Beelink SEi8 Review: Excellent Batocera Mini PC

The Beelink SEi8 is the latest budget mini PC I've tested, and the third Beelink I've reviewed in as many months. So today let's see how it stacks up against its more powerful companions and whether the $350 average price tag is worth it. Bottom line: it's an excellent PC on the Linux and Batocera side, but its Windows performance was mixed.

This was a review unit sent to me from Beelink. All opinions are my own and the company did not see this video before publishing.

Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
02:09 unboxing and impressions
05:50 Windows experience
07:42 PC gaming testing
08:44 Windows emulation testing
12:06 Batocera testing
18:42 summary (likes and dislikes)
20:38 comparison with GTI11 and SER3
22:19 conclusion

Outro song sampled from "Rosetta" by T-120:

Note that this description may contain affiliate links. By clicking on an affiliate link and buying something, I may earn a small commission of the sale at no extra cost to you.

This video is for entertainment and educational purposes only.

#Beelink #MiniPC #Batocera

[Aruneh]

I’m going to need a chart of all these mini PCs soon

[Dadedrums]

I recently got one similiar to this, sane brand and look. I kept their hard disk for Windows and then I plugged a 480GB SSD for being a Batocera dedicated unit. Works awesome and flawless!

[youzernejm]

When you showed the specs and that iris gpu, I was really hopeful for batocera performance. It didn't disappoint.

[ruihanazawa]

Thanks for the review. I found the 8GB+128GB for $150 on Amazon which is perfect considering I just plan on using it for Batocera on microSD.

[SeanScorpion]

I was looking for reviews of the lower spec GK35 and this vid showed up focusing on gaming/emulation which is exactly what I want one of these mini PCs for. I also did NOT know about Batocera and it could very well be a game changer.

[YourWishes]

chill mini-pc unboxing to relax/study to

[eurosoe]

I just tune in now cause you’re awesome. Great tunes too! My 5 year older says he misses the original theme though.

[MarcoLovesgamer]

nice to see xemu in your video. i hope you will continue moving foward! :D

[bjenksful]

I will say if you are looking into purchasing one of these, as mentioned in the video, they randomly go on sale on Amazon so it might be worth watching for a while before purchasing. And it's kind of odd how Beelink does it, they will have more than one listing for the same model/specs at slightly different prices and sometimes one will be marked down and the other not. Not sure what that's about, but I was able to get the i5, 8gb of ram version of this (which is priced around $450) for $350. I also saw the 8gb Ryzen 7 version go on sale for around $360. Right now I see on Amazon the 16gb Ryzen version is marked down $80-90.

Overall, I'm loving it. The small form factor is exactly what I was looking for in my desktop setup. It does everything I need fine as far as my work and daily tasks. I don't game a whole lot but as the video indicates, it does very well. My only complaint right now is that the bluetooth connection doesn't seem to be the strongest as it gets a little shakey with my speaker sometimes, but is fine most of the time. Shouts out to this channel for putting Beelink on my radar.

[EliteCommerceHub]

Im so glad i got myself this for less than $80!
Makes me happy about my purchase seeing this video!! 🎉 thank you! 😅

[icemuckbanggg]

this is pretty good. I could see myself using this for planning and production and research and online shopping emails and social media. Then switch over to the batocera side when I'm ready to game. Cluttered desktop just doesn't look and feel right. Gaming desktop icons are too distracting so switching os for games seems more manageable for me. Seems worth it to me.

[ivancho]

I got a low powered Beelink BT3-X just over 5 years ago for £100 and have been very happy with it. I use it for light office tasks and light emulation. It runs Linux Mint just fine despite only having a Celeron J3355 (only TWO threads!) and 4GB of RAM. This machine has an i3 and 8GB of RAM, but it's 3½ times as much five years later. So inflation sure is running hot for computers at the moment!
I just thought that I'd contrast my experiences. Stay well.

[ThePsychoghost]

What I learned about beelink is that they underpower their mini pcs which would make you think that it sucks but just boot into bios and change the por to whatever the max wattage is from the processor manufacturer.. And if you really want to see a performance bump just put 3200mhz ram and turn on xmp in bios. I did this on the ser3 😊

[trelainshinholster]

So tempted to get this one just for the fact it can do some OG X box titles etc I would not push it to PS3 but looks like Batocera just brings out the best in these mini pcs!

[ab_ria]

Ooo yo that’s a new intro music, sounds pretty good

[fonzitheman]

Whatever PC you are using..
Batocera + PC = Excellent fun.

[RobbGamess]

Jesse eisenburg makes brilliant pc reviews!

[LockeLeon]

We need Alder Lake chips on this NUC type of computers. They are going to be able to do RPCS3, Yuzu and Cemu no problem.

[corymatews]

You can do a lot of things with one of this. I have a beelink U55 I use it to run a plex media server with 4 HDD of 4TB each and I use it to emulate with retropie and block ads with pi hole and downloads with jdownloader and transmission for torrent. You can play AAA games via streaming with Steam Link or NVIDIA geforce now or Xcloud. And you can have a NAS with samba and zerotier one to use it outside home

All running with debian GNU/Linux 😎

[wilmah]

Now that's an intro! Nice jammer!