Or he's comparing it to the competition... Chromecast for one. It might not be as powerful but what it does it does well - without an annoying fan or bad/unreliable wifi. And at a very low price.
Yeah, this doesn't impress me either, mostly due to the failure to make this fanless. The drive size is fine (put Linux with Kodi on it) but the bad wlan - that is a fail, too.
Still, yeah, first gen, Intel is good at incremental improvement so I bet gen 2 will be much much better.
This isn't something comparable to a Chromecast. Chromecast is an extremely limited device. I've already replaced one with a much more capable Fire stick, and may replace the other with one of these or another low power PC.
I'm going to have to agree with you on that, Jeff. This does what they say it does, and it runs Windows. So you can build and compile your own local applications and there's no need for a "network" operating system like ChromeOS. For some users, that's what they want and/or need. You could easily build a Plex server and run the Plex app on this device and be quite happy, I'll assume. It would be nice to have more of a "user experience" review. Performance metrics are interesting, but if I spend $150 on an HDMI stick, I don't care how fast it can encode video, decrypt files, etc. I care how it will perform as a media streamer, can it run any games (highly limited here), can it be a remote streamer for Steam (unlikely for this first gen device), etc. That's what matters to me for something like this.
The first thing I thought when I saw it was Plex server, but the networking solution isn't sufficient enough in my book. While I guess you could add a USB to Ethernet dongle (or thumb wireless solution), that seems kludgey at best. It's an interesting step towards something more usable in the future.
If you mean "Plex client" with the server running elsewhere, then I think its existing wireless is already sufficient. Plex "tops out" at 20 Mbps for streaming, and that's adjustable in the client all the way down to sub HD speeds < ~3 Mbps. You have the option to transcode everything on the Plex server when doing this, and Intel's stick here would be more than capable of handling that situation, provided there's not a lot of WiFi interference on the 2.4 GHz band. If it's 5 Ghz (admit I didn't read the full specs) then less so, but distance is the issue.
Massive fail seems like a bit harsh... I will admit that I haven't used the Compute Stick but I have had a Hannspree Micro PC (www.stickpcstore.com/stick-pcs/hannspree-windows-8-stick-pc-quad-core-1-83-ghz-2gb-ram-32gb-windows-8-1-micro-pc-snnpdi1b.html) for a couple of months and it is very similar spec to the Compute Stick... and it is great... yes it is not an i5 or i7 PC... but it does "light productivity" really well... Word, Excel, Outlook... browsing the web. I've got in plugged into my front room TV (42") and use it occasionally all the time. I agree the WiFI could be better but hopefully this will be a second gen update.
I was reading MAXPC's review, its up on their site. They don't obviously offer the kind of solid quantifiable metrics that I get here, but they are usually good for a user experience overview.
They said that it streamed everything from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu to steam in home perfectly. Playing games with no noticeable input lag, and that it streamed 1080p videos without a problem.
The way they described the fan, is that it was just a high pitched hum that you wouldn't hear unless you were in a dead silent room, which is something that I would never deal with if this were on my living Room TV.
They said they got something like 20 FPS on Portal 1 playing it from the stick itself.
I am a little dissapointed (especially the neutered GPU chops, even compared to other Baytrail SoCs), but at the same time, it seems like it would make a perfectly good LIGHT HTPC. I am not super interested this time around, but if the price stays the same, I might be very interested with Cherry Trail if the drop in process size helps out with maintaining higher frequencies under load, better GPU, etc.
Also, PS where the heck is the Airmont architectual review and Surface 3 review? I feel like Anand had a Silvermont arch review within a couple of weeks (+/-) of Bay Trail being released and even a preview one a couple of months before. I have seen nada on Airmont so far and a couple of reviews of the surface 3 from othersites a couple of days ago.
Thanks for the review. Can somebody smarter than me explain why exactly 23.976 Hz is important? I assume that's the refresh rate used in movies, but is deviating slightly from that really so noticeable, or why is it so important? *never messed with HTPC stuff*
In the worst case, you're going to display those 23.976 FPS movies on a 60Hz screen. But they don't divide evenly. Ideally, you want each image to be on the screen for ~41.7ms, but a 60Hz display only works in multiples of ~16.7ms. So the closest you can get is displaying each image for ~33.3ms.
But as you can see, 33.3ms is not the same as 41.7ms, so you end up having to display some frames for 33.3ms, and some frames for 50ms. The result is that motion that should be smooth appears jittery, because each frame is displayed for a different amount of time.
The closer your display can get to actually displaying 23.976Hz, the fewer frames you'll need delay like that. If your display can do an even 24Hz, then you'll need to double up a frame every ~42 seconds. Not so bad. And the closer you get, the longer between doubled frames. And if you nail it at 23.976Hz, then you never double frames, and it looks great.
The 23.976Hz is technically 24/1001, almost as if it originally derived from an "off-by-one" error in computing frames. Anyways, any multiple of that works just as well as the 23.976Hz display rate. Similarly, any multiple of 24Hz works as well as 24Hz.
And one may ask what rates are available that are multiples of 24Hz to find a good solution. For example, 48Hz and 96Hz don't exist nor does 72Hz. The next multiple would be 120Hz, so by displaying each frame 5 times, each time lasting 8.34ms, one can similarly achieve a scenario that is fairly jitter free. Though in this case one wouldn't have to occasionally display a frame for an extra 16.67ms, but instead an extra 8.34ms.
The next multiple available would be 6, yielding 144Hz and a refresh time of 6.95ms.
In these cases that means going from 60Hz to 144Hz implies that when a frame is displayed an extra refresh cycle to kick the clock back in sync (like leap day does with the calendar), the "lag" experienced decreases from 16.67ms to 6.95ms, making that effect less than half as noticeable. However the real change from 60 to 120/144Hz is that the latter is a multiple of 24 while the former is not. The former, as you say, requires one to either display things for 33.3ms or 50ms and that causes some noticeable problems depending on the scene. Human reaction time is about 100ms, perhaps 80ms in someone young. However that's the time to react to something, we notice things on a shorter scale (see fighter pilots).
Actually plasma displays do have 72hz and 96hz refresh rates. Pioneer kuro's have a 72hz refresh mode and panasonics have 96hz refresh mode. The cheaper panasonics have a 48hz mode but it introduced flicker that made it unwatchable so 72hz was the slowest refresh rate that is watchable and compatible with 24 fps film. This was one of their big selling points as they can natively play 24fps blu ray films at their intended speed without 3:2 pulldown. I know this for a fact as I have a Panasonic plasma that can accept a 1080p24 signal from a bluray using 96hz by repeating each frame of the movie 4 times 4:4 pulldown i believe.
Refresh rate accuracy is important because when it's wrong frames get dropped to keep A/V in sync. For 24p (23.976) this is especially important because there are fewer frames, so it's much more noticeable. In this case 23.973 isn't bad (i.e. there won't be many frames that go missing), but it's not what we've come to expect, and enjoy, from Intel's other systems that get it pretty much perfect.
