Blackview MP60 Mini PC: Expandable Storage but Unremarkable Performance

A stylish and competent mini PC for remote working and light office tasks, but abandon all hope of gaming.

The Blackview MP60 excels as an office PC; perhaps if you've been thrust into remote working a few days a week and only need a little web browsing and Microsoft Teams. It's cheap, goes into your bag without trouble, and you can take your office on the move.

It isn't going to run any 3D games or high-performance applications like Adobe Premiere, but it'll handle Word just fine, and the safety of Windows 11 Pro will protect you. If you grab it on sale for $150, it's excellent value. If the price has already gone up to $250-400 by the time you read this, I’d probably think twice.

The Blackview MP60 excels as an office PC; perhaps if you've been thrust into remote working a few days a week and only need a little web browsing and Microsoft Teams. It's cheap, goes into your bag without trouble, and you can take your office on the move.

It isn't going to run any 3D games or high-performance applications like Adobe Premiere, but it'll handle Word just fine, and the safety of Windows 11 Pro will protect you. If you grab it on sale for $150, it's excellent value. If the price has already gone up to $250-400 by the time you read this, I’d probably think twice.

The Blackview MP60 excels as an office PC; perhaps if you've been thrust into remote working a few days a week and only need a little web browsing and Microsoft Teams. It's cheap, goes into your bag without trouble, and you can take your office on the move.

It isn't going to run any 3D games or high-performance applications like Adobe Premiere, but it'll handle Word just fine, and the safety of Windows 11 Pro will protect you. If you grab it on sale for $150, it's excellent value. If the price has already gone up to $250-400 by the time you read this, I’d probably think twice.

Known for its rugged smartphones, the MP60 is Blackview's first attempt at a Mini PC—and it's a brave one. Unlike most Mini PCs, it has some design character—but is that what you want from a Mini PC?

The Blackview MP60 is available for as little as $150 at the time of writing, but the price goes up on January 9th, so be quick. While the performance is much as you’d expect from a budget Mini PC, that price is more in line with a Raspberry Pi.

Inside the box is the MP60 Mini PC itself, a 12v 2.5 A DC power adapter (30W), a short HDMI cable, and a VESA mounting bracket should you wish to mount this to the back of a monitor. That's it.

The MP60 has a footprint of five inches square with heavily beveled corners and sits two inches high out of the box (128 x 128 x 52mm). However, the bottom three-quarters of an inch is an expansion bay that can be removed should you not require additional storage capacity.

A short way down from the top of the device, the case splits open to reveal a copper heat sink that runs all around. It's not passively cooled, as an internal fan feeds into this copper fin, but it helps to keep the machine running cool at 35C maximum during use. While not as quiet as a passive system, I haven't found the fan noise noticeable, and Blackview claims a maximum volume of just 38dB.

This active cooling section also lights up blue when the machine is awake and red when asleep. There's no obvious way to disable the LEDs with modifying the hardware, but it's a nice design flourish that looks good on your desk and gives immediate feedback on the status.

Weighing just 460g (16.2oz), throwing the MP60 in your bag is easy if you need to move offices. In the age of flexible working, that's a huge benefit if you can't afford the expense of a laptop, but do have peripherals you can hot-desk with.

The case is made of matte black plastic, which loves fingerprints.

On the right-hand side of the Blackview Mini PC, you’ll find two USB 3.1 ports, and one USB 2.0, plus the power button.

The DC power port, another USB 2.0, two HDMI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a combined headphone and microphone TRRS port, and a Kensington lock slot, can be found on the rear.

That's a good I/O selection that should be ample for most users and even allows for a dual 4K monitor setup.

In terms of specs, the Blackview MP60 features an Intel Jasper Lake N5095 running at 2GHz with a turbo of 2.9GHz. There are two variants of the MP60, featuring 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage, or 16GB/512GB. We were sent the larger of the two for testing.

If that's not enough storage, you can expand this easily with the expansion base attached, which can accommodate a 2.5-inch SATA HDD or SSD. If not required, you can remove this expansion case and reduce the height of the MP60 even further.

The MP60 has a recommended retail price of $250 for the 8/256GB, and $400 for the 16/512GB version. Using the on-page Amazon coupon you can currently grab the former for $150.

The Jasper Lake N5095 is a budget CPU released in early 2021, and you should set your expectations accordingly. The Jasper Lake N51095 supersedes this, with significantly improved visual performance, while using 5W less power (10W vs 15W of the N5095). Overall performance is roughly equivalent to a Core i5-4258U desktop-class CPU. You aren't going to get a fantastic performance from this.

As can be seen from testing, it will barely run any modern games. But it's fine for streaming HD media, office work, web browsing, and other day-to-day light usage. You can also stream games, and I tested with both Steam Streaming and Remote Play from a PlayStation 5.

