Beelink BT7, a small computer based on the Atom X7-Z8700

Computers based on the Atom Z8x00 have been on the market for almost a year. Somehow, though, most of the devices I’ve had for review were based on the Atom Z8300, with one based on the Atom Z8500. I still hadn’t tested a device with the top-of-the-line (if you can call it that) Atom X7-Z8700.
Today, I’m going to fill that gap in my testing: on my operating table is the Beelink BT7, one of the very few computers equipped with the Atom X7-Z8700.
A look around, some tests, and the usual teardown and modifications.

When I heard about the Atom lineup refresh in August last year, I bought myself a tablet based on the Atom 8500 almost immediately. After that, I expected Chinese manufacturers to start making more devices based on the 8500, but for some reason they mostly opted for the cheaper Atom 8300, which has a number of differences.

The main differences between the processors are shown in the table. There’s also the fact that the 8300 has a single-channel memory controller and supports up to 2 GB, while the 8500 and 8700 have dual-channel controllers and support up to 8 GB. Chinese engineers did manage to make devices based on the 8300 with 4 GB of RAM, though.
As you can see, the 8500 and 8700 differ very little, mainly in their clock speeds. In other words, the 8500 and 8700 are more closely related to each other than either is to the 8300. Yet for some reason, most devices were built around the 8300.


In this review, I’ll try to compare this computer’s performance with that of its younger siblings. But first, let’s get to the usual introduction and a description of what I actually received.

The computer arrived in a small, almost cube-shaped box that had taken a bit of a beating in transit.


This time, the manufacturer didn’t hold back on the box design, covering every surface with information, from a brief description to the functions of the ports.


There’s information on the bottom, too—in this case, the computer’s main specifications.


Specifications.
Operating system: Windows 10
Processor: Intel Cherry Trail X7-Z8700
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics (8th generation)
Memory: 4 GB RAM + 64 GB ROM (+ M.2 slot)
Wireless: 802.11b/g/n WiFi, 2.4/5.8 GHz
Ethernet: 1000 Mbit
Bluetooth: BT 4.0
Audio output: 3.5 mm audio jack
Display output: HDMI, 1080P
External interfaces: 3x USB 3.0
Memory card support: 1 SD slot, up to 64 GB (some sources say up to 128 GB)

Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 25 mm (excluding antenna)
Weight: 316 g

To my surprise, the box was packed quite tightly inside.


The package contents are quite extensive; you definitely wouldn’t call it bare-bones.
1. Beelink BT7 mini PC
2. Power supply
3. 1 m HDMI cable
4. 30 cm HDMI cable
5. VESA mount
6. Manual + warranty card
7. Driver disc for Windows 10 x64.


A little more detail about what’s included.
1.2. To start with, I was very surprised to find a driver disc in the box. This is the first time I’ve seen one included with a mini PC. It seems the manufacturer expects users to reinstall the OS. Usually, they just provide a recovery image.
3. HDMI cables, which are pretty good quality. But the key point is that there are two of them.
The long one is needed if you install the computer under a TV, which is how most devices are set up. They also included a short cable for mounting the computer behind a monitor. Very convenient, since you won’t have an extra cable dangling around. I bought a short cable like that myself, about 30 cm long.
4. A VESA mount for the computer. It supports two standards, 75 and 100 mm. Five screws are included, one of them a spare. As they say, it’s a small thing, but a nice touch.
The mount screws onto the back of the monitor/TV, and the computer simply slots into it.


This is what the bracket looks like as the designers intended. I could attach it to my monitor, of course, but I don’t see much point—the design is simple and clear as it is.


The power supply is small, although its rated power is 24 W (12 V, 2 A). A power supply of roughly this wattage came with the PIPO computers, which were larger.
I’ll get ahead of myself: with the CPU at 100% load and an external USB 3.0 drive powered from it, the power supply barely gets warm. I didn’t take it apart, since I would have had to break it open, but it gave me the impression of being a fairly well-made power supply.


The computer is small, with the manufacturer’s name on top.


The case is made of metal, presumably aluminum, and painted dark gray.
The only decorative touches, I suppose, are the chamfer around the case and the lettering on top.