Fortunately, you can pick up 100Mb and 1GbE USB adapters for under $10, so the networking performance can be greatly improved with little effort... but the lack of HD bitstreaming is a complete fail for HTPC use. If it's anything like my other Bay Trail devices, it will also struggle with Steam In-Home Streaming.
I have a Baytrail powered Zotac Pico PI320. I'm using the 10/100 Ethernet port, and it does Steam in-home streaming @ 1080p/60 pretty well. Though Baytrail doesn't have QuickSync, the DVXA decoder does a decent job.
The issue I foresee is that if you are going to make the setup unwieldy with an adapter hanging off the Compute Stick - then, the advantage of the form factor is lost. You might as well pick up one of the other mini-PCs compared in this review, but that is just my opinion
Pretty much this, plus if you're already invested in a moderate sized or greater NAS solution, it seems like it'd be pretty cost efficient to just step up to a low priced NUC anyway, unless the form factor of a large stick out the back of the TV is absolutely critical.
Unless your device is using one of a few select Celeron branded Bay Trail's then it does support Quick Sync... Bay Trail uses a Gen 7 (Ivy Bridge) GPU that's just scaled down to 4EU's and slower clock for mobile usage but still supports features like Quick Sync...
Running a 1Gbe connection over 480Mbps USB 2.0 is inherently going to limit you. Still better than the 50Mbps or so you *might* get over the 802.11n, but really... running a CAT5 cable out to your TV is bordering on the non-trivial. Even if feasible it's not clean.
It's no more complicated than any other cable and is every bit as clean. I bought this http://amzn.com/B005LW4CFG a few years ago and it has made it trivial to run all my cables (HDMI, speaker wire, networking) through walls. Very feasible and clean.
As for the 1GbE connection over USB 2.0 - it is slower than real GbE - but the gains in latency and throughput make it possible to stream so much more than the weak wifi permits. It's worth doing.
This is an interesting idea but for me there are too many limitations for me to consider it. Now at 10nm with a lower power x86 2/4 processor and 120GB of controller based storage I'd be interested as a HTPC or computer for my kids.
So a SoC that due it's perf is worth 5$ , the NAND+RAM are less than 25$, the wifi must be 3$ or less and all in all 150$ is way too much. Damn x86 monopoly.
I considered preordering this. Thankfully I did not. Thanks for the review. Can anyone suggest the best device to use for plex on 4 k TV ? I would like as small as possible without massive sacrifices
Too limiting for my needs. I just picked up an HP stream mini for $10 more. Yes it's bigger, but still fits in the palm of your hand. Added 8GB of ram and stuck to back of TV and good to go.
HP Stream Mini is also limited, you can't put in 2.5" drive without some additional cable.
Better to buy Zotac miniPC (ZBOX ID18,...) or Gygabite BRIX with 4-core Bay Trail CPU and add additional 4GB RAM and 2.5" HDD. You will pay: miniPC (120$) + RAM (35$) + HDD (45$) = 200$ But you will have much better hardware and BIOS which will undoubtedly support Legacy BIOS booting option and more options thatn HP Stream Mini.
IMO, lack of Ethernet and terrible WiFi performance kills the product from the start. This is obviously intended to turn a TV into a media host device with the added functionality of running Windows, but if a very slow WiFi connection is the only way to get connected, then the product is rather useless.
With a decent WiFi AC receiver, this would be the ideal Steam Home Streaming client.
Wait a minute so every single one of these is going to crap out when people go to add the windows updates?? How is that acceptable? They can't seriously expect everyone who buys this to find a work around do they? Is Windows 10 smaller? Any luck there with upgrading to that in July? I want to buy a few of these for some TV's. But I'm not going to cut it that close on the updates, I mean what happens on the next windows update and that's it, you went over and can't do a single thing after that...
Stop advertising HP Stream Mini, Zotac miniPC or Gygabite BRIX barebones are better and you can even put in youtr desired HDD and RAM and they only cost around 120$. See my post above.
I'm surprised that they had issues with updates. I'm running a Winbook 7" with only 1GB of ram and 16 GB on board storage. I've added a microSD 64-gig card, but windows updates will only stage/install on the c: partition. I've got less than 1 GB free, but all the updates have applied - I just got this two weeks ago, so I'd consider it a fairly comparable situation. I did run disk cleanup including system updates, but I never ran into an error. It is too bad that there's no way to extend the drive space of c: using a microSD, or to have Windows seamlessly use it for temp files, or be able to move other files to it. It would also greatly help if they allowed you to move the "recovery" partition to a USB stick and be able to recover by placing that back in the device. Recovering 5 GB of space would be really helpful. Of course, my tablet only cost $40.00. It also plays NetFlix and Youtube output to HDMI acceptably, and even my medium bitrate Blu-Ray rips.
Did they even mention whether they tried to do the update ? In any case, after the 'Refresh', I installed 1.3+ GB of updates all over again, and the second time went without a hitch. I think it depends on a lot of factors - eMMC behavior etc. , but, in general, it would be preferable to have plenty of free space on the primary drive for OSes such as Windows.
Great review as always, but the Compute Stick isn't quite enough and it really doesn't have much to do with the CPU, but storage. The 32GB of storage problem has really been the biggest turn off of these kinds of small computing platforms. It'd work fine for most Linux distros, but Windows needs a good 16-32GB more, I think, before the device becomes flexible enough to use for things beyond very basic content consumption. I'd had hopes about Cherry Trail systems sticking around the same price point while offering a generational improvement in storage capacity, but with Intel's pricing, I have doubts that there'll be a sub-$150 device that ships with 2GB of RAM and 64GB solid state storage in the near term.
PPSTCK1A32WFC? Uhm, how much do you want to bet that people start calling it the peepee stick. I wonder if this was the marketing guys having a laugh, or if they honestly didn't think the name was questionable. It should be standard practice to run marketing material past a fifth-grader to see if they laugh(or me, apparently).
Intel Compute Stick is the name of the product, looks pretty simple and self-explanatory to me, the detailed product code number is not marketed by anyone.
So, the question that runs through my mind in every single one of these types of reviews, yet never seems to be given consideration: How well can these units play back Hi10p encoded h264 video? (either 720p or 1080p) Hi10p can't be GPU accelerated, so can they play video like that back at all, or will it be like watching a slideshow (as was the case on a friend's very early netbook)? I know Kodi is capable of playing back 10-bit video, so since they used Kodi in the test, it should certainly be testable.
Bay Trail is a good step up from the older Netbook ATOMs... 2-3x the performance... Chippy, from UMPCPortal, has a video demonstrating Hi10p playback. X.264 10-bit encoded file on a Bay Trail based Intel NUC... if you want to see how well Bay Trail handles such videos...
Basically, Bay Trail's can usually handle Hi10p encoded videos, though, they can struggle a bit with 1080p Hi10P w/ FLAC audio... but it's watchable in most cases, depending on what you're watching and whether anything else is going on that also adds CPU load...
However, the SoC in this PC stick is on the lower end of the scale... So it may struggle a bit more and may require lowering expectations to 720P for smooth playback...
