Getting a new computer usually means clearing desk space for a bulky tower or spending a significant amount on a laptop. The market has shifted, though. Efficient, pocket-sized machines are flooding in from China, promising to handle your daily workload without making a sound or denting your wallet. I’ve been testing the SOAYAN MN-N5, a tiny silver box that fits in the palm of my hand but claims to be a full-fledged PC.
It’s running the newer Intel N150 processor, a chip that’s trying to dethrone the popular N100 as the budget king. You can typically find this unit available on Amazon for around $200, depending on the current sale. That price gets you 12GB of fast DDR5 RAM and decent storage, which sounds almost too good to be true. I wanted to see if this thing is actually a daily driver or just another piece of low-power e-waste, so I plugged it in to find out.
Design & Connectivity
Holding the SOAYAN MN-N5 feels a bit like holding a deck of cards rather than a computer. It weighs in at a featherlight 191 grams and takes up a tiny 9-by-9 centimeter footprint on the desk. The silver chassis looks clean and surprisingly premium for the price, but it’s the way the manufacturer managed the input and output layout that really catches your eye. They utilized practically every available surface to cram in connectivity.
You’ll find two USB-C ports sitting right next to the power button on the front. These are great for quick data transfers, though you should note that they don’t support power delivery, so you’re still tied to the barrel-jack wall adapter. To keep the device as compact as possible, three USB-A ports were pushed to the left side of the case. I actually appreciate this move; these are fast USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and having them on the side makes it easy to plug in flash drives without fumbling around the back.
The rear panel is packed tight. You get two HDMI 2.0 ports capable of 4K output, which frames a DisplayPort 1.4, allowing for a triple-monitor setup if you really need the screen real estate. The standout feature here, however, is the dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. Seeing two LAN connections on a consumer-grade mini PC is a rarity, and it immediately makes this box a contender for soft-router or home lab projects. I also have to give credit for placing the 3.5mm headphone jack on the back. It keeps your setup looking much cleaner if you leave speakers plugged in permanently.
There is one massive design fail we have to address. Flip the unit over, and you won’t find any rubber feet. It’s just a smooth metal plate with exposed screws. This means the computer has zero grip. The moment you plug in a stiff HDMI cable, the tension alone is enough to spin the entire PC around on your desk. You are definitely going to need to buy some sticky rubber pads yourself, or this thing will slide around like it’s on ice. Additionally, despite being marketed for schools, there is no Kensington lock slot, so securing it in a public space is going to be a challenge.
Performance & Daily Use
The heart of this little machine is the Intel N150, a quad-core chip designed strictly for efficiency rather than raw horsepower. It operates with a super low 6W TDP, which usually signals a sluggish experience, but the SOAYAN MN-N5 manages to punch above its weight class. A huge part of this performance boost comes from the memory. While many budget mini PCs handicap themselves with 8GB of RAM, this unit comes with 12GB of LPDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz. That extra breathing room makes a noticeable difference in how snappy Windows 11 feels.
I threw my typical office workload at it to see where it would break. Opening multiple browser tabs, checking emails, and editing documents in LibreOffice felt smooth. You won’t see the dreaded “buffering” cursor or major stutters that often plague entry-level hardware. It handles the basics without complaining, and switching between apps is quick enough that you aren’t constantly waiting on the system to catch up.
The integrated Intel UHD Graphics do a solid job with media consumption. The chip features hardware decoding for most modern video codecs, meaning you can watch high-resolution YouTube videos or stream 4K content from Netflix without dropping frames. It’s actually quite a capable little media center. I hooked it up to a 4K TV, and it delivered a crisp picture without sending the fans into overdrive.
Gaming is where you need to manage your expectations. I fired up Asphalt 9 to test the graphical limits. The game ran, and the system automatically adjusted the graphics settings to accommodate the hardware, but it wasn’t exactly a buttery smooth experience. You are looking at frame rates hovering around 17 to 20 FPS in busier scenes. It’s playable if you aren’t picky, but it certainly isn’t competitive.
This machine is much happier running lighter fare. Classic titles like Monkey Island or simple games like Solitaire run perfectly. If you are into retro gaming, this is a fantastic emulation box for older consoles up to the PS1 era. For modern AAA titles, your best bet is cloud gaming. Since the Wi-Fi and video decoding are solid, services like Xbox Cloud Gaming or GeForce Now turn this low-power box into a portal for high-end gaming, provided your internet connection is up to the task.
