Originally published at woitzik.dev
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After cycling through more mini PCs than I care to admit in my homelab — some running 24/7, others retired after a single disappointing week — I have settled on a clear ranking for 2026. The mini PC market has matured significantly: Intel's N100 still dominates the efficiency tier, AMD's Ryzen mobile chips crush multi-threaded workloads, and even the budget options no longer feel like compromise.
This comparison is based on real deployment experience. My lab runs Proxmox, K3s, Terraform-managed VMs, and local LLM inference. Every machine on this list has been tested under those workloads.
TL;DR — The Picks