Price seems steep. You can get a tablet like the HP Stream 7 for < 100 dollars. Not sure why this would cost > 50% more when there is no battery or screen to drive up cost. If this were priced in the 70-80 dollar range that would make much more sense.
Probably better off considering something like the Surface 3 with Cherry Trail, the new Gen 8 GPU is significantly better than Bay Trail's Gen 7 GPU and the display port should easily handle a 4K display better than most models with HDMI output...
I don't know how that can be considered an effective thermal solution. Maybe it is how tiny the chasis is. In my T100 with the z3740 (and plastic chasis, but obviously a larger chasis than the compute stick, but the compute stick has active cooling), I hit 1.83-1.86GHz and the CPU will stay pegged there under max load. I don't think I've ever monitored it for more than ~10 minutes, but running handbrake on it to test, it loaded all 4 cores at 95-99% and over the course of 10 minutes it never dropped the CPU frequency below that 1.83-1.86GHz range.
The brief bit of testing (VERY brief) running some games (Kerbal space program actually) my T100 runs (after a minute or two to settle the thermals) the CPU at 1.33-1.6GHz generally and the GPU at around 450MHz or so with some brief bursts on both up towards 1.7GHz and 650MHz respectively.
Also 8w sounds like a LOT of power. Back to the whole KSP thing, I can get a little over 5 hours of battery life on my T100 running KSP, which is on a 31hwr battery, which equates to about 6 watts of average consumption under heavy CPU and GPU load (okay, probably not be as high as prime + furmark) for the ENTIRE platform, SoC, memory, screen, keyboard dock, etc. I'd be shocked if the SoC itself was drawing more than 4w.
For this chassis size, I will call the thermal solution effective since the CPU is running at the rated 1.3 GHz without throttling for more than 30 minutes, all the while maintaining the temperature below 85 C for the CPU package. The only time I would call a thermal solution ineffective is if it allows the CPU to reach junction temperature or makes the CPU run at less than rated speed.
I guess that is a point, but since it seems to throttle within just a couple of seconds back towards or to base clock, I think I'd call that thermal solution marginal. Does the processor melt down or throttle below base clock? No, but at the same time, the turbo core speeds seem close to worthless, because only occasionally would you ever see them.
At least something that can manage to hit max turbo for 10-20s, you would likely see real benefits of that in a lot of light work loads, but here you'd only get to experience it for very, very brief periods of time (perhaps a webpage load, but you aren't going to see it in an application load even).
The WiFi speed is barely adequate, and that is only 20' away. Given the single radio, any issues whatsoever and video would hiccup. I think for about the same price or a little more, it would be safer to have a slightly bigger box. 'Something in the NUC range. After all, you aren't really saving that much space, and the thing still needs a power plug anyway.
Looking at the performance as a whole, it is nowhere near impressive. But if you consider the price of this, there is not much to complain to be honest. I am looking forward to something like this with the new Cherry Trail chip to use as my HTPC.
Are there any interoperability issues with BT and WIFI? I'm asking because I have a Tronsmart 4-core stick (actually 2) and when I am connected to 2.4GHz Wifi and use a BT mouse, I cannot watch anything. I noticed this first with HBO go, where using a BT mouse would result in not playing. but even in play store I had lots of "retry" messages. Then I saw this about a Hanspree clone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RQORH45TGR8KU/ref=c... "The WiFi and Bluetooth can get a bit flaky if used together. Using one causes the other to slow down or drop out completely. I've got a USB network adapter attached so I can use a bluetooth controller. Those wanting to use this as a steam machine might want to either do the same, or use a wireless 360 controller with its adapter to avoid using the bluetooth and WiFi together." This led me to the conclusion that 1x1 2.4GHz radio cannot work reliably with BT and Wifi.
Strange to reply to my own mail. But I've seen some posts about people realizing a slower Wifi connection when BT is active (even about Apple devices). So maybe this stick does has a stable connection, but the wifi performance is degraded by Bluetooth activity. So please, please, tell us how you tested (BT mouse+KB ?) and also report the other way. This is really important for this class of devices.
I got curious and tested out by disabling Bluetooth completely. Peak TCP Wi-Fi performance with our test router gave around 15 Mbps in the same physical setting. A slight improvement, but I suspect the BT interference is not that bad in the Compute Stick.
Actually, in my experience, it's the BT transfer that's problematic. As in: if I click on something and don't move the mouse, it works correctly, but if I keep moving the mouse, cursor is jerky and network problems appear. So you tested with BT completely off....it is a good info. But did you also move the BT mouse while testing?
Saying that the absence of HD audio bitstreaming will not bother too many consumers is flat out entirely false.
Any HTPC MUST have the ability to bitstream HD audio. It is a 100% REQUIRED and ESSENTIAL ability.
Why bother having an HTPC that can only output DVD quality? Makes zero sense. May as well get a proper blu-ray player or a media player from 5 years ago that is quite capable of bitstreaming HD audio.
It is a complete and utter fail.
Sorry, Intel screwed this up. This is entirely, 100% useless to me until they give it the ability to bitstream HD audio.
So I guess you don't travel and use the hotel's (maybe) stereo TV, where HD audio is impossible. To listen to HD audio you already need a serious 5.1 (or more) receiver, which means size does not really matter and most likely you already have a BD player. So go buy the NUC. Also videos with HD audio tracks need so much storage that the compactness of this device is useless , as it can't power directly a 2.5"HDD or BD reader, which means you need an additional power brick. This is before I get to the single USB port.
Having HD audio bitstream would be nice, but, if you are having an AVR capable of bitstreaming I strongly suggest you spend a little more and get a NUC or some other 'capable' HTPC for playback purposes.
"32 GB, simply put, is just not enough after Windows installs a couple of updates."
Although I do agree there are other options. Remove the recovery partition, disable virtual memory, disable hibernation etc to grab back all of the space. Also after installing updates run disk cleanup to recover even more space taken by the updates.
Yeah I was wondering this. Once you have Windows fully installed you can usually claw back 3-5GB easy. I've got fully setup Windows 10 preview installs down to around 11GB doing such things. DiskCleanup works wonders. 32GB is plenty for a light on the go setup. Why do folks still need to carry around TBs of data?
Speaking of storage, Ganesh can you confirm if this runs using WIMBoot? I worked on WIMboot using a 32GB tablet with 19GB free space which includes educational software, latest updates, and Office 365 in the recovery image/partition.
So basically the only use for this thing is turning a dumb tv into a smart tv? If you already have a DLNA compatible tv with a built in web browser what extra does this little stick bring to the table? I can already use DLNA streaming to stream movies, tv shows, and mp3's to my tv and I can use the built in web browser to browse the web and the built in youtube and netflix apps to use those services. I guess this thing is cool if your tv is a very basic model with no extra features or older before those features became almost standard.
Other than streaming video and browsing the web there is nothing else this stick will be powerful enough to do and good smart tv's can already do all of this. You need an HTPC if you want to do other PC things on your tv as this stick doesn't have the power.
