Acemagic F2A review: Intel Core Ultra AI Mini PC with Wi-Fi 7, a world first?

ACEMAGIC is a brand that has not crossed our desks here at Neowin, that is until recently. Today, we are taking a look at the ACEMAGIC F2A. Our configuration is powered by the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, which came out at the end of 2023, with a (Low Power/Efficient-core) base clock of just 700 MHz and a Max Turbo Frequency of 4.5 GHz, invoking up to a max TDP of 65W. The Ultra 5 is part of the Meteor Lake range announced in September of last year.

Below are its full specifications.

ACEMAGIC has two configurations of the F2A, with the only difference being the more powerful Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, everything else is the same except the price, which is, as of writing, $100 more at $799. Windows 11 Pro is also pre-loaded on the F2A.

Before I started writing this review, the above pricing was $400 more expensive for both SKUs on the official website, so I guess ACEMAGIC had a change of heart for whatever reason, or perhaps due to some other reviews online, which have all said it was priced too expensive. Amazon still has the original pricing but with $300 (for the Ultra 5) and $400 (for the Ultra 7) off coupons.

The packaging is a quite nicely textured cardboard box with a sleeve that contains information about the Mini PC, and around the back, details about the configuration that can be ticked (like color, amount of RAM, and so forth) along with support information (contact details) for the U.K. and Europe.

Once you have the sleeve off and the top of the box is removed, you are then required to open another cardboard cover like a page from a book, which then reveals the Mini PC itself with a box of accessories (listed below) in a velvet-covered cushioning.

What’s In The Box

• 1 x F2A Mini PC
• 1 x Power Adapter
• 1 x HDMI Cable
• 1 x VESA Mounting Bracket & bag of (4) screws
• 1 x User Guide

As you can see in the image below, there's a small VESA mount and a bag of screws, which contain two screws for the VESA mount, and helpfully, there's also two NVMe drive mount screws, you know, the kind that SSD manufacturers never ship with their drives. In any case, you have everything to get started.

Design

The look of it is quite nice, although it is clearly made from plastic with some silver trim around the top and around the power button. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the top is a metal grill, but even the top of the Mini PC is plastic and acts as a vent for cooling. When running some benchmarks, it was evident that there was a lot of air displacement from the top, so it's not a great idea to cover it at all.

All of the edges are rounded off, so there are no sharp edges, and it definitely has a heft to it. The F2A is not among the lightest we've tested at 768 grams (The Geekom A7 is just 450 grams), but even this larger and heavier F2A won't weigh you down when carrying it from place to place.

The front of the F2A includes a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports, along with a 3.5 mm audio jack port. This means you can attach a screen from the front Type-C port that supports both video (up to 4K@60Hz) and power delivery. However, despite the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H supporting up to four screens and HDMI 2.1, the F2A comes with 2x HDMI 2.0b ports and only one Type-C USB port on the front, meaning it's only possible to attach up to three screens.

The manufacturer's website is pretty scarce on specifications. I had to ask my contact if she would send fully detailed specifications to confirm some of the weird omissions, like HDMI 2.0b instead of HDMI 2.1 and the lack of support for up to 4 screens, but I was given a link to a forum post which you can check out here for a more detailed rundown of the specifications.

The F2A includes a laptop-inspired cooling system that cleverly sucks in air through the top and expels warm air through vents on the left and back of the F2A. I can confirm the F2A did not get hot to the touch and barely made any noise that I could hear.

As far as looks go, it is a kind of dark gray, the sleeve indicates (link) that there are three colors: grey, silver, and black. Mine is the latter, although I swear it is dark gray, not black. However, it is not possible to select a color when ordering, maybe ACEMAGIC plans to release it in the additional colors at a later date. I reached out to my contact about this and was told that "currently the F2A mini pc is only available in black color".

There is a "lid" but it is not removable. The whole Mini PC does feel "plasticky" but the silver trims give it a bit of a premium look to the hardware. Up top on the lid are several stickers that can be removed, and the ACEMAGIC logo is printed in the center in a sort of ivory color. It looks fine and is not overbearing.

Accessing the F2A is simple; simply turn it over and unscrew the rubber feet with your fingers (no screwdriver needed!) and then carefully remove the bottom plate by turning it over and giving it a pat from the top, or use a tool to prise the lid free. As you can see from the above images, a small fan is attached to the bottom plate to cool the PCIe 4.0 SSD(s) and DDR5 memory. The cable has been routed with tape, but happily, it is long enough not to get accidentally ripped off.

That's as far as I got with the internals, since other methods are not supported by warranty. Although this is the largest Mini PC I've tested (more on that later), It is not possible to add a 2.5-inch SSD, but the nice compromise was to ensure people can add a second NVMe M.2 SSD very easily.

Usage

On first boot, you are prompted to complete the setup of Windows 11 Pro, meaning you do not have to fork out for a license, which is nice. After the setup was completed, I found that this machine appears to be stuck on Windows 11 22H2, it needed to install KB4023057: Update Health Tools update, a Cumulative Update for .NET Framework (KB5036620), and the April Patch Tuesday update (KB5036893).

