

My initial assumption was that this is simply a bad Wi-Fi card, but as I was about to swap it with the one on my previous mini PC, I realized they have the exact same card, just different processors. It seems like this MediaTek modem doesn't play nice with AMD chips.

My office is across the house from where my router is, and from there, it was incredibly unstable. I got download errors trying to install benchmarks, and when they did work, it was usually at download speeds under 1MB/s, even though my connection goes up to 1Gbps. I got a cheap Wi-Fi USB adapter that's much older (it only supports Wi-Fi 5) and even that was slightly more stable.

And before we blame the distance to the router, look at the comparison above between my laptop and and the Geekom A8, both in my office, running at exactly the same time. I did run the tests a couple more times and things varied a bit, but my laptop was consistently much faster.

Moving closer to my router did help, but even then, at one point I was getting 54Mbps on this PC while my mid-range phone was getting 120Mbps (though in other instances, it did work fine). It's not great.

Otherwise, it's pretty good

It's a shame, too, because aside from the horrendous Wi-Fi performance, this PC works pretty well. The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS is a pretty fast processor, and it handled everything I did on it gracefully. I didn't actually try gaming (even downloading a game would have been a chore here), but benchmarks show pretty high scores. Here's a quick rundown:

Clearly, the Geekom A8 comes out on top across the board compared to the Mini IT13, largely thanks to the powerful integrated GPU. The situation may have been different if Geekom had models with Intel Core Ultra, but as it stands, those aren't available yet, so AMD is the clear winner for performance for now.

It's worth noting that the Geekom A8 also uses a PCIe 4.0 SSD, but it's not a top-tier SSD in terms of speed. Max read speeds topped out just under 5,000MB/s, similar to the Mini IT13. That model seemed to have slightly slower sequential speeds, but faster random performance.

It really is a shame that this hardware is held back by its terrible Wi-Fi chip, as I would have been ecstatic to use it as my daily driver otherwise. Maybe I'll swap out the Wi-Fi card at some point.

Should you buy the Geekom A8?

Your decision when it comes to buying the Geekom A8 is fairly simple. If you need Wi-Fi and you're not close to the router, the answer is no. Unless you're willing to buy a separate Wi-Fi card to put in here (or you already have one), this is simply no good, and I wouldn't recommend anyone get it.

But if you're going to be next to your router or you do have a Wi-Fi card you can swap in, then this is a PC I like a lot. It's tiny, fast, and it has a lot of ports.