A Flexible Ryzen-Powered Portable

Hong Kong based Minisforum has made some bold moves with its first foray into the tablet market. Actually, the new AMD Hawk Point powered Minisforum V3 isn’t ‘just’ a tablet, and the company describes the device as a 3-in-1. Where Microsoft’s Surface and its imitators are 2-in-1s, blending tablet and laptop modes, Minisforum includes another mode by adding portable monitor functionality to the V3, which seems like a great addition. If you like to get the most out of your devices, it is hard to complain about a handy, additional function, but the question remains whether Minisforum’s V3 has successfully hit all its targets at a justifiable price point.

Minisforum V3 Hardware Under The Hood

Powering the V3 is one of AMD’s newest Hawk Point processors. Specifically, AMD’s Ryzen 7 8840U is used here. This processor packs 8 cores and 16 threads running at up to 5.1GHz alongside a potent Radeon 780M iGPU. It also has an NPU or ‘AI Engine’ delivering up to 16 TOPS alone, or 38 TOPS in combination with the other onboard processors (but still not enough to make it a Copilot+ PC).

Various power-modes can be employed, with the included software and auto-switching based on power source. The processor runs at 15W (power save), 22W (power balanced), and 28W (power premium) when plugged in. The premium mode also cranks up the screen refresh rate from 60 to 165Hz by default. On battery, it will switch to 18W (balanced) mode. In our tests, we always kept the device plugged in and operating in power premium 28W mode, to allow the machine to perform at its best, but also commented on how balanced mode performed in a couple of tests.

Other important internal components include the provision of 32GB LPDDR5-6400 RAM, and a 1TB Kingston OM8PGP4 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD which uses QLC NAND and a host-memory buffer cache. We wouldn’t like to try and service this device, replacing the battery or changing the SSD configuration (for example), as the glued-on screen would need to be pried off the device first.

Minisforum V3 Design And Accessories

Moving our appraisal to the exterior of the Minisforum V3, the 14-inch screen is sharp (1600p), vibrant, bright (up to 500 nits), offers fast refresh rates (up to 165Hz), and is 10-point touch and stylus friendly. Check the spec table above for the full details. Tablets don’t usually have many ports, and that is true of the V3. To the right are a pair of full-function USB4 ports, meaning they can be used for power, data, and video (DP-Alt) connectivity. Above these ports is a power button with built-in fingerprint reader. The button is flush with the side, and it isn’t easy to find to power on/off the device or scan your fingerprint, until you get familiar with the design. Just above this button is an LED which indicates power on, charging etc.

Moving to the left side edge of the tablet (landscape mode), there is a USB-C V-Link port, which is only useful for when you want to use the V3 as a portable monitor. Above that is a full-size SD card (UHS-II) reader with a rubber bung that will probably go missing the first time you travel with this device. Next up is a volume rocker which, similar to the power button, is lacking in tactility for reach around adjustments. Atop of the left edge is a 3.5mm headphone jack, which provides a handy wired alternative to Bluetooth audio.

Both left and right edges feature twin perforated speaker sections for the quad-speaker setup. Surprisingly, the audio output gets pretty loud and quality is quite good, but overall lacks bass, which you’d expect from a device with this form factor.

Atop of the tablet are two fan exhausts. The twin-fan cooling system sucks air from perforated sections on the upper-rear of the tablet. Minisforum’s thermal design works very well to keep temperatures control under load, and this device is also pleasingly quiet. We measured a library-quiet 25dBA fan noise from a position of just 12-inches in front of the screen during benchmarking sessions.

The bottom edge of the tablet features the dedicated magnetic keyboard cover connector. It looks and functions a lot like the one you find on the bottom of Microsoft’s Surface devices.

Above the screen area, there is a Windows Hello compatible webcam and twin noise-cancelling mics. Logging in using facial recognition was pleasingly swift, which was appreciated since it wasn’t easy to feel precisely where the fingerprint sensor on the side of the unit was located.