MINIX NEO Z83-4, Intel Cherry Trail Fanless Mini PC Windows 10 (64-bit) [4GB/32GB/Dual-Band Wi-Fi/Gigabit Ethernet/Dual Output/4K]. Sold Directly Technology Limited.

For the price of $169.00 and how well it has worked for my media center setup, it is a perfect little machine. We have thousands of CD’s in our music collection and I wanted to create a system where we could archive the entire library with have some space for video as a central media center. It is certainly not a powerful machine by any stretch if you have more intensive applications such as games or video editing. However it excels as a media device which will also easily handle everyday light use for email, internet, office productivity.What impresses me about the unit is how much hardware is packed into the dimensions of 4.8” x 4.8” x 1.2” chassis. Quad core Atom x7-Z8700 Cherry Trail 1.44 ghz to 1.84 ghz, 4 Gigabytes of DDR3 RAM, 32 gb SSD, Dual band Wifi AC, Bluetooth 4.0, gigabit Ethernet, 3x2.0 and 1x3.0 USB ports, HDMI and display port with discreet Broadwell Gen 8 graphics capable of supporting 4K displays, and Windows 10 64 bit. Just having Windows 10 is around $100 for an OEM license.When I was putting my media center system together in my head, some of the major considerations was size, available ports, responsiveness, and overall power consumption. I looked at a couple of Intel HDMI stick computers, but the less expensive unit ($131) had only 2 gb of RAM which is too low for Windows 10 to operate without hiccups. The next model of that series ($349.00) has a M3 processor and more disc space (64 gb) than the Minix (32 gb). The first was affordable, but unacceptable for my needs and the more expensive model was too expensive and didn’t have an Ethernet connection.Out of the box, the unit felt solid and the body being both plastic and mostly aluminum in construction. Since this is a passively cooled system, the aluminum helps disperse the heat from the internal heatsink to the outside. The processor has a TDP of less than 4 watts and the overall unit operates from 2-10 watts from idle to demanding applications. This was ideal because I wanted a system that can be on 24 hours a day and the power consumption level is negligible compared to a regular desktop pc. It puts out very little heat as well!Setup was attaching the power cord and my various connections (Ethernet, external hard drive, USB keyboard, external DVD drive) and startup was a breeze and Windows 10 operates pretty sresponsviely considering the lower end specifications. It booted up in about 30 seconds. With the limited 32 gb SSD where the operating system resides, I attached a 4 terabyte hard drive and the unit is connected to my living room TV at 1080P. I used JRiver Media Center 22 which is truly the most feature-rich program for $50.00 (30 days free trial of a fully functional program) and it helped me devise an even better archival system that includes content streaming to any device on the same network and over the internet on a different network! That was an unexpected feature that I didn’t know about until I downloaded the program. I have started ripping the CD’s into lossless flac and the JRiver program has been great with built in metadata editing, cover art aquistion, and organizes all media . There are free programs, but the ease and organization of JRiver made me a convert and I will be paying for it once the 30 period has expired. It is an easy system to use and it plays anything and at high quality. While I do have it connected to the TV via HDMI, the media center it has become only needs the television screen when ripping cd's. After that everything, including metadata, can be controlled and edited strictly from my phone or tablet. It acts both as a remote to the system as well as media streaming .The Minix z83-4 has performed beyond my expectations and is a bridge between a media streaming device like Roku or Chromecast and a full-fledged Windows computer. For all intents and purposes, even with hardware limitations, it is a Windows 10 desktop. For my purposes, I am able to play CD quality music from it to the stereo and I am also able to stream my own library to up to 5 devices from any remote location. Via Gizmo (free) or JRiver Remote ($9.99) apps, JRiver will stream the original flac quality or transcode it from low to high quality mp3. Both apps do the same thing but the JRiver Remote looks more polished. I tend to stream it at a transcoded 128 kbps if I’m using mobile data but keep it at flac quality with wifi. With a 4 terabyte drive, it should be able to hold around 10,000 CD’s as flac files. I am so pleased with this unit which has made my dream media center possible for those of us who have concerns about storing anything with cloud services. Also, I wanted to get away from MP3's because they lack warmth and classical music just sounds so much better at full quality. The the small profile and low power consumption gave me a discreet and efficient system where a bulky desktop or laptop would have been too cumbersome and expensive. For about $300, I was able to put together a system that can stream any personal media I archive to anywhere in the world if I have an internet connection and a Windows, Apple, or Android device!

