Beelink EQR6 review: It's an office-class Ryzen 9 6900HX mini PC with 24GB memory

Beelink is back with another Mini PC for us to test, this time we have the EQR6, which is a bit of a mouthful in name, anyway it is an AMD office-class mini PC.

The Beelink EQR6 comes in three different configurations (listed below). Our configuration is powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 (Zen 3+) 6900HX, which came out in January 2022, and has a base clock of 4.10 GHz and a Turbo Boost of 4.90 GHz, invoking up to a max of 45W with its configurable TDP.

Below are its full specifications, and bold indicates our configuration.

The only difference between the variants are the different AMD CPUs, 16- or 24GB (2x 12GB) of DDR5 4800MT/s RAM, and a 500GB or 1TB M.2 SSD. In each, a Windows 11 Pro license is also pre-loaded with Windows 24H2.

However, there are a total six SQUs for the EQR as indicated in the above image; aside from the three different AMD processors, it can be purchased with 16- or 24GB memory, and 500GB or 1TB SSD, except for the base 6600H version which apparently only has the option for a 500GB SSD.

Once you remove the EQ branded sleeve and take the cover off the box, you are greeted with the EQR6 sitting in a plastic mold, above a Hello card and User Manual that has guidance on all of the controls, and how to access the EQR6 to swap out, or add an additional M.2 SSD or memory, and safety information in several European languages. Below that there's another compartment that contains the power lead, and HDMI cable.

As you can see in the above pic, it's also kind of cute they included guidance on the plastic film covering on how to setup Windows 11 without having to login to a Microsoft ID, even if they do not mention the OS by name.

What’s In The Box

• 1 x EQR6 Mini PC
• 1 x Power Adapter
• 1 x HDMI Cable
• 1 x User Manual and Thank you card

In short, you have everything you need to get started.

Design

The exterior is completely made from plastic, and aside from the top, which is textured with the Beelink logo in the middle, the sides are completely smooth. It's not a fingerprint magnet either. Beelink calls it "Dual-Color Molding Technology Injection-Molded Bottom Case", it's essentially a unibody design with a bottom plate.

All of the edges are rounded off, so there are no sharp edges, and it definitely has a sturdy feel to it. Beelink does not provide product dimensions or weight on the official product page, however the EQR6 is quite light at 534 grams, so it won't weigh you down when carrying it from place to place.

The front of the EQR6 includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one is Type-A, and the other Type-C, and they are both data only, but it is still an option I prefer to see as we move to a world mainly consisting of Type-C connectors. There's also an audio jack, and clear CMOS pinhole. Overall it looks quite tidy.

It's also not possible to connect a screen on the front, which is a bit of an inconvenience.

For the "MSC 2.0" cooling, the bottom plate allows for intake, and the heat is expelled out the back of the EQR6.

I can confirm the EQR6 generally did not get even warm, beyond a bit of warmth on the rear of the Mini PC during the Cinebench 2024 test, and barely made any noise that I could hear.

As far as looks go, it is completely gray, and thanks to the shell being made from one piece of plastic, there are no joints to be seen on the sides or up top where you would normally find a "lid" that can be removed to access the internals. The top Beelink logo is a nice touch too, it looks decent enough, even if gray is not my favorite color.

I feel like a special mention is needed for the front of the EQR6 as well, I mentioned earlier that I find the front tidy, which pales in comparison to my findings with the SER6 Max which I reviewed almost a year ago to the day. You may remember my critique on the ugly CLR CMOS, and extreme brightly lit power button. Although the buttons looks almost the same on both mini PCs, the lighting on the EQR6 has moved to a small LED to the right of the power button. It's definitely a step up in aesthetics, considering this is what is facing the user.

Accessing the EQR6 is pretty simple, but a bit fiddly. First of all you have to remove the four tiny rubber feet, which require a small flat head screwdriver to prise them out. Under that you will find four tiny screws. Upon removing the four screws, you can then detach the plastic cover, which exposes access to the memory and the stacked M.2 slots.

The preinstalled Crucial P3 Plus is located in the bottom M.2 connector, to access that, the top M.2 slot cover must be removed with four screws and then you can carefully lift up the top M.2 connector, making sure not to damage the ribbon cable. It's a bit fiddly to put it all back as the connector side of the M.2 slot must also be pushed into the side in order to properly align with the screws.

The forth image above shows the position of the power supply jumper, which by default is set to supply power to the USB ports when the EQR6 is switched off, but connected to power. You can set the jumper to pins 1, and 2 to block power being supplied to the USB ports when the machine is switched off.

As you can see the 85W PSU is situated inside the mini PC rather than as a brick outside the unit.

Usage

BIOS

The EQR6 uses an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends, which can be fully utilized to manage the Beelink Mini PC.

WINDOWS

On first boot, I was prompted to complete the setup of Windows 11 Pro. After the setup was completed, I was surprised to find that I was on build 26100.863, which is the in June released Windows 11 24H2 update (KB5039239) specific to CoPilot+ PCs. I only had to install a few updates that included the August 2024 Patch Tuesday update (KB5041571). My contact confirmed to me that 24H2 was intentionally being loaded on the EQR6, which means you are getting the very latest version of Windows 11. Beelink does not include any bloatware in their PCs, so that is always a bonus.

