VZMore iX9 Max review: A powerful and impressive debut Mini PC

In a game of Chinese mini PC top trumps, the new VZMore iX9 goes head-to-head with Geekom's A9 Max. Both are very similar in size, port selection, and performance, despite one running on Intel silicon and the other on AMD.

At the time of writing, the iX9 does enjoy a bit of a price advantage, though, costing £849 ($899) for a box with a 1TB SSD and 24GB of RAM compared to £1,199 for an A9 Max, albeit with a 2TB SSD and 32 GB of RAM.

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The price advantage aside, VZMore also makes a fuss about the iX9's advanced cooling system, which, given that we found the A9 Max to be rather a loud old Hector when running under load, gives the VZMore box the opportunity to steal some of the A9 Max's thunder.

VZMore iX9 Max: Design

VZMore is a new company, registered and based in Germany, but with a supply chain just as firmly rooted in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong region as those of companies like Geekom, Acemagic, and GMKtec.

It currently offers five different Mini PCs and has direct-to-consumer sales operations in the UK, USA, and Germany/EU. UK customers are offered a 30-day money-back Guarantee and a 3-Year Warranty.

Visually, the iX9 is a very smart bit of kit. The dark grey paint finish that covers the metal case makes the unit look more of a premium offering than the all-silver finishes favoured by much of the competition. An engraved style-line runs around the front and sides, expanding into the letters VZ in the front left corner.

On the top you'll find the brand name emblazoned in chrome along with a badge that's very similar to the one you'll find slapped on the nose of every Porsche on the road.

The iX9's width and depth are the same as the Geekom A9 Max at 135 x 132mm. The iX9 is taller, though, to the tune of 9mm, taking the total height to 56mm, thanks to the round grille that adds extra depth to the base plate. At 777.5g, the iX9 is also heavier than the A9 Max.

Given the similarity in size and port layout between the A9 Max and iX9, we wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of relationship between Geekom and VZMore, but this could be nothing more than the two using the same off-the-shelf components.

The selection and layout of I/O ports is another feature common to both the iX9 and A9 Max, with 6 USB-A ports: four 10Gbps 3.2 Gen 2 spec on the front, one 3.2 Gen 2 and one 2.0 at the back.

Also on the back are two 2.5GbE RJ-45 ports, useful if you want to wire the box up to a network and an NAS box, two USB-C 4.0 ports, which also support DisplayPort video, and a brace of HDMI 2.1 video outputs.

Both boxes feature an SD card reader on the left side and a 3.5mm audio jack at the front, but the iX9 doesn't have a Kensington security lock slot, which the A9 Max does. That's a bit of an oversight on a device that's both small and expensive.

If we had to pick an ergonomic nit, it would be the absence of a Type-C port on the front panel. Given the increasing ubiquity of Type-C connectors, it would be a great convenience.

The rather impressive retail box also includes a 120W power brick, HDMI cable and a VESA mounting bracket with screws.

Getting inside the iX9 is not the easiest of jobs. After undoing four Philips screws hidden beneath rubber feet, you need to be quite bold, even brutal, to pry the base plate up and away.

Once inside, you need to remove four more screws and lift the secondary internal aluminium frame that shields the internals, making sure not to dislodge the Wi-Fi antenna as you do so.

With the internal frame lifted, you can see the double-stack mount populated by the 2280 SSD and the WLAN card and the separate, easily accessible, open mount for a second 2242 SSD.

The WLAN card is a MediaTek MT7925, which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, so there's no need to worry about the speed or modernity of your wireless connectivity.

The 24GB of LPDDR5 dual-channel is modular and fixed to the motherboard out of sight, so upgrading it, or adding to it, is out of the question.

To get at the fan and the rest of the cooling system, you'll need to further remove the motherboard, which makes blowing out the fan quite the chore.

The 1TB Kingston SSD in our review unit proved a tidy performer, returning sequential read and write speeds of 5,041MB/s and 4,789MB/s respectively.

VZMore only supplies its PCs with Windows 11 Pro, but booting the iX9 into a Linux distro (Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, to be specific) caused no problems, with everything working as it's supposed to right out of the box.

VZMore iX9 Max: Specs and Performance

Inside the iX9 lurks one of Intel's late-2023 vantage Meteor Lake CPUs, specifically the Core Ultra 9 185H. This CPU boasts 16 cores (6 Performance, 8 Efficient and 2 Low-Power Efficient), 22 threads, a maximum turbo clock of 5.1GHz and maximum TDP of 65W.

In ITPro's in-house 4K multimedia benchmark, the iX9 scored 408 points to the A9 Max's 356 points. It also beat the Geekom box in the PCMark10 test, scoring 8,166 to the A9 Max's 7,712.

Looking at those results, it would be easy to give the gold medal to the iX9, but other benchtests tell a slightly different story.

In the Cinebench R24 CPU benchmark, the VZMore box scored 109 single-core and 898 multi-core to the A9 Max's 119 and 1,179. But in the Geekbench 6 test, the iX9 takes the laurels by 2,944 single-core and 14,762 multi-core to 2,509 and 13,505.

When it comes to graphics performance, it's another case of even honours depending on which test is used.

The iX9's 8 Xe-core Arc iGPU scored 4,104 to the Radeon 890M's 3,701 in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, but the AMD iGPU ran the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling test at 43fps compared to 23.5fps for the iX9.

The superiority of the Intel iGPU in handling the modern rendering pipelines used in games and the AMD graphics chip's edge when it comes to the raw horsepower needed for wireframe rendering and geometry calculations wasn't unexpected.

What does that tell us? Nothing more than that the Core Ultra 9 185H-based chipset inside the new iX9 and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 inside the A9 Max perform very similarly in most real-world conditions though for serious CAD work the A9 Max is clearly the better option.

Given the equality of performance, we must consider the manner in which said performance is delivered.

VZMore makes a big deal of the iX9's cooling system. Rather than depending on traditional copper heat pipes, the iX9 uses a vapour chamber that covers the chipset die, power delivery, and surrounding circuitry.

The sealed vacuum chamber contains a liquid that vaporises and condenses across an internal surface; the heat is then transferred to a large fin array with fresh air pushed through to remove the heat.

As expected, both the iX9 and A9 Max can run flat out for extended periods without any sign of thermal issues, but the iX9 is the quieter of the two. And by some margin.

VZMore claims the iX9 only generates 38dB of noise under load. Our sound meter recorded 48.7dBA but given the vagaries of recording sound levels outside of a laboratory environment, the difference came as no surprise, and anyway, even our recorded levels were impressively low.

The raised base undoubtedly improves airflow through the body of the iX9, which combines with the much-touted vapour chamber to require less work from the fan. The result is a box that, while not silent, is surprisingly quiet when running under heavy loads.

VZMore iX9 Max: Is it worth it?

The first VZMore device to cross our paths here at ITPro has left us generally impressed. We found it to be powerful and refined; in fact, the lack of noise and drama under heavy loads is the feature that really separates the iX9 from the competition. It's good value too.

Negatives are the lack of an option to add more RAM, though to be fair, 24GB is a sweet spot between the performance benefits of 32GB and the cost savings of 16GB and the fact there's no Kensington lock to prevent anyone with larcenous intent from having it away on their toes with what is a very desirable little PC.

VZMore iX9 Max Specification