I love this PC! I ordered it online in the wee morning hours on a Friday. It was scheduled for free delivery Sunday by 8pm. Actually arrived Saturday around noon! I had no problem setting up the PC, and hooking it up to my 50 inch TV in my living room. Windows 10 set up was a breeze, and I had no issues with connecting wy wireless keyboard. I just plugged in the dongle and it worked fine. Video looks great!I have been running it nearly a week without turning it off. No issues at all. It is quiet, and only slightly warm to the touch. I attached it to the back of my monitor with super duty velcro. I also piggy-backed my 500G external hard drive to it with velcro. And I installed a 128G micro SD card. So while my initial concern was the 32G memory that comes with this device, I now have about 650G of memory, so I should be good for a while.I also connected a 4 port USB hub to it, and also velcroed to the back of the set. So now I have a very functional PC with lots of memory and USB ports hidden out of view in a small spot behind my TV.The only technical problem I had was that Google Chrome was running slow, and not finding web pages, or didn't understand search terms. But after a little research I discovered that I needed to do a winsock re-set. After re-starting my computer, it's working fine.The fully licensed Windows 10 lives up to its billing. But be aware that it does NOT come with Office. I plan to download Open Office, which is a free compatible version.Overall the MINIX-NEO Z83-4 lives up to its billing as a compact, affordable, fast PC for basic computing, surfing, and streaming videos. My speed test showed 118 mbps download, which impressed me. And its nice to no longer have to hear the whirring fan of my old PC. I originally thought of buying the MINIX NGC-1 for its faster processor, larger memory, and Bluetooth. But that unit runs about $200 more. I believe I made the right decision. This unit appears to meet my needs.

Pratique à mettre en route. Fonctionne sans aucun bruit. Par contre, pour la vitesse, faut pas être pressé...

Absolutely brilliant mini PC. Like many, I was sceptical that this all looked too good to be true. But I'm now using it for all daily computing, and it is just fantastic.It arrived in a lovely, high quality sturdy box which inspires confidence. The Minix itself is very well-built, with a mixture of metal and high quality plastics, along with soft grippy rubber feet and a single, subtle LED. It is silent in operation, and you really have to smoosh your ear into the casing to hear the faintest of sounds in there (probably the internal power supply). It doesn't get hot, even under full load only ever so slightly warm.Performance is great, and gets better with time as my web cache builds up, and Windows prefetch gets sorted. After almost a week now, it's as fast as any desktop PC I've used for general computing (web browsing, video playback, word processing). Bootup is remarkably fast from power off,t but because there is no hard disk drive or fan, you can just use sleep instead of shut down anyway, so in real life startup is instant.Power consumption is miniscule, around 2 watts, compared with 1-200 watts for a normal PC which has to power a spinning hard drive, plus fans for PSU and processor. It makes you feel free to leave it on, or just sleep, and know you won't notice it in your power bills and won't wear it out due to lack of moving parts. I guess in the very long term the eMMC internal storage will wear out, but that'll be many, many years down the line.I don't download a lot, so the lack of internal storage isn't really an issue, but I got a 128GB SD card just for the hell of it. Since I mainly use Netflix, Google Play Music, Google Docs and Kodi (Exodus), I don't store much/anything locally. If you do, the SD card will be fine.RAM-wise it seems fine. Right now I have open a Kodi HD stream and 4 Chrome tabs including an HD YouTube video, and I'm only using 2.6 of 3.8GB user-accessible RAM. This is obviously not a computer for those wanting to do video editing or full on gaming, but for most photo editing it's fine, and mobile games via the Microsoft Store are fine.I also found it very comforting that Minix is highly responsive to user feedback, and has a super active forum (minxforums.com) with helpful users and staff patrolling the boards helping out. They have already issued a few BIOS updates which most PC/board manufacturers do extremely rarely. This, coupled with the 2 year warranty and the vast amount of positive press for this computer all over the web, made this a very comfortable, confident purchase for me, and I'm really enjoying using it.I use it with 2 peripherals: Logitech K400, which works superbly, can put the computer in out of sleep and operates everything perfectly (get Logitech Options software to customise fully), and an MX3 Airmouse which works very well after some fiddling, but this is the fault of the remote and not the Minix!I really can't find anything to criticise this box for. If you have normal light computing needs, this is just ideal - no need to run a whole tower like I used to, but being Windows 10 you still have all the capabilities and compatibility that entails. I absolutely love it.