Throughout all my testing, the thermal management impressed me. The fan is whisper-quiet even under load. You won’t have a jet engine sounding off on your desk while you’re trying to work. It stays cool, efficient, and unobtrusive, which is exactly what you want from a PC of this size.
Benchmarks & Hard Numbers
I always like to back up my real-world experience with some synthetic tests just to see what the silicon is actually doing. Since the Intel N150 is a relatively new refresh of the N100, I was curious to see if the numbers justified the model name change.
I started with PCMark 10 to simulate a standard office day—spreadsheets, video calls, and web browsing. The SOAYAN MN-N5 posted a score of 2,792. That puts it comfortably in the “Productivity” bracket. It handles the “Essentials” tests (like app startup and web browsing) with scores over 5,000, which aligns perfectly with my actual experience: snappy for the basics, but it hits a ceiling if you try to render video or compile large codebases.
Next, I looked at the storage. The 512GB SSD is replaceable, but out of the box, CrystalDiskMark showed sequential read speeds of 519 MB/s and write speeds of 372 MB/s. These numbers tell us immediately that the M.2 slot is running on the SATA interface, not the faster NVMe (PCIe) standard. For a budget machine, this is acceptable—Windows still boots in seconds and apps load quickly—but don’t expect the blistering transfer speeds you get from higher-end drives.
For the graphical torture test, I ran 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light. The result was a score of 299, with an average frame rate of just 2.22 FPS. That sounds catastrophic, but it’s exactly what I expected. It confirms that the integrated GPU is strictly for video decoding and displaying your desktop, not for pushing polygons in 3D environments.
Comparing this to the older Intel N100, the gains are marginal but present. The N150 offers slightly higher turbo frequencies, and combined with that 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, it feels more stable under multitasking loads than its 8GB predecessors. The numbers prove it’s a highly efficient office worker, just not a heavy lifter.
Power Consumption & Efficiency
Efficiency is really the secret weapon of the Intel N150 processor. While high-end desktop chips are chugging power to squeeze out every last frame, this little chip is designed to sip electricity. Intel rates the TDP (Thermal Design Power) at just 6 watts, which sounds incredibly low on paper, so I hooked it up to a power station with a real-time wattage display to see what it actually pulls from the wall.
I ran the Asphalt 9 gaming test again to force the system into a “worst-case scenario,” pushing both the CPU and the integrated graphics as hard as they could go. Even under this full load, the power draw peaked at just 17 to 18 watts. To put that in perspective, a typical gaming desktop can easily pull 100 watts just sitting on the Windows desktop doing absolutely nothing.
During lighter tasks like writing this article or browsing the web, the consumption drops significantly lower. This incredible efficiency changes how you can use the computer. You don’t need to worry about turning it off at night. You can leave it running 24/7 as a media server or a network controller without noticing a spike in your electricity bill. It generates very little heat, which explains why the fan rarely needs to spin up, keeping the entire operation cool and wallet-friendly.
Additional Insight: Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Extremely compact and lightweight.
- Generous port selection (Dual LAN is a win).
- Low power consumption (great for always-on tasks).
- Supports Linux (Ubuntu tested).
Cons:
- No rubber feet (slides on desk).
- No Kensington lock (risky for public schools/libraries).
- Wi-Fi is WiFi 5 (not the newer WiFi 6).
- Audio jack is on the back (awkward for wired headphones).
Conclusion
The SOAYAN MN-N5 is a fascinating little gadget that proves just how far entry-level computing has come. It’s miles ahead of the sluggish budget machines we used to deal with a few years ago. While the move from the Intel N100 to the N150 isn’t a revolutionary leap in speed, the inclusion of 12GB of fast RAM makes this system feel surprisingly capable for real-world work.
At a price point hovering around $200, the value proposition is hard to beat. You get a genuine Windows 11 Pro machine that handles office tasks, 4K streaming, and retro gaming without making a sound or heating up your room. The addition of dual Gigabit LAN ports pushes it from a simple “cheap PC” to a genuinely useful tool for home lab enthusiasts and tinkerers.
It isn’t perfect, of course. The lack of rubber feet is an annoying oversight you’ll have to fix yourself, and you definitely shouldn’t buy this expecting to play modern shooter games. But if you need a reliable media center, a silent office computer, or a low-power home server, this tiny box delivers exactly what it promises.
I’m curious to hear how you would put a machine like this to work. Would you mount it behind a monitor for a clean student setup, or stick it in a closet to run your home network?
