Asus NUC 14 Pro review

When Intel announced a year ago that it would no longer make mini PCs under its own name, it looked like there might not be one. next Next unit of computing. But Asus has picked up the NUC mantle from the chip giant, agreeing to support Intel’s existing 10th to 13th Gen Intel NUCs and build new Asus-branded ones under a non-exclusive license. (Several PC partners, notably MSI and ASRock, also debuted NUC models.) One of Asus’ early NUC efforts was the NUC 14 Pro (starting at $869), a tiny productivity-focused system that fits easily behind or under a monitor. Can be mounted. a desk; It is also suitable for commercial capabilities for kiosks and digital signage. Under the hood, an AI-ready Intel “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra CPU, up to 96GB of RAM and room for three storage drives make this tiny desktop a serious alternative to a traditional productivity PC.

Design: Fits in the palm of your hand

Fulfilling Intel’s promise to “enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth,” the Asus NUC 14 Pro is launched as a pre-configured, ready-to-run model and a bare-bones kit without RAM, storage and operating system. did The company backs the Mini PC with an average warranty of better than three years.

Intel Core Ultra H-Class processors give the NUC 14 Pro the computing power of a high-end laptop. Some new CPUs, like the Core Ultra 7 165H in our test unit, support Intel’s vPro Enterprise to simplify remote management and deployment at scale. That said, you can get the NUC 14 Pro with a lower-end Core 3 100U for non-essential tasks like digital signage or kiosk duty. Only the Core Ultra chips offer more advanced Intel Arc integrated graphics and a built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU).

The NUC 14 Pro is small enough that it can be held with one hand, with a footprint of 4.6 by 4.4 inches. The tall version reviewed here is 2.1 inches higher, 0.6 inches taller than the slim version, identical save for not having a 2.5-inch drive bay. The Asus ECS is also more compact than the Liva Z5 Plus (1.5 by 5.8 by 4.7 inches).

Most of the NUC 14 Pro is hard plastic, but the baseplate is metal. The latter includes a VESA monitor mounting screws. By design, the bite-sized black box doesn’t attract the eye; An Asus logo is the only decorative touch.

Connectivity and upgradeability are plentiful

The NUC 14 Pro’s impressive connectivity starts with an Intel AX211 networking card supporting Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, which requires no external antenna. The front panel houses one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports and the power button. On the back are two more USB-A ports (one 3.2 Gen 2 and one Legacy USB 2.0), two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, two HDMI 2.1 video outputs and a 2.5Gbps Intel Ethernet jack. Using the Thunderbolt port for DisplayPort output, the NUC 14 Pro supports up to four monitors.

Other features on the back of the unit include a cable lock slot (essential for a device that might be used in a public space) and jack for a laptop-style external AC adapter. Like most mini PCs, the NUC 14 Pro is too small to accommodate an internal power supply. The adapter delivers 90 or 120 watts depending on your CPU choice. A cutout below the rear ports hides the 2.5-inch bay.

Servicing the little Asus couldn’t be easier; Turn a lock nut on the bottom of the chassis, push a latch, and the entire top half slides off the base in clamshell fashion. Inside are two DDR5 SODIMM memory slots and two M.2 solid-state drive slots, one 80mm and one 42mm.

NUC 14 Pro in review: Small yet powerful

Our NUC 14 Pro test sample is a ready-made model with an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor (16 total cores, up to 5.0GHz Turbo), Intel Arc integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Windows 11 Pro.

While Asus’ online store lists a starting price of $869, I found a Core 3 100U bare-bones kit at Walmart for $399 and a Core Ultra 7 155H kit for $871, both without memory, storage, and an operating system. (I couldn’t find any prebuilt models for sale.) Even adding those components to a Core 3 system would push the price up to $600 to $650, so it’s a rather expensive PC. The ECS Liva Z5 Plus we tested is just $630 in ready-to-run form.

In addition to the ECS, our benchmark comparison systems include the Acer Vero Veriton Mini, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini, and the MSI Pro DP21. The NUC 14 Pro’s Core Ultra 7 looks likely to deliver the best performance in the group, though we were expecting Lenovo’s Core i7 to be closer.

During my testing, the sound of the NUC’s cooling fan was occasionally distracting in my small workroom. I had the unit on a desk; I suspect most of the sound would be masked if the sound was mounted out of sight.

Test productivity and content creation

We run the same general productivity benchmarks on both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

The other three benchmarks focus on CPUs using all available cores and threads to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower time is better).

Finally, we ran PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that performs a variety of common and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks, from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The NUC 14 Pro pretty much led all but Lenovo on PCMark’s productivity benchmarks, though the five mini PCs easily cleared the 4,000 points that indicate decent everyday performance for office apps. The Asus outperformed its rivals in the CPU test, but with particularly outstanding Handbrake times.

Graphics and gaming tests

We test desktop and laptop graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

We also ran two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which emphasizes both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, respectively, are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics, and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

The Intel Arc integrated graphics in “Meteor Lake” processors are head and shoulders above the Iris Xe graphics of previous generations of chips in Acer, ECS and Lenovo machines. In fact, our separate laptop testing of this integrated graphics solution suggests it’s good enough for basic gaming (720p, or low-detail 1080p). The NUC 14 Pro probably won’t be used for gaming (that’s far from the point of this little PC), but it should have no problem running multiple monitors.

Verdict: A pricey but worth learning NUC carrier

We’re glad to see the Intel NUC line continue under the Asus brand (and others). The NUC 14 Pro delivers impressive performance and connectivity from its Core Ultra H-class CPU and Intel Arc graphics, and IT departments will appreciate its vPro support and three-year warranty.

Alas, all this goodness doesn’t come cheap, with a Core Ultra 7 kit without memory, SSD or Windows (or Linux) starting at around $900. The ECS Liva Z5 Plus remains our top mini PC for the money, but this Asus is well worth the next-level-for-its-size performance and connectivity.