I have an ncase m1 htpc running an i7-3770t undervolted to 1.05v at stock clocks cooled with Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm fan with the ULNA adapter attached and coollaboratory liquid metal ultra TIM and the Noctua NF-B9-1600 92mm rear exhaust with ULNA adapter attached. Asus P8Z77-I deluxe mobo. 4x 120mm noctua intake fans all with ULNA attached (2x side 2x bottom). Silverstone 600 watt SFX PSU 80+ gold semi fanless mode. No optical drive have 512GB samsung 840 pro in slim optical drive bay. GSkill TridentX 2x8GB 2400Mhz Cas 10 DDR3. Recently added EVGA 4GB GTX 960 custom repasted with coollaboratory liquid metal ultra which replaced the GTX 660ti mainly for the hardware HEVC decode and the ability of the fans to shut off completely below 60C and a little for the gaming increase also for the decrease in power and heat. It has no standard HDD's and uses my NAS for bulk storage of movies and tv shows connected via 1Gbit ethernet as my house was completely wired for ethernet before wifi became a reliable thing. OS, apps and games installed on SSD.
Even though this system has infinite more power than the compute stick believe it or not it actually runs dead silent and may actually even be quieter. Even though this has 6 fans + 2 gpu fans and 1 psu fan the 6 noctua fans with ULNA adapters cannot be heard over ambient noise at all. The psu fan and gpu fans do not even turn on unless you are playing a demanding game and even then they can only be very slightly heard if there is a lull in the noise coming from inside the actual game. Haven't tested how demanding the hardware HEVC decode is on the gpu if it's enough to push the gpu over 60C to turn the fans on as I don't have a 4k tv yet but the way the ncase is set up the 2x 120mm intake fans on the bottom are just centimeters away from the GPU so the gpu gets cold air forced on to it at all times whether its fans are on or not which really helps from keeping the noisy gpu fans from ever coming on in all but the most demanding situations.
Yes I know the price difference is massive. As my system was 10 times the cost of the compute stick 1500 vs 150 and that doesn't even count the NAS system used to augment it. But I think it's money well spent as I can do more than 10 times the tasks the compute stick can at more than 10 times the speed.
I can only see the most casual of casual users ever wanting a stick like this. A real enthusiast will build a real HTPC and the 1500 is a large initial outlay but most of the parts can be reused for a long time coming. I won't need a new cpu and mobo till at least the 7nm tock and won't get a new ssd till the new cpu and mobo upgrade which will be an nvme ultra m2 with 1TB capacity and won't get a new GPU till at least 10nm as well unless major progress is made on video decoders. The case will be a forever thing as well as the PSU and fans at least until they die. Will have to get new ram only because of DDR4 taking over by the time the 7nm tock rolls around but prices will be like ddr3 prices now by then. The stick is so underpowered you will be buying new generations of it every single year out of desperation for more power and pretty soon the money difference isn't as large as it initially looks and you get so much more enjoyment out of a real HTPC.
I could understand the problems and compromises (like the fan) in a prototype, but this seems really poor for a final product. They could easily have avoided the fan by making the casing out of aluminium; sure it would be added cost, but not much, and would have resulted in a far superior product, as I don't know about anyone else, but I expect a stick computer to be silent like any good mobile phone.
The Wi-Fi performance is also pretty shocking; this is a device that, by its nature, is likely to be stuck on the back of a monitor, so it's not an ideal location for good Wi-Fi reception to begin with, which means that good Wi-Fi performance is a prerequisite to any device of this type.
It's a shame, as it's not a bad processor with all things considered, and the other specs seem decent as well.
nice product. adds some value to a tv and fits perfectly in the gap between pc and mobile gadgets. would be already enough for me to do my work but, as with other products, the usability seems to be cut down due to the 2gb ram.
“Intel announced the Compute Stick […] Late last month, Google also introduced the Chromebit. Both of these point to the 'stick' computing platform being more than just a passing fad.”
That doesn’t logically follow at all. Intel and Google and the rest of the PC industry produce tons of things that nobody buys.
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Arnulf - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Looks like a massive fail, but then again what else to expect from such a small form factor ...kyuu - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
If you think this is a "massive fail", the problem is probably more your expectations than the product.jospoortvliet - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Or he's comparing it to the competition... Chromecast for one. It might not be as powerful but what it does it does well - without an annoying fan or bad/unreliable wifi. And at a very low price.Yeah, this doesn't impress me either, mostly due to the failure to make this fanless. The drive size is fine (put Linux with Kodi on it) but the bad wlan - that is a fail, too.
Still, yeah, first gen, Intel is good at incremental improvement so I bet gen 2 will be much much better.
JeffFlanagan - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
This isn't something comparable to a Chromecast. Chromecast is an extremely limited device. I've already replaced one with a much more capable Fire stick, and may replace the other with one of these or another low power PC.usernametaken76 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I'm going to have to agree with you on that, Jeff. This does what they say it does, and it runs Windows. So you can build and compile your own local applications and there's no need for a "network" operating system like ChromeOS. For some users, that's what they want and/or need. You could easily build a Plex server and run the Plex app on this device and be quite happy, I'll assume. It would be nice to have more of a "user experience" review. Performance metrics are interesting, but if I spend $150 on an HDMI stick, I don't care how fast it can encode video, decrypt files, etc. I care how it will perform as a media streamer, can it run any games (highly limited here), can it be a remote streamer for Steam (unlikely for this first gen device), etc. That's what matters to me for something like this.Deelron - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The first thing I thought when I saw it was Plex server, but the networking solution isn't sufficient enough in my book. While I guess you could add a USB to Ethernet dongle (or thumb wireless solution), that seems kludgey at best. It's an interesting step towards something more usable in the future.usernametaken76 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
If you mean "Plex client" with the server running elsewhere, then I think its existing wireless is already sufficient. Plex "tops out" at 20 Mbps for streaming, and that's adjustable in the client all the way down to sub HD speeds < ~3 Mbps. You have the option to transcode everything on the Plex server when doing this, and Intel's stick here would be more than capable of handling that situation, provided there's not a lot of WiFi interference on the 2.4 GHz band. If it's 5 Ghz (admit I didn't read the full specs) then less so, but distance is the issue.bigkev1978 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Massive fail seems like a bit harsh... I will admit that I haven't used the Compute Stick but I have had a Hannspree Micro PC (www.stickpcstore.com/stick-pcs/hannspree-windows-8-stick-pc-quad-core-1-83-ghz-2gb-ram-32gb-windows-8-1-micro-pc-snnpdi1b.html) for a couple of months and it is very similar spec to the Compute Stick... and it is great... yes it is not an i5 or i7 PC... but it does "light productivity" really well... Word, Excel, Outlook... browsing the web. I've got in plugged into my front room TV (42") and use it occasionally all the time. I agree the WiFI could be better but hopefully this will be a second gen update.Refuge - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I was reading MAXPC's review, its up on their site. They don't obviously offer the kind of solid quantifiable metrics that I get here, but they are usually good for a user experience overview.They said that it streamed everything from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu to steam in home perfectly. Playing games with no noticeable input lag, and that it streamed 1080p videos without a problem.
