Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Back in January at CES, Intel showed us a full range of mini desktop PCs that it has been releasing steadily over the course of the year. The first was a new, inexpensive version of its Compute Stick, followed by a new, mainstream Skylake NUC, and finally a quad-core NUC box that wasn't quite like anything the company had done before.

Now Intel has sent us the last device we learned about at the beginning of the year: a Core m3-powered version of the Compute Stick that sits somewhere between the Atom version and the Skylake NUC on the price and performance spectrum. It looks more or less like the Atom version we've already seen, but it introduces a few neat ideas (and enough performance) that it's actually plausible as a general-use desktop computer.

The bad news is the price tag, which at $380 (with Windows, $300 without, and $485 with Windows and a Core m5) is pretty far outside the sub-$150 impulse-buy zone that the other Compute Sticks exist inside. So how well does it work? What compromises do you make when you shrink a decent laptop's worth of power into a stick? And how big is the niche for a relatively powerful, relatively expensive stick-sized desktop, anyway?

A tiny package with a few good ideas

The Core M Compute Sticks look a lot like the newer Atom versions at first blush, but if you look at the ports it becomes more obvious which is which. They only have one USB Type-A port, but they draw power through a USB Type-C port on the other side. A cable (a thick, longish one included in the box) provides both power and data, and there are two more USB Type-A ports built into the power adapter at the other end.

It’s a (still-too-rare) example of the utility that USB Type-C is supposed to deliver, a way to fit more ports into a thing that doesn’t have room for those ports and a way to simultaneously deliver power using a standard connector. Connecting accessories to ports on a power brick that may or may not be easily accessible isn’t ideal, but for things like wired keyboards or other rarely moved accessories it’s a better option than buying a separate hub.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Specs at a glance: Intel Compute Stick STK2m3W64CC OS Windows 10 64-bit CPU 900MHz dual-core Intel Core m3-6Y30 (Turbo Boost up to 2.2GHz) RAM 4GB 1600MHz DDR3L (non upgradeable) GPU Intel HD Graphics 515 (integrated) HDD 64GB eMMC SSD Networking 867Mbps 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 Ports 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB Type-C (power and data), microSD Size 4.49” x 1.50” x 0.47” (114 x 38 x 12mm) Other perks Lock slot Warranty 1 year Price $370 with Windows

The Windows versions of the stick ship with a relatively cruft-free version of 64-bit Windows 10—you get all the software that comes with Intel's drivers plus a remote keyboard app for your phone. One nice touch during setup is that Windows will actually pause to ask you if you'd like to pair a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse if it doesn't detect one, something that OS X and Chrome OS will do by default but that Windows 10 still doesn't think to do for whatever reason. You won't need to dig up a USB keyboard to use with the Compute Stick unless you want to (or if you want to dig into the BIOS settings; the BIOS can work with Bluetooth accessories but they need to be paired from within the BIOS).

The Compute Stick looks a lot like a chunky USB drive. It’s a long black stick with a glossy plastic finish on the end and a matte finish everywhere else. Its main selling point is its unobtrusiveness—it can fit in places where a mid-tower or even a NUC can’t go. It can’t draw the power it needs to run over HDMI, so you’ll need to have that power adapter, but otherwise it’s pretty easy to throw it in a bag and hook it up to anything with an HDMI port, including TVs in classrooms and hotel rooms.

If an x86 PC running Windows or Linux is an absolute necessity for you, this is pretty useful, though it’s hard to imagine too many situations in which the Compute Stick would be more convenient or useful as a portable computer than, say, a laptop.

But the Core M version is at least fast enough and well-specced enough to serve as an actual general-use computer; running Chrome and Office and Slack and Spotify and a handful of other apps on the Atom version, with its weaker SoC and 2GB of RAM, is possible but painful. 4GB of RAM is the absolute minimum I’d want in any PC I was trying to use for work, and 64GB of storage means that editing a bunch of photos or videos is probably out, but multitasking is reasonably pleasant, and I could see it being a good loaner/replacement desktop that IT shops could hand out when a user’s actual desktop is in the shop.

Wireless performance, a major issue in the first-generation Compute Stick, is mostly not a problem here. Wi-Fi connectivity seems good, though the device’s smallish antennas probably won’t work great in areas where wireless reception is weak or flaky. Bluetooth works fine but not great—if your accessories are within three or four feet of the device, everything I tested (a speaker, a mouse, and a keyboard) worked fine. Five or six feet out, the mouse in particular started getting glitchier. Bear that in mind if you want to use the Compute Stick as a TV computer; you won’t get a great 10-foot experience if some of your accessories won’t work when the stick is 10 feet away.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham