They Upgraded The CPU… And Made It Slower

What was meant to be a straightforward review of Geekom's A9 Max (2026) turned into something quite different. On paper it is very similar to the 2025 model we reviewed last September, the main difference being that CPU has been upgraded from the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, to the HX 470. It's a small spec bump, so we're expecting perhaps a 5% boost to performance. Instead, we found things were dramatically worse with the new model, so we had to dig a little deeper and find out what was going on... See the A9 Max 2025 review: https://youtu.be/WPj11IgpBkY 00:00 Intro 00:51 2025 vs 2026 A9 Max models 01:12 The root cause… 02:18 Testing setup 02:59 Benchmarks! 05:12 Gaming performance is hit hard 06:14 CPU clock behaviour 06:50 Discussion around the memory situation 07:54 Geekom responded to us 08:21 One other change (SSD) 09:03 No other design changes 09:25 Closing thoughts We never offer affiliate links or take percentages of product sales. If we say the product is good or bad we mean it. Our Editor in chief wrote about why you should value this and how the industry is rife with fake reviews from 'influencers' - read here https://bit.ly/3pXzaw4 Buy our merch from here: https://kitgurutech.myspreadshop.co.uk Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/4cqFSWY Steam Community https://steamcommunity.com/groups/kitguruofficial Be sure to support us on PATREON https://www.patreon.com/kitgurutech and read our MANTRA on HONEST REVIEWS Here: http://bit.ly/2BopnF9 Visit our facebook page over here! https://www.facebook.com/KitGuru.net/ Visit our Twitter page over here! https://twitter.com/kitgurupress?lang=en #Geekom #MiniPC #RyzenAI #A9Max #Memory