ECS LIVA X Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC

Final Words

The ECS LIVA X provided us with an opportunity to see how ECS could improve upon the baseline created by the ECS LIVA. We are happy to see that the LIVA X manages to fix many of the shortcomings without sacrificing any of the advantages brought forward by the LIVA. The misplaced thermal pads were a bit of a downer, but, considering that the LIVA had no thermal throttling issues and the heat sink is physically much better in the LIVA X, we have no doubt that customer shipments will not have any problems on that front.

The absence of SODIMM slots reduce the BOM cost and the eventual end-price for consumers (which is the reason the ECS LIVA X is cheaper than a Bay Trail NUC). A mSATA port makes an appearance for users interested in running Windows 7 (which doesn't have an eMMC driver). The Wi-Fi card came pre-installed, and the unit was good to go right after purchase, unlike the LIVA. The LIVA X provides an additional USB port and they are all in the front panel - that is a good decision considering the typical use case for such mini-PCs. The vertical orientation of the HDMI port also saves some space on the read panel, giving it a more uncluttered look.

The Celeron N2808 has Quick Sync enabled, and this provides some interesting use-cases. The availabiligy of a 64 GB SKU at launch is also welcome. 32 GB is not enough once a couple of Windows updates get installed.

Pricing is the final aspect that we will talk about. The 32 GB eMMC version will have a MSRP of $210, while the 64 GB version we evaluated will come in at $250. This is with 4 GB of RAM, but no OS. $250 is definitely a bit steep when we look at the competition. Particularly, the Zotac CI320 nano PLUS model with Win 8.1 + Bing sells for $252 with the operating system. It has a quad-core CPU and adopts passive cooling, just like the LIVA X. It has the 64 GB storage drive and DRAM replaceable too, in case things go wrong with those components. The WLAN card (1x1 802.11ac) is also better in the CI320 nano compared to the LIVA X (1x1 802.11n). The LIVA X does have 2 GB of RAM extra and a different industrial design (approximately the same volume, though). We still believe pricing must be much lower for better market reception. Other than that aspect, the ECS LIVA X ticks all the right boxes in terms of what users expect out of a passively cooled mini-PC.