The promotional materials claim it has been polished and ground to near-precision standards. To me, that’s just marketing. I see a well-made case, nothing more.


The sides of the case have the following:
1. The front has only the power/sleep indicator. It’s blue/red and fairly bright, but shines as a small dot.
2. The left side has ventilation slots running its full width.
3. The rear has:
WiFi antenna
Power connector
USB 3.0 port
HDMI video output
Gigabit Ethernet port
3.5 mm headset jack, which can also be used as an audio output.
Reset button (behind a small hole).
4. The right side has an SD card slot and two more USB 3.0 ports. In my opinion, a microSD slot would have been better, but that’s just my personal view.
There’s also a power button to the right.


The bottom has only four rubber feet; there aren’t even any ventilation holes.
The feet are very soft and don’t slide around on the desk.


Overall, the computer looks quite well-balanced. I’ve mentioned before that I like understated designs—the more understated, the better.


Mostly out of curiosity, I took a photo comparing it with the computer from this review.


That’s it for the external inspection; we can take a look inside.
Actually, no—I opened it up after testing its performance and temperatures, to get more accurate test results. But for convenience, I’ll describe the teardown now.


Now that we've looked at the internals, we can move on to the software.
First, some general information.
When I first turned it on, the computer set the display resolution to 1024x768, although computers usually select the full 1920x1080. The monitor was connected through an HDMI-to-VGA converter.
There are three reasons for connecting it this way:
The monitor's HDMI input is already occupied.
The converter usually makes things harder to run, so this adds an extra test.
The converter itself uses quite a lot of power, so if it works through the converter, it will definitely work without it.


I changed the resolution to the one native to my monitor and continued checking things out.


The first thing I always do is add the My Computer, Control Panel, My Documents, and Network Neighborhood icons to the desktop.
It's strange that they aren't there by default.


Windows 10 Home is preinstalled. The default language is English, but switching to Russian is usually no trouble. In this case, I didn't even have to download the language pack; everything went quickly and smoothly.
I could write a guide to switching the system to Russian, but if you need one, I can find a link to one of my reviews where I covered it.


The drive is split into three partitions, one of which is a recovery partition. But judging by its size, it contains an installation package rather than a system image, so reinstalling will probably take a long time.
Since there's only one OS installed on the computer, there's almost 46 GB of free space, which is nice to see.


Here's some information from CPU-Z. It won't tell us anything particularly new, but it's enough to get a good idea of what we're dealing with.




My first test was the speed of the built-in eMMC storage.
Just to be safe, I now run two tests using different versions of the program.


But the test results weren't very encouraging. Let's just say they could have been better.
The fastest memory I've come across in mini PCs so far was made by Samsung.
For comparison, here are the test results for other mini PCs with eMMC storage.
Pipo X9
Pipo X7
Pipo X7S
MeeGoPad T02
Pocket P1
Vensmile W10
Teclast X98 Pro
MeeGoPad T03
Wintel Pro CX-W8


The next issue I tend to consider a sore point is Wi-Fi performance.
First, here's the information from WiFiInfoView.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single access point in the 5 GHz band, so the only basis for saying this band is supported is the Wi-Fi module's specifications.


After that, I ran a series of tests measuring connection speed and data transfer speed, and was somewhat surprised by the results (I hadn't read the module's datasheet yet).
Three tests: connection speed 12 meters from the router with lots of walls in between, then at about 10–11 m, and finally with a couple of concrete walls in between at a distance of about 6–7 m.
I was pleasantly surprised that the computer connected to my router without any problems from a long distance. Lately, I seem to encounter that less and less often. But I was disappointed that the system response was very slow when controlling the computer via Radmin over a wireless connection.


A couple more tests with other routers. The first test was a few meters from one of the Chinese routers.
I ran the second test with a TP-Link router. I was surprised that the connection speed wouldn't go above 65 Mbps, even from half a meter away.


And here's the data transfer speed test.
1. First, a test over a wired connection to find out the actual link speed.
2. 12 m from the router, lots of concrete walls.
3. 11 m from the router, several concrete walls
4. 6–7 m from the router, two concrete walls, no direct line of sight.
5. 1–2 m from the router.
6. 0.5 m from the router.