Following on from my malware test of AceMagic, Beelink, and Geekom Mini PCs, I felt it was only right to at least ensure Microsoft Defender was updated and then run a Full Scan and after that an "Offline scan", which restarts the computer and scans the entire computer for rootkits or persistent malware before Windows loads. I am pleased to say that our EQR6 came back clean. But don't take my word for it, always check your newly bought pre-loaded PCs for malware.

The EQR6 supports dual screens 4K @ 60Hz through the two HDMI 2.0b ports. Unfortunately, there's no support for connecting a screen on the front Type-C port, as that is data-only.

Regarding connectivity, from left to right there are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two HDMI 2.0b ports, one USB 2.0 port, two RJ45 1000 GbE Ethernet ports, and an AC port for power on the back. Around the front, there are two more USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (Type A and Type-C), a port for a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a pin hole reset CMOS button. I linked my Edifier 360DB over Bluetooth v5.2, and I did not experience any noticeable audio delays.

As you can see from the above images, there's no Kensington lock option here, which is a shame.

Benchmarks

Before I started running benchmarks, I ensured that Windows 11 and drivers were up to date. At the time of testing, the EQR6 was running Windows 11 Professional 24H2 build 26100.1457, and I also upgraded to the latest available AMD Adrenaline drivers (24.8.1 August 2024).

With that out of the way, and because people like that sort of thing, I ran some benchmarks and compared it to my main PC that I built last year.

The reference PC consists of the following (at the time of testing):

• AMD 7950X3D
• ASRock X670E Steel Legend (v1.30 BIOS)
• 64GB DDR5 Kingston Fury Beast RGB 6000MT/s
• WD_Black SN850X 1TB NVMe
• ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB OC Edition (Nvidia driver 551.52)
• Windows 10 22H2 build 19045.4046

For our benchmarks, we used Cinebench 2024, and UL Solutions provided us with Professional (commercial use) licenses for 3DMark, PCMark 10, and Procyon. In addition, Primate Labs Inc provided us with commercial licenses for Geekbench 6 Pro, and Geekbench AI Pro.

3DMark Time Spy tests gaming capability with DX12 graphics performance and 7-Zip for compression and decompression speeds. PCMark tests are a mix of CPU and real-world productivity tests, such as using an office suite, web browsing, light photo/video editing, and making conference calls.

Cinebench 2024 stresses the entire CPU as it is a multi-threaded rendering test. Finally, Geekbench 6 is a synthetic benchmark that is great for a quick look at the potential performance across a wide range of workloads, and Geekbench AI Pro can evaluate AI workload performance.

We were also interested to see what happens in UL's Procyon, which is an Inferencing benchmark meant to test AI and ML performance.

¹ Geekbench 6 was used, previous tests used Geekbench 5
² Cinebench 2024 was used, previous tests used Cinebench 2023

The highest temperature recorded during benchmarking was in Time Spy at 78.3C, which incidentally came out only 156 points lower than the Geekom A6, which includes the same CPU but also launched with an MSRP twice that of the EQR6. I ran the Time Spy test three times and recorded the highest score.

Time Spy was not the only place where the EQR6 under-performed than the A6 despite both mini PCs having the same 6900HX APU. It failed to match in the PCMark Extended test as well, which again, implies that for some reason the iGP (integrated graphics processor) on the EQR6 is not performing the same as the A6.

Curiously, the EQR6 does great on the vanilla PCMark 10 benchmark which does not include the gaming section implying that the CPU side on this mini PC is doing a good job.

It must be pointed out that Beelink markets the EQR6 as more of an office Mini PC than one you can game on, so it is faithful in that regard.

We tested browsing performance using Speedometer 3.0. Speedometer provides a value and also a range showing the highest and lowest scores as indicated in the chart above by the two scores for each browser. It's clear to see that it was a toss-up between Firefox and Chrome.

I also tested the SSD's capability using AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5.

The Crucial P3 Plus 3D NAND drive here is not setting the world alight, in fact compared to PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 drives we've tested in other mini PCs it under-performs by quite a bit, but it's a relatively cheap upgrade to put in something better/faster.

Despite running all of the above benchmark tests, the EQR6 did not get even warm to the touch, and there were no annoying noises coming from the single fan that cooled the unit.

Conclusion

The EQR6 isn't a gaming PC. You will not be able to enjoy graphically intensive games on it. Still, it is suited as something like an office workstation with a mixture of light gaming, or perhaps a good solution for a student or office worker without a permanent desk, affording the ability to pack this away after every use. This thing also doesn't take up much room in your bag if you need to move it from place to place.

I used this for a few days viewing YouTube videos, and browsing the web, and found it to be quite snappy. Windows 11 does not lag on this machine, which is really the lowest expectation you should have for any computer. If you keep reality in check with what this mini PC is intended for, you won;t be let down.

When you're spending a few hundred dollars to replace the job of a full-sized PC, you're going to want it to replicate as much of the capability as possible.

Coupon

It's available right now for preorder on the official website, or on Amazon for $399 once you apply the $80 off in-page coupon, which certainly sweetens the deal a bit. The EQR6 starts shipping from September 16.

For me, this ticks a lot of boxes. It has both Type A and Type-C on the front, along with DDR5 memory, but it must lose a point for going with 1.0 Gbit LAN in a world that has mostly moved to including 2.5GbE Ethernet ports by default. It would have even been nice if they went with a 1000/2500 option like you can find on most modern motherboards these days. The price for the most expensive EQR6 variant also seems to be sensible at the discounted $399 that you can find on Amazon.

This is a solid office or study Mini PC that will also let you do some light gaming on.

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