The way they described the fan, is that it was just a high pitched hum that you wouldn't hear unless you were in a dead silent room, which is something that I would never deal with if this were on my living Room TV.
They said they got something like 20 FPS on Portal 1 playing it from the stick itself.
azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I am a little dissapointed (especially the neutered GPU chops, even compared to other Baytrail SoCs), but at the same time, it seems like it would make a perfectly good LIGHT HTPC. I am not super interested this time around, but if the price stays the same, I might be very interested with Cherry Trail if the drop in process size helps out with maintaining higher frequencies under load, better GPU, etc.azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Also, PS where the heck is the Airmont architectual review and Surface 3 review? I feel like Anand had a Silvermont arch review within a couple of weeks (+/-) of Bay Trail being released and even a preview one a couple of months before. I have seen nada on Airmont so far and a couple of reviews of the surface 3 from othersites a couple of days ago.kyuu - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Yeah I'm definitely missing the indepth reviews of new processors. Hopefully that's not something that has gone away with Anand's departure.tuxRoller - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I run plex on a local machine along with bubble. Those two handle pulling in various streams and transcoding everything properly to the chromecast.Xpl1c1t - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
14nm. Sure will be better!maxxbot - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Chromecast only does one very specific thing while this is a general purpose machine, the two products are not comparable at all.close - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Why not compare it with a Kindle? Which also has a screen so it must be better...duploxxx - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
have ugoos m2 for about a year now, half the price, 1/4 power consumption. full XBMC support.x86 is useless in uber small form factor
Jumangi - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Chromecast? This is a fully working PC. Have you heard the phrase Apple and Oranges?Marthisdil - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Except Chromecast isn't a valid comparison. Chromecast doesn't do anything...It's a neat tool for casting from a computer or mobile device to your tv...but that's about all it does.
the comparison isn't valid
Jumangi - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
They got a fully working windows machine onto a USB sized stick for $150 that includes Windows. That it works at all is impressive.Drumsticks - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review. Can somebody smarter than me explain why exactly 23.976 Hz is important? I assume that's the refresh rate used in movies, but is deviating slightly from that really so noticeable, or why is it so important? *never messed with HTPC stuff*Guspaz - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
In the worst case, you're going to display those 23.976 FPS movies on a 60Hz screen. But they don't divide evenly. Ideally, you want each image to be on the screen for ~41.7ms, but a 60Hz display only works in multiples of ~16.7ms. So the closest you can get is displaying each image for ~33.3ms.But as you can see, 33.3ms is not the same as 41.7ms, so you end up having to display some frames for 33.3ms, and some frames for 50ms. The result is that motion that should be smooth appears jittery, because each frame is displayed for a different amount of time.
The closer your display can get to actually displaying 23.976Hz, the fewer frames you'll need delay like that. If your display can do an even 24Hz, then you'll need to double up a frame every ~42 seconds. Not so bad. And the closer you get, the longer between doubled frames. And if you nail it at 23.976Hz, then you never double frames, and it looks great.
madwolfa - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
FWIW, I'm just using Smooth Motion feature of MadVR and it works great with 60Hz displays and 24 FPS content. Needs some GPU power, though.joex4444 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The 23.976Hz is technically 24/1001, almost as if it originally derived from an "off-by-one" error in computing frames. Anyways, any multiple of that works just as well as the 23.976Hz display rate. Similarly, any multiple of 24Hz works as well as 24Hz.And one may ask what rates are available that are multiples of 24Hz to find a good solution. For example, 48Hz and 96Hz don't exist nor does 72Hz. The next multiple would be 120Hz, so by displaying each frame 5 times, each time lasting 8.34ms, one can similarly achieve a scenario that is fairly jitter free. Though in this case one wouldn't have to occasionally display a frame for an extra 16.67ms, but instead an extra 8.34ms.
The next multiple available would be 6, yielding 144Hz and a refresh time of 6.95ms.
In these cases that means going from 60Hz to 144Hz implies that when a frame is displayed an extra refresh cycle to kick the clock back in sync (like leap day does with the calendar), the "lag" experienced decreases from 16.67ms to 6.95ms, making that effect less than half as noticeable. However the real change from 60 to 120/144Hz is that the latter is a multiple of 24 while the former is not. The former, as you say, requires one to either display things for 33.3ms or 50ms and that causes some noticeable problems depending on the scene. Human reaction time is about 100ms, perhaps 80ms in someone young. However that's the time to react to something, we notice things on a shorter scale (see fighter pilots).
Laststop311 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Actually plasma displays do have 72hz and 96hz refresh rates. Pioneer kuro's have a 72hz refresh mode and panasonics have 96hz refresh mode. The cheaper panasonics have a 48hz mode but it introduced flicker that made it unwatchable so 72hz was the slowest refresh rate that is watchable and compatible with 24 fps film. This was one of their big selling points as they can natively play 24fps blu ray films at their intended speed without 3:2 pulldown. I know this for a fact as I have a Panasonic plasma that can accept a 1080p24 signal from a bluray using 96hz by repeating each frame of the movie 4 times 4:4 pulldown i believe.kyuu - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I'm not 100%, but I believe the issue is that the disparity in the refresh rate adds up over time and results in skipped frames here and there.babgvant - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Refresh rate accuracy is important because when it's wrong frames get dropped to keep A/V in sync. For 24p (23.976) this is especially important because there are fewer frames, so it's much more noticeable. In this case 23.973 isn't bad (i.e. there won't be many frames that go missing), but it's not what we've come to expect, and enjoy, from Intel's other systems that get it pretty much perfect.nathanddrews - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Fortunately, you can pick up 100Mb and 1GbE USB adapters for under $10, so the networking performance can be greatly improved with little effort... but the lack of HD bitstreaming is a complete fail for HTPC use. If it's anything like my other Bay Trail devices, it will also struggle with Steam In-Home Streaming.Can't wait for v2.0!
mwildtech - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I have a Baytrail powered Zotac Pico PI320. I'm using the 10/100 Ethernet port, and it does Steam in-home streaming @ 1080p/60 pretty well. Though Baytrail doesn't have QuickSync, the DVXA decoder does a decent job.ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The issue I foresee is that if you are going to make the setup unwieldy with an adapter hanging off the Compute Stick - then, the advantage of the form factor is lost. You might as well pick up one of the other mini-PCs compared in this review, but that is just my opinionDeelron - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Pretty much this, plus if you're already invested in a moderate sized or greater NAS solution, it seems like it'd be pretty cost efficient to just step up to a low priced NUC anyway, unless the form factor of a large stick out the back of the TV is absolutely critical.zeo - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Unless your device is using one of a few select Celeron branded Bay Trail's then it does support Quick Sync... Bay Trail uses a Gen 7 (Ivy Bridge) GPU that's just scaled down to 4EU's and slower clock for mobile usage but still supports features like Quick Sync...joex4444 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Running a 1Gbe connection over 480Mbps USB 2.0 is inherently going to limit you. Still better than the 50Mbps or so you *might* get over the 802.11n, but really... running a CAT5 cable out to your TV is bordering on the non-trivial. Even if feasible it's not clean.nathanddrews - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
It's no more complicated than any other cable and is every bit as clean. I bought this http://amzn.com/B005LW4CFG a few years ago and it has made it trivial to run all my cables (HDMI, speaker wire, networking) through walls. Very feasible and clean.As for the 1GbE connection over USB 2.0 - it is slower than real GbE - but the gains in latency and throughput make it possible to stream so much more than the weak wifi permits. It's worth doing.
