MINISFORUM N40 Mini PC UHD 4K@60Hz Celeron N4020(up to 2.8GHz) Fanless Mini Computer, DDR4 4GB+64GB eMMC, DIY SSD, Dual Band WiFi, HDMI&VGA Desktop Mini Computer

This is my second purchase of an N40 NUC from MINISFORUM and I am pleased with both. I evaluate this to be a real sweet spot in terms of value / utility.What you get:A nice small form factor NUC loaded with Windows 10.A shorter HDMI cable (great for hanging this machine off the back of your monitor).A bracket to attache to a standard monitor mountA power adapterIf you are new to the world of NUC computers this is a desktop with the hardware of a laptop inside. I love the ideas of lower power consumption, lower heating of my office area and moving into the area of truly affordable computing. This machine has been ideal for office tasks, spreadsheets, documents, web browsing, media consumption, etc.This is not a great choice for graphical games, video processing, or other tasks that require a lot of CPU work. The N4000 is a Celeron dual thread processor - not the top of the line any longer. However, the whole machine runs on less power than my last desktop PCs graphics card alone used.Like:Small size.Low power.Does not heat up my desk area.Great for remote work/school.Dislike:Small 64gb internal flash drive the only hard drive (windows will gobble up half of this rapidly)Adding an SSD is limited by requirement of an "M.2 2242 NGFF SATA SSD" of up to 1tb - more to the point, many M.2 drives sold these days are NVMe and these will not work. Finding just the right M.2 SSD is tricky.RAM not expandable - what can you expect from such a small box?Would love to see a USB C slot.Summary:If you are remote working via VM or needing a machine to do basic office tasks, this is the promise of cheap computing fulfilled. If your kids need to remote in for school, but you don't want to get them an expensive gaming rig this will work - if your kids are smart enough to enjoy playing non-graphical games they are likely to do fine in life anyway. At this price, you could get 3 machines and dedicate them to different work areas for home based learning for under $450 USD.

This is NOT meant for any gaming with high end graphics, but it does great with watching the various streaming video services, common web browsing, checking and updating your social media, and use with the common "office" type of applications. This is a great little machine for simple basic computing needs.It offers wired and wireless network connectivity, HDMI video output, AND if you have an older VGA monitor it has the appropriate plug for that as well.Once you figure out how to open it up, you can add your own SATA SSD to expand your storage.However, shop wisely... there is NO SLOT for RAM, so make sure to purchase one with enough to meet your current and anticipated future need.Also, it is air cooled and does NOT have a cooling fan. Make sure you do not stack things on top of it because it will not like that.Since there is no fan, it runs silent.

I bought this computer to run a dedicated application I am writing, so I didn't need a lot of horsepower. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it boots up in 45 seconds from a cold start. From sleep mode, it comes up in about 5-8 seconds. Windows is very responsive too, but I did have it get bogged down when I pulled up Yahoo.com in Chrome. After looking at some other less media dense sites, I decided that it was having problems with all of the video ads on yahoo's main page. On something like Netflix or Hulu, it had no problems at all playing 4k video. Chrome is also well known for being a CPU and memory hog, so the 4 GB of ram is probably a factor as well.Wifi performance is extremely good. I have high speed wifi which typically delivers 800 megabits/s to my laptops, and this computer gets 400-500 Mbits/s on the 5 Ghz band. I tested it connected to my 4k tv, and it can stream 4k video at 60hz from Netflix via wifi with no buffering or stuttering. It would a very good media PC. I don't think it would be a good media server if it had to transcode bit streams, but it can easily stream video which doesn't have to be transcoded.One feature which is a little rare in PC's in this form factor is the ability to add a M.2 SSD up to 1 TB.I think it will handle light gaming like Minecraft or League of Legends. It will be very good for anyone who wants to do email, word processing, spreadsheets, Skype, social media, etc. It will also be good for driving signs or kiosks. Overall, it's an impressive little computer.