MINISFORUM TL50

The Minisforum TL50 takes its name from Tiger Lake and therefore embeds a Core i5-1135G7. It remains as compact as ever with an identical width and depth of 14.96 cm and 5.5 cm thickness. A very compact format, quite light with 603 grams and which will not take up space on your desk or hung in VESA behind a screen.

The interest of the Minisforum TL50 comes from the switch to Intel Xe graphics chipset in addition to the overall performance of its Core i5 processor. The machine also supports DDR4-3200, PCIe 4.0 but also Thunderbolt 4.0.

For this model, the brand made some specific choices. I’m not sure if they will suit everyone, but they are interesting. The RAM for example, usually mounted on SoDIMM slots, is here soldered to the motherboard. 12 GB of LPDDR4-3200 are thus delivered by default but without the possibility to upgrade them. 12 GB will be enough for many users, but we lose the possibility to modify it. On the other hand, the storage is interesting with an Intel Optane compatible M.2 PCIe NVMe 2280 slot and no less than two 2.5″ SATA 3.0 slots. So one could choose to mount three storage units on the device or increase the swap performance with an Optane cache system.

The rest of the device is more classic in the brand’s range, we find a M.2 2230 slot that embeds a Wifi51 and Bluetooth 5.0 module and the usual connectivity: Three video outputs in total with an HDMI 2.0, a DisplayPort and the USB Type-C port of Thunderbolt 4.0. USB Type-C port offering obviously all the sides of the format: Data, Power Delivery, Ethernet. Two Ethernet 2.5 Gigabit ports are also present, two USB 2.0 Type-A and, finally, four USB 3.0 Gen1 Type-A ports.

The brand is going to release the Minisforum TL50 in Japan in a particular marketing mode that seems to work well there. It is not really a participative financing but rather a pre-order with advantages linked to the number of interested customers. If everyone will reserve a machine like a normal customer, the content of this one will evolve according to the volume of the pre-orders. Thus the brand will first extend its warranty and then offer rewards with a switch from Windows 10 standard to a pro version, the use of a PCIe NVMe SSD from Kingston, the change from DDR4 3200 to DDR4 3733 MHz, the addition of other options that can go up to a switch to a Wifi6 module. To tell the truth, considering the options put forward, I doubt that the product does not come out directly like this.

The Minisforum are systematically delivered as Kingston products and the price difference between the Windows licenses as well as between the Wifi5 and 6 modules are minimal. The whole pre-order incentive system is based on very low tiers. I assume that the Minisforum TL50 will be released by default in Wifi6, running Windows 10 Pro and with all the benefits listed in its pre-order.