Hulk - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
This is an interesting idea but for me there are too many limitations for me to consider it. Now at 10nm with a lower power x86 2/4 processor and 120GB of controller based storage I'd be interested as a HTPC or computer for my kids.jjj - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
So a SoC that due it's perf is worth 5$ , the NAND+RAM are less than 25$, the wifi must be 3$ or less and all in all 150$ is way too much. Damn x86 monopoly.Refuge - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
You can bet a lot of it is probably licensing for Windows 8.1. This isn't Windows with Bing.Lonyo - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The WIndows license is $40. The Ubuntu version is $110 vs $150 for the Windows 8.1 version.ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Note that there is 24 GB of extra eMMC for the Win 8.1 version.BMNify - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Ubuntu version is cheaper because it has just 1GB of ram and 8GB storage, Windows 8.1 version has 2GB ram and 32GB of storage.BMNify - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
This is free windows license, windows with Bing is mentioned in the review which is provided free to OEM's.kyuu - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Uh, except it is Windows with Bing. As mentioned in the article.Marc GP - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It's huge compared with the Asustek Chromebit, it can't be much comfortable to carry with you everywhere.No thank you. Put that capability on the phone instead (that I have no problem to always carry it).
tekeffect - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I considered preordering this. Thankfully I did not. Thanks for the review. Can anyone suggest the best device to use for plex on 4 k TV ? I would like as small as possible without massive sacrificesMarc GP - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Have you considered the Asus Chromebit ?http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-chromebit/
It's fanless, much smaller and powerful (specially the GPU, that is capable of 4k).
It comes with Chrome OS, but looks like there is a Plex app for Chrome.
Uplink10 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Google's Chrome OS can't even compare to Windows or Linux, it is more like a Thin client.Dug - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Too limiting for my needs. I just picked up an HP stream mini for $10 more.Yes it's bigger, but still fits in the palm of your hand. Added 8GB of ram and stuck to back of TV and good to go.
Lonyo - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It's also more versatile because it can be used without a TV since it has a screen.BMNify - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
HP Steam Mini does not have a screen, you are confusing HP stream laptop with HP stream Mini desktop PC.Uplink10 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
HP Stream Mini is also limited, you can't put in 2.5" drive without some additional cable.Better to buy Zotac miniPC (ZBOX ID18,...) or Gygabite BRIX with 4-core Bay Trail CPU and add additional 4GB RAM and 2.5" HDD.
You will pay: miniPC (120$) + RAM (35$) + HDD (45$) = 200$
But you will have much better hardware and BIOS which will undoubtedly support Legacy BIOS booting option and more options thatn HP Stream Mini.
ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
IMO, lack of Ethernet and terrible WiFi performance kills the product from the start.This is obviously intended to turn a TV into a media host device with the added functionality of running Windows, but if a very slow WiFi connection is the only way to get connected, then the product is rather useless.
With a decent WiFi AC receiver, this would be the ideal Steam Home Streaming client.
Krysto - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Slow and expensive for what it offers - I'd say that defines Intel pretty well these days.Krysto - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Oh and don't forget this is the kind of "Celerons" and "Pentiums" we're going to see from now on - for $100-$160 a chip.Drumsticks - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Not really sure why you're ignoring the $50 Celeron G1820 which is a 2.7Ghz Haswell chip, but hell if it makes you feel better go ahead.Drumsticks - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Edit: And if you're referring to mobile bay/cherry trail parts, it's not like consumers can personally buy those anyways.Refuge - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Thats right, because Microsoft lets Intel use Windows for FREE.Forgot that deal.
v1001 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Wait a minute so every single one of these is going to crap out when people go to add the windows updates?? How is that acceptable? They can't seriously expect everyone who buys this to find a work around do they? Is Windows 10 smaller? Any luck there with upgrading to that in July? I want to buy a few of these for some TV's. But I'm not going to cut it that close on the updates, I mean what happens on the next windows update and that's it, you went over and can't do a single thing after that...Marc GP - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Looks like you'd be much better served with something like the HP Stream Mini.Uplink10 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Stop advertising HP Stream Mini, Zotac miniPC or Gygabite BRIX barebones are better and you can even put in youtr desired HDD and RAM and they only cost around 120$. See my post above.dtgoodwin - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I'm surprised that they had issues with updates. I'm running a Winbook 7" with only 1GB of ram and 16 GB on board storage. I've added a microSD 64-gig card, but windows updates will only stage/install on the c: partition. I've got less than 1 GB free, but all the updates have applied - I just got this two weeks ago, so I'd consider it a fairly comparable situation. I did run disk cleanup including system updates, but I never ran into an error. It is too bad that there's no way to extend the drive space of c: using a microSD, or to have Windows seamlessly use it for temp files, or be able to move other files to it. It would also greatly help if they allowed you to move the "recovery" partition to a USB stick and be able to recover by placing that back in the device. Recovering 5 GB of space would be really helpful. Of course, my tablet only cost $40.00. It also plays NetFlix and Youtube output to HDMI acceptably, and even my medium bitrate Blu-Ray rips.Refuge - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
There are other reviews, that have not ran into any such problems installing the updates to the stick.So no, that isn't the case.
ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Did they even mention whether they tried to do the update ? In any case, after the 'Refresh', I installed 1.3+ GB of updates all over again, and the second time went without a hitch. I think it depends on a lot of factors - eMMC behavior etc. , but, in general, it would be preferable to have plenty of free space on the primary drive for OSes such as Windows.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Great review as always, but the Compute Stick isn't quite enough and it really doesn't have much to do with the CPU, but storage. The 32GB of storage problem has really been the biggest turn off of these kinds of small computing platforms. It'd work fine for most Linux distros, but Windows needs a good 16-32GB more, I think, before the device becomes flexible enough to use for things beyond very basic content consumption. I'd had hopes about Cherry Trail systems sticking around the same price point while offering a generational improvement in storage capacity, but with Intel's pricing, I have doubts that there'll be a sub-$150 device that ships with 2GB of RAM and 64GB solid state storage in the near term.Mr Perfect - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
PPSTCK1A32WFC? Uhm, how much do you want to bet that people start calling it the peepee stick. I wonder if this was the marketing guys having a laugh, or if they honestly didn't think the name was questionable. It should be standard practice to run marketing material past a fifth-grader to see if they laugh(or me, apparently).BMNify - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Intel Compute Stick is the name of the product, looks pretty simple and self-explanatory to me, the detailed product code number is not marketed by anyone.biofishfreak - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Ganesh, do you know/ can you test if you can add this Compute Stick to a Windows domain?ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It is running Win 8.1 with Bing - not Pro or Enterprise - as far as I can see, it is not possible to add this to a Windows domain.Kinemaxx - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
So, the question that runs through my mind in every single one of these types of reviews, yet never seems to be given consideration: How well can these units play back Hi10p encoded h264 video? (either 720p or 1080p) Hi10p can't be GPU accelerated, so can they play video like that back at all, or will it be like watching a slideshow (as was the case on a friend's very early netbook)? I know Kodi is capable of playing back 10-bit video, so since they used Kodi in the test, it should certainly be testable.zeo - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Bay Trail is a good step up from the older Netbook ATOMs... 2-3x the performance... Chippy, from UMPCPortal, has a video demonstrating Hi10p playback. X.264 10-bit encoded file on a Bay Trail based Intel NUC... if you want to see how well Bay Trail handles such videos...Basically, Bay Trail's can usually handle Hi10p encoded videos, though, they can struggle a bit with 1080p Hi10P w/ FLAC audio... but it's watchable in most cases, depending on what you're watching and whether anything else is going on that also adds CPU load...
