In this modern era mini PCs are really becoming extremely popular, offering the users an easy and convenient way to stay connected. These PCs perform are the major functions of a normal computer efficiently. Earlier Asus and Zotac were considered to be the leaders when it comes to the mini PCs. But now ECS has debuted in the market of mini PCs with its ECS Liva X. It is a Taiwan based electronic firm that specializes in making PC motherboards.
Portability is must for the small PC and this is the sole reason why they are so popular in the market. With the dimensions of 135 x 83 x 40mm and light weight, Liva X lives up to the expectation of portability. The Liva branding is packed into minimal flourished metal case with slightly angular edges. The device does now have a fan, but features with air vents on the right and left hand side as well as at the base, offering plenty of cooling options when the device gets heated. Four rubber feet are attached to the base through screws and are used to open the Liva X.
The device features with the Intel Bay Trail-M SoC with a TDP of 4.5 W. Exploring the components inside the box gives a feeling that Liva X is an entry level design which is fuelled by an Intel Celeron N2808 processor with a clock speed of 1.58 GHz. The RAM installed in the device is of 133 MHz DDR3L with a capacity of 2 GB.
The device does not heat as much as the laptops, even during its peak performance. There are two 2.0 USB ports and a 3.0 USB at the front portion just beside the power button, offering you plenty of options to stay connected. A LAN Port, an HDMI Port, power in port, an audio jack and the D-Sub port are located on the rear side of the device. The internal storage capacity is of 32 GB, which is sufficient enough to store all your office documents.
1T1R 802.11n chip, Azurewave AW-NB087H powers the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth of the device. 1T1R radios installed in the device are enough for video streaming. One of the major drawbacks of the device is that it lags with HD and full HD videos, thus if you have such videos to play, simply ignore the device. There is also an extra mSATA slot allowing you to expand the memory.
If your work demands net surfing and work on office documents, then the device is good for that, but you will witness a slowdown with heavy websites and the video players in some of the websites can also stream poorly. Thinking about gaming? It is simply out of question with such type of specification. It supports both Linux as well as Windows operating systems. It takes around 3 minutes 3o seconds to compress 100 MB file with 7zip.
The price of $250 is a little high for the device. It is just an entry level mini PC with some added benefits and portability.
Price: $250
