Desktop Use and Conclusion
Subjective Desktop Performance
As I used the newest LIVA I was reminded of the impression I had from last year's LIVA X. There was a general lack of snappiness that you just wouldn't expect on a modern desktop, though the Braswell SoC under the hood is closer to the power of a tablet than a standard PC. The slow onboard storage certainly doesn’t help the X2 out, but in general I think the 2 GB of RAM in the review unit (again, 4 GB is available) was more of a problem. Another note, as this LIVA arrived with the 32 GB eMMC option I had to watch what was installed/saved on the eMMC drive at any given time or risk seeing this message:
So what can the LIVA X2 offer as a tiny desktop replacement? It’s certainly fast enough for light workloads; web browsing, email, office applications, even HTML5 video (thankfully YouTube defaults to this now) – as long as it isn't really high bit-rate. Multi-media tasks such as photo editing are probably out unless you don't mind waiting long periods of time for images to load, or changes to apply. Multi-tasking is out, as a slower dual-core system with only 2 GB of memory just can't support mixed workloads.
A score of 1123 in PCMark 8 isn't going to break any records
Overall, it's just not a great desktop Windows experience. So what is it good for? I've been trying to answer this question since I tested the first LIVA, and while ECS has produced a very polished little product with this X2, it's a question that the user is going to need to answer before making a purchasing decision. Though with improved video playback from this newest LIVA it could certainly be used as an HTPC, with the fanless design and low cost an advantage.
Conclusion
The LIVA is a really cool idea: a full system, complete with memory and storage, ready to use out of the box with a preinstalled OS. And the LIVAs all sip power – under 10W at full load. For lightweight workloads there are a lot of possibilities for this mini-PC, but I can't help wanting more. Is is so unreasonable to expect the performance and the desktops of 5 years ago in today's ultra budget hardware? It certainly seems so. The fact is that at this point a processor that targets just 4W of power isn't going to get you very far with the per-thread performance of an Atom CPU unless you have more cores to work with.
The faster Celeron N3540 part that I used for comparison was slightly faster per thread, thanks to a higher boost clock speed (and TDP), but the biggest advantage came from the additional 2 cores. An 8-core SoC would fare much better of course, especially as more software is multi-core aware than ever. Intel has been moving rather slowly in this regard for their consumer SoCs, and that's too bad considering the power (and price) targets prompting the selection of these parts has condemned many a budget system to suffer lackluster performance as a result. AMD APUs offer an alternative, but the Intel platform clearly has a foothold in the mini-PC market. We'll see what the next generation brings, but that probably means waiting another year.
Strengths
- Better than expected HTPC performance
- Fanless design provides silent operation
- Ultra-low power consumption
- Includes VESA mount
Weaknesses
- Dual-core Braswell SoC underpowered for desktop use
- eMMC storage performance
Bottom line, the LIVA X2 is a product still limited in scope as a PC. The latest version is powerful enough to accomplish lightweight tasks, and offers improved graphics performance from the Braswell SoC, as well the move to 802.11ac wireless. But the system is still not powerful enough to provide snappy performance you'd expect from a modern desktop. There are certainly possibilities for the X2, but I would have liked to see more from this new generation as it is only marginally better than the LIVA X that preceded it. It’s really the platform, not ECS’s execution, that I find fault with. However, if you’re in the market for a low-power Intel Braswell system, this is an excellent option.
Sebastian, do you think the
Sebastian, do you think the Liva X2 or an Asus Chromebox CN60 would be better as a computer illiterate family member computing solution for light internet browsing, email, picture viewing, word processing, and gaming (solitaire)?
I think the CN60 would be a
I think the CN60 would be a lot snappier considering they all use Haswell parts, especially with Chrome OS as I'm sure it's better optimized for limited hardware. The 16GB storage is a negative, as the LIVA comes with 32GB standard, but you lose half of that to the Windows install on the LIVA…
I'm torn here. If I had to use one myself I'd go with the CN60 because of the faster CPU and I'd just deal with the storage limitation by using an external drive (or high capacity SD card). Part of this comes down to price, of course. The Core i3 CN60 is about $200, LIVA X2 is about $160.
In either case I'd install Ubuntu if it was my daily driver. In my experience Linux runs better on these mini-PCs, and I'd be content with the productivity experience of LibreOffice and Firefox.
Why not look at a Mint Box
Why not look at a Mint Box with Linux Mint factory installed, if you want ease of use and a nice UI!
Go to Microcenter/Etc. and
Go to Microcenter/Etc. and get a last generation Ivybridge or Haswell laptop NEW and on sale with windows 7/8.1! There will be core i3/i5 laptops that will have much better features for around $300 for the i3 laptop models, the i5 laptop models a little more. The GPUs in some of the Liva devices use low cost Intel Celeron/Atom SKUs that are not going to be as powerful as Intel’s earlier generation regular form factor laptop(IvyBridge/Haswell) SKUs anyways. you are going to have to have a monitor and keyboard at extra costs, so the retail channels are still offering some very nice deals on NEW IvyBridge, or Haswell based laptop SKUs.
It’s too bad there are not any AMD Carrizo offerings in these types of Mini devices, but that Intel contra revenue and other Intel influences are keeping AMD pushed out of some markets. Carrizo not Carrizo-L with a quad core excavator CPU and the AMD latest GCN integrated graphics would make for some nice affordable systems with better than Intel graphics, and at Carrizo’s price point Intel would definitely not be offering their best graphics in any Intel SKUs!
You guys know office runs on
You guys know office runs on the web right why even install libreoffice when office.com has excel, word, and powerpoint.
Libreoffice is going to come
Libreoffice is going to come with the Linux distros as standard on most. I use Libreoffice and even Libreoffice can accelerate spreadsheet/other workloads on the GPU if there is openCL support for the GPU. That’s why I’d love to see AMD’s Carrizo SKUs on some of these Mini type devices. The AMD latest GCN graphics has the ACE units for accelerating Libreoffice and any other Application that makes use of OpenCL, and a lot of applications, open source and proprietary, are using OpenCL(for compute acceleration on the GPU), and OpenGL(for graphics). Vulkan when it is released will offer even better acceleration of graphics and non graphics computations on the GPU.
Can these mini PCs be set up
Can these mini PCs be set up to stream steam from a more powerful PC I the house?
2gb of RAM is quite frankly a
2gb of RAM is quite frankly a useless amount to have in a modern PC. It leaves the PC constantly using its storage drive (I speak from experience here). I think the impressions would have been far better with a unit that had more integrated memory.
In this day and age where DDR3 is so cheap, having so little RAM is a warning sign that the unit has been cut down too far. While you can make do with 4gb for an office machine just doing MS Office and emails, I could not advise someone to buy a machine with less than 8gb RAM.