However, the SoC in this PC stick is on the lower end of the scale... So it may struggle a bit more and may require lowering expectations to 720P for smooth playback...
Twingo - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Price seems steep. You can get a tablet like the HP Stream 7 for < 100 dollars. Not sure why this would cost > 50% more when there is no battery or screen to drive up cost. If this were priced in the 70-80 dollar range that would make much more sense.uzm - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
can it output 4K desktop? I'm looking for something that can drive an image slideshow on a 4K TV.zeo - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Probably better off considering something like the Surface 3 with Cherry Trail, the new Gen 8 GPU is significantly better than Bay Trail's Gen 7 GPU and the display port should easily handle a 4K display better than most models with HDMI output...Bansaku - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I wonder if you could Hackintosh it?azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I don't know how that can be considered an effective thermal solution. Maybe it is how tiny the chasis is. In my T100 with the z3740 (and plastic chasis, but obviously a larger chasis than the compute stick, but the compute stick has active cooling), I hit 1.83-1.86GHz and the CPU will stay pegged there under max load. I don't think I've ever monitored it for more than ~10 minutes, but running handbrake on it to test, it loaded all 4 cores at 95-99% and over the course of 10 minutes it never dropped the CPU frequency below that 1.83-1.86GHz range.The brief bit of testing (VERY brief) running some games (Kerbal space program actually) my T100 runs (after a minute or two to settle the thermals) the CPU at 1.33-1.6GHz generally and the GPU at around 450MHz or so with some brief bursts on both up towards 1.7GHz and 650MHz respectively.
Also 8w sounds like a LOT of power. Back to the whole KSP thing, I can get a little over 5 hours of battery life on my T100 running KSP, which is on a 31hwr battery, which equates to about 6 watts of average consumption under heavy CPU and GPU load (okay, probably not be as high as prime + furmark) for the ENTIRE platform, SoC, memory, screen, keyboard dock, etc. I'd be shocked if the SoC itself was drawing more than 4w.
ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
For this chassis size, I will call the thermal solution effective since the CPU is running at the rated 1.3 GHz without throttling for more than 30 minutes, all the while maintaining the temperature below 85 C for the CPU package. The only time I would call a thermal solution ineffective is if it allows the CPU to reach junction temperature or makes the CPU run at less than rated speed.azazel1024 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I guess that is a point, but since it seems to throttle within just a couple of seconds back towards or to base clock, I think I'd call that thermal solution marginal. Does the processor melt down or throttle below base clock? No, but at the same time, the turbo core speeds seem close to worthless, because only occasionally would you ever see them.At least something that can manage to hit max turbo for 10-20s, you would likely see real benefits of that in a lot of light work loads, but here you'd only get to experience it for very, very brief periods of time (perhaps a webpage load, but you aren't going to see it in an application load even).
zodiacfml - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Pricey but its probably tested to run 24 7 on a display for ads....than cheaper intel windows tablets. Id reccomend this at my work.valnar - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The WiFi speed is barely adequate, and that is only 20' away. Given the single radio, any issues whatsoever and video would hiccup. I think for about the same price or a little more, it would be safer to have a slightly bigger box. 'Something in the NUC range. After all, you aren't really saving that much space, and the thing still needs a power plug anyway.cen - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It pisses me off to no end when Anandtech does not test Linux with these devices.CharonPDX - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Not a fail to me - just a very specific set of use cases.Micro HTPC (car-PC?)
"Always with you" desktop PC you can plug in to just about any TV (along with a micro Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo.)
Business "thin client" type PC.
Full-function Raspberry Pi replacement.
watzupken - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Looking at the performance as a whole, it is nowhere near impressive. But if you consider the price of this, there is not much to complain to be honest. I am looking forward to something like this with the new Cherry Trail chip to use as my HTPC.mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Are there any interoperability issues with BT and WIFI? I'm asking because I have a Tronsmart 4-core stick (actually 2) and when I am connected to 2.4GHz Wifi and use a BT mouse, I cannot watch anything. I noticed this first with HBO go, where using a BT mouse would result in not playing. but even in play store I had lots of "retry" messages.Then I saw this about a Hanspree clone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RQORH45TGR8KU/ref=c...
"The WiFi and Bluetooth can get a bit flaky if used together. Using one causes the other to slow down or drop out completely. I've got a USB network adapter attached so I can use a bluetooth controller. Those wanting to use this as a steam machine might want to either do the same, or use a wireless 360 controller with its adapter to avoid using the bluetooth and WiFi together."
This led me to the conclusion that 1x1 2.4GHz radio cannot work reliably with BT and Wifi.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Strange to reply to my own mail.But I've seen some posts about people realizing a slower Wifi connection when BT is active (even about Apple devices).
So maybe this stick does has a stable connection, but the wifi performance is degraded by Bluetooth activity.
So please, please, tell us how you tested (BT mouse+KB ?) and also report the other way. This is really important for this class of devices.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I got curious and tested out by disabling Bluetooth completely. Peak TCP Wi-Fi performance with our test router gave around 15 Mbps in the same physical setting. A slight improvement, but I suspect the BT interference is not that bad in the Compute Stick.mathew7 - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Actually, in my experience, it's the BT transfer that's problematic. As in: if I click on something and don't move the mouse, it works correctly, but if I keep moving the mouse, cursor is jerky and network problems appear.So you tested with BT completely off....it is a good info. But did you also move the BT mouse while testing?
SilverBlade - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Saying that the absence of HD audio bitstreaming will not bother too many consumers is flat out entirely false.Any HTPC MUST have the ability to bitstream HD audio. It is a 100% REQUIRED and ESSENTIAL ability.
Why bother having an HTPC that can only output DVD quality? Makes zero sense. May as well get a proper blu-ray player or a media player from 5 years ago that is quite capable of bitstreaming HD audio.
It is a complete and utter fail.
