It’s affordable yet still delivers power efficiency and 4K playback for streaming content.
It’s an excellent all-rounder mini-PC for light gaming, productivity tasks, and general use.
However, it does have a few severe issues.
Its port and video-out selection is good but not great, and it lacks USB-C. ## Who Are Aerofara and Can You Trust Them?
Its productsespecially the Aero 2 Pro Mini PCshow good construction quality.
However, I did have some trouble with customer support from Aerofara.
By “trouble”, I mean Aerofara’s customer support didn’t respond to a single message.
During the holidays, that’s around three months.
It’s flatter than its competition, measuring 120 x 120 x 23mm.
Kannon Yamada/MakeUseOf
For comparison, most mini PCs are around 40mm thick.
However, compared to a GMK Nucbox (ourNucBox review), the Aero 2 Pro looks enormous.
The Aerofara Aero 2 Pro comes with Windows 10 Pro, although it’s upgradeable to Windows 11.
It also features a Jasper Lake processor, Wi-Fi 5, and is housed in an aluminum frame.
The antennas connect to a 3165 Wi-Fi 5 card tucked underneath the SSD.
The framing and style remind me of an Apple Mac Mini.
The 10-watt processor is cooled through a copper heat sink-fan combination.
A full-copper heat-sink fan combo can handle higher heat stress with lower noise production.
That’s perfect for HTPC purposes.
Hardware and Specifications
Like other budget mini-PCs, the Aero 2 Pro uses a low-wattage Intel processor.
Interestingly, there’s also a full-sized SD card slot and an RJ45 LAN port.
It’s located under the same slot as the Netac drive.
Overall, it’s a fairly modular system, although the RAM isn’t replaceable.
Second, it has a full-sized SD card slot.
Third, it’s quieter than some of its competition.
Unfortunately, the $200 price point is loaded with similar systems.
For example, theGMK NucBox 5includes newer Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6.
GMK’s system also costs less while offering a similar number of ports, except VGA.
The Aero 2 Pro Mini PC was also slightly more expensive than its competition.
Last, its 2242 M.2 SSD slot can’t fit a larger, more common 2280 storage drive.
This makes it one of the most energy-efficient mini-PCs I’ve tested for 4K playback.
Kannon Yamada/MakeUseOf
However, its power consumption wasn’t appreciably lower than the GMK NucBox.
That said, the NucBox couldn’t credibly do 4K HDR, so these numbers aren’t quite comparable.
In comparison, some mini-PCs use soldered-on eMMC modules, which are quite slow.
According to CrystalDiskMark, the transfer speeds max out the SATA interface.
The Netac SSD scored 547 MB/s for sustained write and 463 MB/s for reads.
For shallow queue-depth random reads and writes, it scored 10.75 and 53.22 MB/s, respectively.
Excellent Build Quality
A teardown of the Aero 2 Pro reveals good layout and design.
There’s no sign of poor manufacturing standards.
For the most part, Aerofara is acting like a solid manufacturer.
On the downside, the RAM is permanently soldered onto the main board.
The faster ECS Liva series is the only mini-PC in this budget segment that offers upgradeable RAM.
Because decibels are not linear, 25 dBm is nearly silent, whereas 53 dBm is distractingly loud.
Aside from fanless computers, the Aero 2 Pro produces less noise than any computer I’ve ever tested.
It outperforms the older Gemini Lake Refresh processor by around 20-40%.
You’ll generally get snappier, faster performance when visiting your favorite websites.
They’re more comparable to desktop processors than any older generation of low-power processor.
Here’s a comparison between the last two generations of low-power processors usingBrowserBench.
For reference, I’m including3DMarkresults, which show adequate performance.
However, even so, the results aren’t quite comparable to a mainstream desktop processor.
What We Didnt Like
There’s a lot to like about Aerofara’s Aero 2 Pro.
But not everything is perfect.
In particular, the problems we had contacting customer support are highly problematic.
USB 3.0 Ports
Unfortunately, USB 3.0 ports suffer from a wireless interference bug.
Weak Customizable UEFI Options
The UEFI lacks the diverse customization options that competitors like GMK.
Absent Customer Support
Unfortunately,Aerofara’s absent customer support pagedoesn’t do them any favors.
Aerofara’s absent service doesn’t speak well for them, given that their competition is so responsive.
However, other users reportedissues getting sound working in Kubuntu, which means they successfully installed Ubuntu.
I wasn’t able to get Ubuntu working, unfortunately.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to like about theAero 2 Pro Mini PC.
It’s affordable yet still delivers on power efficiency and 4K playback for streaming content.
It’s an excellent all-rounder mini-PC for light gaming, productivity tasks, and general use.
However, it does have a few severe issues.
Its port and video-out selection is good but not great, and it lacks USB-C.