Upon first boot, you'll be asked to create an account. This is managed locally, since you won't have internet access yet. This feels like a cut-down version of the usual Windows first-time setup wizard in that it's a lot sleeker and asks far fewer intrusive questions. I suspect the majority of Windows setup is imaged at the factory, which might be a security concern for some. A full Windows reset should alleviate any concerns.

The first thing you'll see upon boot-up is a screen of broken icons. Clicking almost anything results in errors because you're not connected to the internet yet, so make sure you do that first.

As soon as you enter your Wi-Fi details or hook up your Ethernet cable, those missing icons magically transform into a selection of crapware like Tiktok, Prime Video, and WhatsApp. They're only advertisements, though: clicking on them will initiate an app download. You can also boot up Microsoft Edge at this point and use it to download a better browser.

The Blackview Mini PC works well for light usage, office tasks, and daily web browsing. The Windows 11 UI is snappy, apps load quickly, and it feels like a modern Windows PC. You'll find the aforementioned apps like TikTok run well.

While HD content played natively with ease, I couldn't stream HEVC or AV1 4K content; it just stuttered and lagged behind the audio. This isn't surprising, however; most of the streaming Android sticks in my household can't handle HEVC either.

To test out a variety of office tasks, I used PCMark10, which scored as follows (for comparison, I've included the Geekom Mini Air scores in brackets, which features the same CPU)

Next up, I used 3DMark TimeSpy for an idea of graphical performance. I wasn't expecting much here, and sure enough, the GPU is about as underpowered as it can be while still being functional, scoring a mere 211 (compromising 184 for the graphics and 1442 for the CPU). So, abandon all hope of even light 1080p 3D gaming on this. Older, casual games should work fine at 720p as long as you're willing to run at the lowest possible graphical settings.

PS5 Remote Play worked, but it was still slightly laggy, even over the Gigabit LAN. Again, fine for casual gaming, but it left me somewhere in the middle of the Call of Duty scorecard (which, I assure you, isn't normal).

BrowserBench gives a good idea of how performance will be for the most common use of this kind of mini PC, and the results are reasonable:

I repeated the MotionMark test in Microsoft Edge and got the same result, so that may be a bug with Windows 11. The Speedometer rating compares favorably to the Aerofara Aero 2 Pro mini PC—which is surprising, considering that it runs the newer N5105. As expected, neither comes close to the performance an M1 Mac Mini.

Finally, Cinebech R23 showed a multi-core of 1797, and single core 610. This is disappointing, but it still compares favorably against the 1125 and 502 of theGeekom Mini Air 11. This is no doubt helped by our test model having double the RAM. And again, even during this heavy testing, the Blackview MP60 remained almost completely silent.

The closest competition is the Geekom Mini Air 11, which we reviewed a few months ago, and uses the same N5095 CPU. It features similar specs, with only a slightly smaller form factor. Performance is roughly on par, as is the price, with the Mini Air 11 featuring an on-page Amazon coupon that brings the price closer to $180 at the time of writing. There's almost nothing between them other than the design and LEDs.

If you want better performance from under $200, the cheapest Mini PC to feature the more efficient and faster Jasper Lake N5105 is the Beeline U59 Pro. It has a similar storage capacity, 8GB RAM, and is a similar size at just under five inches square. Again, the design is rather boring compared to the Blackview.

You can find smaller devices than the Blackview MP60, even more powerful ones, if you’re willing to pay over $300. Given that the performance of the MP60 isn't particularly great, I can only guess that Blackview opted for this design mainly for aesthetic reasons. It's a somewhat bizarre design choice, given that most people buy a Mini PC to hide them on the back of a monitor or for embedded applications. The MP60 wants to sit proudly on your desktop, and if that's what you want from a Mini PC, then by all means, go for it. At least you won't mistake your place in a hot-desking environment.

The other unique selling point is the absurdly low price—at the time of writing, anyway. At $150, it's closer to current Raspberry Pi prices, and if you want to compare performance there, it's no competition. Again, as a cheap machine to play around with or try out some programming, the MP60 excels.

I can't recommend the Blackview MP60 as the basis of a media center though; I’ve had a better experience with a $50 streaming stick when it comes to 4K or HEVC-encoded movies. You'd get a better media center experience with a Roku or Google Chromecast Ultra if you only need it for a home theater.

Nor can I recommend the Blackview MP60 as a "my first gaming PC" for the child in your life; the Intel UHD graphics chipset is about as weak as it gets, and they'll be disappointed in the framerates unless running on the lowest of low settings.

But the Blackview MP60 does excel as an office PC; perhaps if you've been thrust into remote working a few days a week and only need a little web browsing and Microsoft Teams. It's cheap, goes into your bag without trouble, and you can take your office on the move.

The Blackview MP60 isn't going to run any high-performance applications like Adobe Premiere, but it'll handle Word just fine, and the safety of Windows 11 Pro will protect you. At $150, it's excellent value. If the price has already gone up to $250-400 by the time you read this, I’d probably think twice.

James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.