Sorry, Intel screwed this up. This is entirely, 100% useless to me until they give it the ability to bitstream HD audio.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
So I guess you don't travel and use the hotel's (maybe) stereo TV, where HD audio is impossible.To listen to HD audio you already need a serious 5.1 (or more) receiver, which means size does not really matter and most likely you already have a BD player. So go buy the NUC.
Also videos with HD audio tracks need so much storage that the compactness of this device is useless , as it can't power directly a 2.5"HDD or BD reader, which means you need an additional power brick. This is before I get to the single USB port.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Having HD audio bitstream would be nice, but, if you are having an AVR capable of bitstreaming I strongly suggest you spend a little more and get a NUC or some other 'capable' HTPC for playback purposes.Anyways, Netflix DD+ bitstreaming works.
Tranzaction77 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The Netbook of Compute Sticks.damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
"32 GB, simply put, is just not enough after Windows installs a couple of updates."Although I do agree there are other options. Remove the recovery partition, disable virtual memory, disable hibernation etc to grab back all of the space. Also after installing updates run disk cleanup to recover even more space taken by the updates.
Not sure why this is never mentioned.
jabber - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Yeah I was wondering this. Once you have Windows fully installed you can usually claw back 3-5GB easy. I've got fully setup Windows 10 preview installs down to around 11GB doing such things. DiskCleanup works wonders. 32GB is plenty for a light on the go setup. Why do folks still need to carry around TBs of data?zodiacfml - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Speaking of storage, Ganesh can you confirm if this runs using WIMBoot?I worked on WIMboot using a 32GB tablet with 19GB free space which includes educational software, latest updates, and Office 365 in the recovery image/partition.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I suspect not, because I saw only 17.1 GB of 23 GB free after initial setup - no other programs installed.zodiacfml - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Thanks. I wonder why they didn't bothered. I find that it works pretty well, might be even faster if the storage device has slow read speeds.I hope I could convince people in the office to purchase one of this. It looks fun especially after seeing the fan and heatsink in Tom's review.
Laststop311 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
So basically the only use for this thing is turning a dumb tv into a smart tv? If you already have a DLNA compatible tv with a built in web browser what extra does this little stick bring to the table? I can already use DLNA streaming to stream movies, tv shows, and mp3's to my tv and I can use the built in web browser to browse the web and the built in youtube and netflix apps to use those services. I guess this thing is cool if your tv is a very basic model with no extra features or older before those features became almost standard.Other than streaming video and browsing the web there is nothing else this stick will be powerful enough to do and good smart tv's can already do all of this. You need an HTPC if you want to do other PC things on your tv as this stick doesn't have the power.
I have an ncase m1 htpc running an i7-3770t undervolted to 1.05v at stock clocks cooled with Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm fan with the ULNA adapter attached and coollaboratory liquid metal ultra TIM and the Noctua NF-B9-1600 92mm rear exhaust with ULNA adapter attached. Asus P8Z77-I deluxe mobo. 4x 120mm noctua intake fans all with ULNA attached (2x side 2x bottom). Silverstone 600 watt SFX PSU 80+ gold semi fanless mode. No optical drive have 512GB samsung 840 pro in slim optical drive bay. GSkill TridentX 2x8GB 2400Mhz Cas 10 DDR3. Recently added EVGA 4GB GTX 960 custom repasted with coollaboratory liquid metal ultra which replaced the GTX 660ti mainly for the hardware HEVC decode and the ability of the fans to shut off completely below 60C and a little for the gaming increase also for the decrease in power and heat. It has no standard HDD's and uses my NAS for bulk storage of movies and tv shows connected via 1Gbit ethernet as my house was completely wired for ethernet before wifi became a reliable thing. OS, apps and games installed on SSD.
Even though this system has infinite more power than the compute stick believe it or not it actually runs dead silent and may actually even be quieter. Even though this has 6 fans + 2 gpu fans and 1 psu fan the 6 noctua fans with ULNA adapters cannot be heard over ambient noise at all. The psu fan and gpu fans do not even turn on unless you are playing a demanding game and even then they can only be very slightly heard if there is a lull in the noise coming from inside the actual game. Haven't tested how demanding the hardware HEVC decode is on the gpu if it's enough to push the gpu over 60C to turn the fans on as I don't have a 4k tv yet but the way the ncase is set up the 2x 120mm intake fans on the bottom are just centimeters away from the GPU so the gpu gets cold air forced on to it at all times whether its fans are on or not which really helps from keeping the noisy gpu fans from ever coming on in all but the most demanding situations.
Yes I know the price difference is massive. As my system was 10 times the cost of the compute stick 1500 vs 150 and that doesn't even count the NAS system used to augment it. But I think it's money well spent as I can do more than 10 times the tasks the compute stick can at more than 10 times the speed.
I can only see the most casual of casual users ever wanting a stick like this. A real enthusiast will build a real HTPC and the 1500 is a large initial outlay but most of the parts can be reused for a long time coming. I won't need a new cpu and mobo till at least the 7nm tock and won't get a new ssd till the new cpu and mobo upgrade which will be an nvme ultra m2 with 1TB capacity and won't get a new GPU till at least 10nm as well unless major progress is made on video decoders. The case will be a forever thing as well as the PSU and fans at least until they die. Will have to get new ram only because of DDR4 taking over by the time the 7nm tock rolls around but prices will be like ddr3 prices now by then. The stick is so underpowered you will be buying new generations of it every single year out of desperation for more power and pretty soon the money difference isn't as large as it initially looks and you get so much more enjoyment out of a real HTPC.
Haravikk - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I could understand the problems and compromises (like the fan) in a prototype, but this seems really poor for a final product. They could easily have avoided the fan by making the casing out of aluminium; sure it would be added cost, but not much, and would have resulted in a far superior product, as I don't know about anyone else, but I expect a stick computer to be silent like any good mobile phone.The Wi-Fi performance is also pretty shocking; this is a device that, by its nature, is likely to be stuck on the back of a monitor, so it's not an ideal location for good Wi-Fi reception to begin with, which means that good Wi-Fi performance is a prerequisite to any device of this type.
It's a shame, as it's not a bad processor with all things considered, and the other specs seem decent as well.
elbert - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Were is the 1GB linux version for $89?stefstef - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
nice product. adds some value to a tv and fits perfectly in the gap between pc and mobile gadgets. would be already enough for me to do my work but, as with other products, the usability seems to be cut down due to the 2gb ram.Teetu - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
This is a good first effort. The second version, or competitors follow up, will be good enough to replace my ps3!mofongo7481 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
It might be fun to stream some Steam games from a gaming machine to it while hooked up to the TV.mkozakewich - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I'd just get a $100 WinBook and mount it to the back of the monitor.Teknobug - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
The wifi network in these little things are usually terrible.Eric_WVGG - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
“Intel announced the Compute Stick […] Late last month, Google also introduced the Chromebit. Both of these point to the 'stick' computing platform being more than just a passing fad.”That doesn’t logically follow at all. Intel and Google and the rest of the PC industry produce tons of things that nobody buys.