HP ProDesk 600 G4 Black

The HP ProDesk 600 G4 is a refurbished office PC bundled with a 27-inch monitor. It's fine for basic tasks but held back by just 8GB of RAM and a small SSD. Only worth it if you find a deal near the $300 mark and need a complete, ready-to-go setup.

The 6-core i5-8500T handles everyday multitasking without much fuss, but it lands in the 22nd percentile for CPUs in our database, so don't expect any heavy lifting. The integrated AMD graphics are a real weak spot, sitting in the 44th percentile, which means this thing will choke on anything beyond 2D games or very old titles. The 8GB of RAM is the biggest bottleneck here, ranking in the bottom 8th percentile. You'll feel the pinch if you open more than a dozen browser tabs. The 256GB SSD is also on the small side, in the 13th percentile, so you'll be leaning on cloud storage or an external drive pretty quickly.

Stacked against something like the Apple Mac mini M4, the ProDesk gets absolutely demolished in raw power, efficiency, and storage speed, but it also costs a fraction of the price. The Lenovo IdeaCentre and Dell Optiplex 7070 are its real peers, offering similar refurbished business performance. The GMKtec K12 is a wildcard, often packing newer Ryzen chips and faster RAM for a similar price, making it a tempting alternative if you don't need the bundled monitor. The ABS Cyclone Aqua is in a completely different league, a proper gaming desktop that makes the ProDesk's gaming claims look silly.

Pricing for this bundle is all over the map, with a spread from $300 to a frankly absurd $8799 across vendors. At the low end, around $300, you're getting a fair deal for a working office PC with a monitor included. Anything over $400, and you're getting into territory where a newer mini PC with better specs starts to make more sense. Just make sure you're buying from a vendor with a solid return policy, because that price range is a minefield.

The HP ProDesk 600 G4 is a refurbished mini PC that gets bundled with a new 27-inch monitor, a wireless keyboard, and a mouse. It's aimed at basic office work and light browsing, not the gaming rig the seller's description might lead you to believe. The Intel Core i5-8500T is a capable 8th-gen chip for spreadsheets and video calls, but the 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD are pretty tight by today's standards. You're getting a complete setup in one box, which is convenient, but you need to know exactly what you're buying.

Anyone looking to play games or run demanding software should skip this entirely. The gaming description is misleading, and the hardware will leave you frustrated. If you need to keep more than a few apps open at once, the 8GB of RAM will be a constant headache, so look for a model with 16GB or more.

This is a sensible buy for a no-frills office or homework station, but only if you snag it at the right price. It's perfect for a reception desk, a point-of-sale terminal, or a kid's first computer for schoolwork. Just don't buy it thinking you're getting a gaming PC, and be ready to accept the limitations of 8GB of RAM and a tiny SSD.