Latest Minisforum M2 Pro Mini PC tested: Small size, plays AAA games, sips power

The Minisforum M2 Pro Mini PC officially went on sale in August. ETA Prime has now tested the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H-powered SKU with 32 GB of soldered RAM. The results paint the Minisforum M2 Pro as a compact Mini PC with impressive performance, both in day-to-day use and AAA gaming.

ETA Prime tested the performance of the M2 Pro by setting the Core Ultra X7 358H to the max 65 W TDP. However, the Mini PC is reportedly very conservative when it comes to power consumption. The Minisforum M2 Pro only consumes 61 W during AAA gaming and only hits 73 W at peak consumption. A lower power consumption naturally leads to a lower operating temperature. So, ETA Prime reports that the M2 Pro Mini PC hit an average temperature of 60 C in AAA gaming and only hit a maximum of 75 W.

Moving on to synthetic performance, the Core Ultra X7 358H of the M2 Pro reportedly beats the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 of the Minisforum AI X1 Pro-470 by 6% in Geekbench 7. Both CPUs are neck and neck in the single-core benchmark.

This is exactly what ETA Prime reports. The YouTuber tested Forza Horizon 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, Black Myth: Wukong, and Crimson Desert. Aside from Crimson Desert, where the Arc B390 needs to rely on XeSS Multi-Frame Generation to hit 60+ FPS at 1080p/high, other tested titles easily hit a playable frame rate at 1440p.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440p with a mix of high and medium settings, the Core Ultra X7 358H manages 60+ FPS. The game didn’t need any XeSS to hit this framerate. However, XeSS “Quality” was needed in Forza Horizon 6 to hit 60+ FPS at 1440p/high settings. Similarly, Black Myth: Wukong also needed a 75% XeSS resolution scale to hit an average of 75 FPS at 1440p/high settings.

All in all, the Minisforum M2 Pro Mini PC proves to be a small yet capable PC. It looks quite appealing for folks who want something super portable that is a jack of all trades. Minisforum is currently selling the M2 Pro Mini PC with 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage for $1,439. You can upgrade the storage to a total of 24 TB thanks to three M.2 slots. If you want something cheaper, Minisform has a lot of cheaper Mini PC options on Amazon.