Seriously this PC is incredible value. It's plug & play, it's tiny, it's silent and it provides very decent speed performance. For me it has served both as a media PC for streaming video and as a home based server using a portable drive plugged into the USB 3.0 port. Extremely pleased with this well built machine. I've not used the WiFi antenna because I have it on my network via cable. So without the antenna screwed in, it tucks completely out of sight.

I was just AMAZED how incorrect descriptions sometimes might be.I thought at some point, my Old Pentium 2 back then at old times, worked much faster?It says: Excellent Thermal Design – Perfect balance of speed, temperature, performance and absolute silence.It's not TRUE. It is very slow.It says: Desktop Performance – Lightning-fast and highly responsive user experience.It is NOT TRUE EITHER. When I tried for the first time to move a mouse on the desktop, just right after windows setup, I NOTICED that a mouse arrow is moving with slight latency, it's like you have some processes on the background, but in reality this mini pc just can be enough fast to handle a simple desktop.Opening folder, options, menus and others stuff - works with very low Frame drop.Watching youtube and other videos online via WIFI? Forget about it.I tried netflix - didn't work out. Low quality.My TV handles it way more better. So, I'm going back to use my Smart TV for a while until I find something worthwhile.and this, as it called "mini PC" is going to be returned and never seen again! (really, when you try it first, you understand what I mean).Lastly, just wanna say that I've been dreaming to find mini PC sitting under the TV that will help me do basic things: Watching movies, using Chrome browser and playing simple games. Where are you that small mini PC with the price around 300$ and decent hardware to meet my expectations?

This is a good device, no doubt about that.The packaging and presentation was a level higher than I was expecting. It comes in a really nice box and you plug it in and it jumps right into the last few steps of Windows setup. So it's really easy to get started. Somehow I thought this would be more fiddly.The machine is really small. A silent 10cm square. A full Windows PC in a small box. It runs on the rather hot side of warm, but that doesn't seem to cause a problem. It reminds me of thin-client type machines from days passed. I enjoy the silence when working on it, for sure.The performance level offered is.. interesting. I use it for Remote Desktop and a bit of web browsing and it does both *just about* acceptably, whilst also being noticeably slower than a normal machine. e.g. it does fine at rendering web pages, but maybe slightly sluggish when switching around a lot of tabs or going in and out of full screen videos. But at the same time as struggling a little, it still works well enough.If you were in a mood to get annoyed by any lack of performance, it might annoy you. But given a little patience, it will do the job and give you the feeling that you're achieving a lot while using just about the minimum amount of power possible. That's quite a fun feeling.So I actually use this on my day-job, working on it all day, using Remote Desktop to another machine in the office. It does this good-enough. I do get some painful screen redrawing occasionally but I still live with it okay. I find it quite amusing to be able to do my full time job sitting at a machine with a power level that's about equivalent to a mobile phone. I wonder if my boss would be mad if he knew that.I am also running a service on it. The machine has been on 24/7 since I bought it, exactly 3 months ago now, with me using it during working hours and a service running all day and night. In that time, I barely noticed any full reboot type crashes. Maybe there were one or two, but it fits my definition of "stable enough".Something to be aware of is 32GB of drive space for the OS is not much space. You couldn't install endless software on this thing. I think you need a purpose for it in mind, install what you need for that, and then no more. It wouldn't take long at all to run out of space. Likewise, I think Windows-updates themselves are going to eventually cause a problem. Sooner or later there would not be enough space to install further updates. (also, installing them on this is seriously slow. Keeping this up to date in any long term is perhaps a significant issue.)So. It think it is a useful machine which is undoubtedly good at what it does, but requires a disciplined user who can work within limitations.