There's no extra bloatware installed either, which is good. For good measure, I also ran TotalAV to check for malware, as I have heard reports of several Mini PCs shipping to review sites pre-loaded with malware, but ours was clean.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU supports up to 4 screens at 8K @ 30Hz normally through the USB 4 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (DP 1.4) ports, but here we only have 4K @ 60Hz over the two HDMI 2.0b ports on the back, with the same config (DP 1.4 video output, 4K @ 60Hz, maximum 10Gbps data transfer) around the front with the Type-C USB 3.2 gen 2 port. I was able to confirm that my ZSCMalls 17.3" FullHD 144Hz portable screen works fully through a single USB Type-C cable on the front port.

Regarding connectivity, from left to right, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two HDMI 2.0b ports, an RJ45 2.5 GbE Ethernet port, and a barrel port for power on the back. Around the front, there are a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, along with a 3.5 headphone jack port. For audio output, I linked my Edifier 360DB over Bluetooth, and I did not experience any noticeable audio delays.

As you can see from the images above, there is no SD card reader, but there is a Kensington lock on the back. There's ample venting and you can actually feel the air displacement around the F2A, but it is not noisy.

The above image should show a bit more clearly how large this is relative to other recent Mini PC options. None of the above can be expanded with a 2.5-inch SSD. From left to right are the Beelink SER6 Max, ACEMAGIC F2A, and Geekom A7.

Benchmarks

Before I started running benchmarks, I ensured that Windows 11 and drivers were up to date. At the time of testing, the A7 was running Windows 11 Professional 22H2 build 22621.3447, and I also upgraded to the latest Intel v31.0.101.5382 display drivers, along with the latest Intel NPU driver v32.0.100.2267 (both released in April 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:

• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D (1.30 BIOS)
• ASRock X670E Steel Legend
• 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, UL Solutions provided us with Professional (commercial use) licenses for 3DMark, PCMark 10, and Procyon. In addition, we used a licensed version of Geekbench 5 and Cinebench 2024.

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 stresses the entire CPU as it is a multi-threaded rendering test. Finally, Geekbench is a synthetic benchmark that is great for a quick look at the potential performance across a wide range of workloads.

We were also interested to see what happens in UL's Procyon, which is an Inferencing benchmark meant to test AI and ML performance. We ran the Intel OpenVINO test on the NPU and GPU, and for the CPU we kept it with the Windows ML test so we can compare performance between Intel and AMD.

As you can see, in some ways, the Ultra 5 125H holds up well next to the powerful Ryzen 9 7940HS in the 3DMark Time Spy test and Procyon's AI Inference Benchmark for Windows test. Here, we're getting full NPU support through the Intel OpenVINO test, while AMD's NPU is not yet supported in Windows or even the UL Procyon Benchmark. And the benefit of the NPU is quite palpable, compared to the CPU.

Where the Ryzen truly shines is at compression/decompression as the AMD CPU is 45% faster, which is a whole other tier of performance. So if your workload involves frequent archiving and unarchiving, you are much better off with a Ryzen.

Moving on the GPU side, as you might see from the Timespy and Compute scores, don't think you can replace your gaming desktop with this, you'd still need a dedicated GPU if you intended to do much of any gaming on it.

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

Despite running all of the above benchmark tests, the F2A did not get hot to the touch, and there were no annoying noises coming from the single fan that cooled the unit.

Conclusion

As with all the Mini PCs I've reviewed in the past couple of years, this F2A 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. Despite its relatively larger footprint, this thing also doesn't take up much room in your bag if you need to move it from place to place.

When it comes to Mini PCs, the market is saturated with cheap options, just like the Desktop PC market. You have to be on the lookout and closely scrutinize the specifications. Will you be purchasing to drive four displays? Then this is not for you considering it maxes out at 4K @ 60Hz over three ports (despite the CPU supporting more). However, we do have PCIe 4.0 and DDR5, which are both cutting-edge in regard to office/student PC-style setups.

But let's get real here: when you're spending several 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, aside from the obvious lack of GPU prowess.

As I said earlier, the decision ultimately comes down to what you're willing to pay for the options you need. This Mini PC offers a lot of options regarding expandability and connectivity, but it misses out on a few points, mostly if you're making a decision based on how many displays you can hook up.

Pricing and Coupons

It's on sale now for $699 on the official website or $1099 on Amazon, but you can save a further $475.84 by applying the $300 in-page coupon and adding MM4D3SIE 16% off voucher code during checkout, bringing the total price down to $630.15 before taxes. Personally, $699 is the sweet spot for this very modern Mini PC, the $1099 MSRP is a big ask in my opinion.

For me, this loses a point for supporting four screens but only having the possibility to physically attach up to three screens, and for HDMI 2.0b; it includes the ultramodern Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU with HDMI 2.1 support, why not properly use it? It loses another point for not having USB 4. The fastest speed this ultramodern Mini PC supports is USB 3.2 Gen 2 @ 10 Gbps.

However, this remains a seriously capable Mini PC that includes a dedicated NPU for accelerating AI workloads, along with a quick PCIe 4.0 SSD and DDR5 5600MT/s memory, so for that I give it a thumbs up! By the way, I asked my contact if the "F2A" meant anything significant, and was told it's just a model number, eh oh well. Regarding the title of this review, I think it is currently (as of writing) the only Mini PC on the market (that you can actually buy right now) with an Intel Core Ultra AI-powered CPU and Wi-Fi 7. I'm prepared to be put in my place.

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