The £290 ARM Windows Mini PC That Actually Makes Sense

Windows on ARM has spent years being the answer to a question nobody asked. Cheap mini PCs, meanwhile, usually cut the one corner that matters: expandability. So when the Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini 01Q8X10 dropped to £290 (it normally sits around £400), I bought one to find out whether the two problems cancel each other out.

Short version: this is the first ARM Windows desktop I'd actually recommend to normal people — with a couple of caveats you should know before you click buy.

What you get for £290

That second M.2 slot is the headline. Most mini PCs at this price solder everything down or leave you one slot that's already occupied. Here you can drop in another SSD in about ten minutes — I show the full teardown and upgrade in the video, including which screws hide under the feet.

The ARM question

The elephant in the room: it's Windows on ARM, so anything that hasn't been compiled natively runs through emulation. In day-to-day use — browsing, Office, media, remote-admin tools — you genuinely stop noticing. Where you will notice is older x86 utilities, some VPN clients, and anything that ships a kernel driver. If your workflow leans on one specific legacy app, check it works on ARM before ordering.

For the full benchmark and stress-test numbers, watch the video — the thermals surprised me more than the raw scores did.

Who this is for

• A quiet desktop for everyday work — 32GB of RAM at this price is unheard of.
• A homelab node — low power draw, small footprint, and that second slot means real storage.
• Not for you if you need x86 compatibility guarantees or want to game on it.

Links

• Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini on Amazon UK (affiliate link — costs you nothing, helps the channel)
• The SSD I used for the upgrade (affiliate)

Buy once, buy right: at £400 this is a decent machine. At £290 with an empty M.2 slot, it's the best-value ARM desktop I've tested.