Customer Ratings & Reviews

I had one of these units previously and it lasted about 6 months and it went out. I bought another because I liked the idea, but it stopped working in a month. I would stay away from these. Great idea but not yet perfected.

First things first, this is a bare bones unit. I came across this product while helping someone else yesterday, had no idea best buy carried it.. And thought I might write a review. This product is very cool! It houses typically and Intel Core i3, which is great for basic usage (i.e. home theater pc set up, small form factor pc, travel pc, ext). It's tiny! The case is just about 4.5 inches wide, and about an inch thick. This unit also has dual HDMI outputs, 3 USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, 16g 1333/1600mHz ram capacity, and 2 mSATA slots. If you don't know about mSATA it's basically housing your drives in a PCIe slot. This product needs a C5 AC power adapter cable, because it is a bare bones kit. Keep that in mind! They're about 5-10$ where you buy them, you can get them from the Best Buy website, if you order through the marketplace, or through newegg for a little cheaper. You will also need RAM! Remember, you can use up to 16g, making sure the RAM is the same.. The NUC uses SO-DIMM's, so you'll need some laptop RAM in this bad boy. Also, make sure you pick up a mSATA drive, preferably 64g or higher.. Make sure you grad a wireless mouse and keyboard too! That doesn't come in the tiny box.. Value for price is good, because it's less than 300$ for an Intel Core i3. However, it really lacks necessary components, like a power cable. Something that's 5$ should be included. Features? Awesome! Tons of choices, whether or not you need a thunderbolt (or mini display adapter) adapter, or dual HDMI, whether or not you want gigabit ethernet (10/100/1000) this product has great interface for how small it is. I would have liked to see a USB 3.0, but if, for example, you need that for your external hard drive, make sure you pick up a thunderbolt to usb 3.0 adapter (from the manufacturer website, like WD or Seagate) and use that. One HDMI out will definitely be fine, considering you should be using dual monitors with an Intel Core i3. Performance? Again, awesome! Intel Core products typically perform very well, with whatever tasking you're going to be doing. This houses a third generation Intel Core processor, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing! Great performance from this product, considering you have 16g advantage (with 1600mHz capability) and mSATA interface for fast boot times, load times, ext.. Reliability? Honestly, I've read some bad reviews on this product relating to overheating. That makes sense considering the form factor of this product. However, if you're smart about what you're doing on this product, it won't be an issue. That being said, it's still an untra small form factor product, and will typically have more issues than something that's standard ATX. Thanks for reading!

The Intel NUCs are great for home media players. This one, being one of the better ones performance wise.