PELADN HO-4 Mini PC Review

The PELADN HO-4: Punching Above Its Weight Class?

The mini PC market is no longer a niche curiosity; it’s a fiercely competitive arena where every cubic inch and every dollar counts. In this crowded space, brands like PELADN are vying for attention by offering compelling hardware at aggressive price points. The HO-4 is their latest contender, a compact machine built around Intel’s energy-efficient N-series processors. It promises to be the perfect silent partner for your home office, a capable media hub for your living room, or a low-power server for your homelab. But in a world of Beelinks and Minisforums, does the HO-4 have what it takes to stand out? We put it through its paces to find out.

Design and Build: A Study in Practicality

Unboxing the PELADN HO-4 reveals a device that is unapologetically utilitarian. Housed in a compact, dark grey plastic chassis, it prioritizes function over form. The textured top panel resists fingerprints, a thoughtful touch for a device that might be handled often. While it lacks the premium feel of an all-metal enclosure, the build quality is solid, with no discernible flex or creaking. Its tiny footprint is the real star here; measuring just a few inches across, it can be tucked away discreetly or mounted directly to the back of a monitor with the included VESA bracket, effectively disappearing from your desk.

Connectivity is surprisingly robust for a machine of this size and price. The front panel is spartan, featuring only the power button and a status LED. The real action is around the back, where you’ll find two HDMI ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. This array is more than sufficient for a dual-monitor office setup and standard peripherals. The inclusion of two HDMI ports, rather than a mix of HDMI and DisplayPort, is a practical choice that simplifies connections for the average user.

Performance: Setting Realistic Expectations

At the heart of our review unit is an Intel Processor N100, a 4-core, 4-thread CPU from the Alder Lake-N family. It’s paired with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD. It is crucial to frame performance expectations correctly: this is not a high-performance workstation or a gaming rig. This chipset is designed for efficiency, and in that regard, it excels.

For everyday tasks—web browsing with a dozen tabs open, streaming 4K video from YouTube, and working within the Microsoft Office suite—the HO-4 is perfectly responsive. The snappy NVMe drive ensures that Windows 11 boots quickly and applications load without frustrating delays. Where the N100 shows its limits is in more demanding workloads. Heavy multitasking, video encoding, or even light photo editing in applications like Photoshop will cause the system to bog down. Gaming is largely off the table, aside from browser-based titles and older, less demanding retro games via emulation. Thermals are well-managed; the internal fan is barely audible during normal use and only spins up to a modest hum under sustained full load, never becoming intrusive.

Features and Value

The PELADN HO-4’s true value emerges when you consider the complete package. It comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, adding value for business users who might need features like BitLocker or Remote Desktop. Internally, the single stick of RAM and the M.2 2280 SSD are user-accessible and upgradable, offering a welcome path for future expansion—a key advantage over many sealed, all-in-one systems. Wireless connectivity is also modern, with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 providing fast, reliable connections.

Priced in the highly competitive sub-$250 bracket, the HO-4 delivers a strong performance-per-dollar ratio for its target use case. It handily outperforms older Celeron-based mini PCs and offers a more complete, out-of-the-box experience than a DIY Raspberry Pi setup for a similar cost. It’s a pragmatic and powerful little box that understands its role and executes it well.

Final Verdict

The PELADN HO-4 is not a machine that tries to be everything to everyone. It’s a focused, efficient, and affordable computing solution that excels at the fundamentals. It’s an ideal choice for students needing a machine for research and writing, professionals looking for a silent and compact work-from-home PC, or anyone seeking a low-power media server or home automation controller. While power users, content creators, and gamers will need to look at more powerful and expensive options, the HO-4 stands as a testament to just how capable and affordable a modern mini PC can be. For basic computing needs, it’s a smart, practical, and highly recommendable buy.

Where to Buy:

Check it out on Amazon