Next up are the usual temperature and performance tests. Can't skip those, of course :)
First, LinX.
The computer overheated easily, but still put up decent results.


3DMark. More or less the same story: I expected better performance and less heat.
Although compared with the 8300 processor, it's great, since that one scores much lower, around 2150.


I ran this test mainly for the sake of statistics and comparison; I'll repeat it later.





And now the tests after the modification, along with a comparison against the results from before.
3DMark: 3621 versus 3238.
The 8300 processor scores about 2150 points, while the 8500 scores 3800 points
Yes, for some reason I even got a higher score in 3DMark on this tablet.


LinX in 32-bit and 64-bit modes. Both are shown because the first test was run in x64 mode, while the intermediate tests were run in x32 mode.
The result is pretty good in this case, but what interested me more was that performance barely drops as the processor heats up.


In x64 mode, I got 7.92–7.83, compared with 7.83–5.86 before the modification. The 8300 scores around 5.0–4.5 in this test, while the 8500 scores 7.3–6.9 (in x32 mode)…
Interestingly, in every test the processor's fourth core runs 3–5 degrees hotter than the others.


Cinebench, on the other hand, showed practically the same result as before the modification. That's because the test is short and doesn't have time to heat up the processor.


And a couple more tests for the record.
WinRAR


7ZIP


Finally, a few more tests.
The first two tests will be familiar to many.
1. Memory card performance. I don't know what affected it, but the speed is about what you'd expect from USB 2.0, even though I know for sure that this processor can handle memory cards at higher speeds. I don't know whether the adapter is to blame or the card reader is simply connected differently, but I didn't get a high speed :(
2. With external hard drives, however, the speed is normal and in my case is limited only by the drive itself.
3. 4, A slightly unusual test, but one that lets you assess (or compare) RAM performance.
For this test, I created a RAM disk and ran the benchmark on it. I'll run this test from time to time, since its results may be useful in their own way.


Mostly out of curiosity, I also took a couple of measurements of the case temperature with the processor under load.
The first was taken right at the beginning of the tests, but for some reason I thought the temperature had actually been higher.
The second was taken after the modifications. The temperature difference isn't very large, but it's there.


I also measured the current draw at the desktop and under LinX load.


There's not much point in running gaming and video tests, since this processor (the 8300 and 8500) has already been tested many times. I even played around with it a little in this review.
Real-world performance is slightly higher than the 8500's and noticeably better than the 8300's.

So, what can I say in conclusion? First, the usual pros and cons.
Pros
Good build quality
SSD installation option.
3 USB 3.0 ports
Gigabit Ethernet
USB port protection.
VESA mount included
An extra short HDMI cable is included.
Decent power supply.
2.4/5 GHz Wi-Fi
Windows 10 preinstalled.

Cons
Fan
Poorly designed cooling system
Rather slow flash memory.
Card reader speed is on par with USB 2.0 (presumably)
Wi-Fi connection speed isn't very high, despite decent sensitivity.

My take: I don't really want to criticize this computer, since it's put together pretty well, and it's clear that more thought went into the design. But it feels like the board was designed by one team and the cooling system by another. I don't understand how they could enclose a fan in such a small space without an outlet for hot air. That's basic stuff when designing systems like this.
I was pleased to see an SSD connector, although it uses the less common M.2 form factor instead of the familiar mSATA. But the card reader was disappointing. Maybe my adapter is to blame, or maybe it's the connection; I can't say for sure, since I don't have a fast SD card.
The Wi-Fi is also a mixed bag: good sensitivity, an external antenna, and 5 GHz support, but a low maximum speed. One plus cancels out another.

Overall, on the one hand, we have good build quality, a decent processor, a good set of accessories, and room for upgrades. On the other, there are the familiar cooling issues and Wi-Fi speeds that aren't particularly high.

That's about it. As always, I'm looking forward to your questions, suggestions for tests, and just your comments.
I hope you found the review useful.
The GBBT76 coupon is valid through July 31 and brings the price of this computer down to 168.99

The product was provided by the store for review.