Asus VivoMini UN62 review: Decent entry-level compact PC, but its pricing isn't impressive

Mini PC as a category has been around in India for many years now, but mainstream adoption is still lacking. A lot of regular buyers still associate a desktop PC with huge cabinets. While the option to customise your desktop is one of the main reason people still stick with assembling their PCs, a lot of the times our use-case is pretty basic. In such a scenario mini PCs provide an excellent space-saving alternative. Intel also tried to make this alternative mainstream with  Next Unit of Computing (NUC) series of Mini PCs but that never really took off. We have also been seeing a lot of mini PCs   from ZOTAC in the past, this time around we got the Asus VivoMini UN62 mini PC. Build and Design: 7/10 [caption id=“attachment_254187” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] ASUS has released the VivoMini UN62 mini PC which is compact and easily portable. It comes in a plastic construction and measures 131 x 131 x 42 mm[/caption] The Asus VivoMini UN62 comes in a very compact form factor - with a gray coloured plastic enclosure. It measures 131 x 131 x 42 mm in dimensions and weighs just 1 kg. It has a sturdy plastic covering, with a textured design on top with the Asus branding, a power button with an indicator light up front, vents for air circulation and ports on the rear side and SD card slot and USB 3.0 ports on the left hand side. It is as simple as it can get and there are no design elements such as the glowing circular light seen on ZOTAX ZBOXes. [caption id=“attachment_254189” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] On the left hand side, you have an SD card slot and two USB 3.0 ports along with a Kensington lock[/caption] Asus has kept it functional. The mini PC can be opened up and you can add in your own components such as more RAM, flash memory or replace storage and so on. To unscrew it you will need to remove the rubber feet found on the base, which reveal the screws. Overall, the UN62 has a good build quality for a mini PC, making it quite portable. On the rear side, you will also find provisions for a VESA mounting, which allows you to attach the UN62 right behind your monitor, thereby saving more space. [caption id=“attachment_254188” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The rear portion of the ASUS VivoMini UN62 has all the ports: power-in, HDMI port, DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports, a LAN port and a headphone jack. It can support a 4K/UHD output as well[/caption] On the rear side you have the power port, a DisplayPort++, an HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, a LAN port and an audio jack. Coming to the left hand edge, you get an SD card slot along with two USB 3.0 ports. So in terms of connectivity options, you are pretty much covered. Even if you have wired keyboard and mouse, you still have two USB 3.0 ports free for data transfer. Features: 7/10 Asus VivoMini UN 62 comes in a range of specifications. The review unit we got was one with Intel Core i3-4030U, a low power dual core hyper-threaded processor clocked at 1.9GHz. Its maximum power limit is around 15W, so it keeps the heat generation to the minimum. There is no support for Turbo Boost, which allows for dynamic changing of frequency depending on the work load. It comes with integrated Intel HD4400 graphics. It is paired with 4GB of RAM which can be expanded to 16GB if you so wish. [caption id=“attachment_254190” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The ASUS VivoMini UN62 houses an Intel Core i3-4030U processor, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 802,11 b/g/n/ac WiFi[/caption] The other variants include the VivoMini UN62 with Intel Core i5-4210U processor with Intel HD 4400 graphics with 4GB RAM. The VivoMini UN42 on the other hand will come with Intel Celeron 2957U with Intel HD graphics and 2GB of RAM. You can either go for the barebones model, which are sold sans RAM, HDD/SSD and OS and are priced more economically. Even with the non-barebones models offer you the chance to change around the RAM and storage if you so wish. As seen above, the VivoMini UN62 is flush with ports of all types one can expect from a regular PC. In terms of connectivity, the UN62 offers Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-fi 802.11ac. On the storage front, you get 128GB SSD of which only 102GB is available to the user. Asus gives you 100GB of Webstorage space for free (1 year) with every VivoMini PC. [caption id=“attachment_254184” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The VivoMini UN62 houses an Kingston 4GB DDR3 RAM and an SK Hynix 128GB mSATA SSD. These components can be replaced easily[/caption] The VivoMini PC comes with Windows 8.1 OS on board. Apart from the OS itself, Asus has added a lot of its own proprietary software, some of which is useful but most just adds to the bloatware. You can also make your VivoMini PC into a cloud server to be used by multiple devices inside your house using Asus HomeCloud utility. Asus VivoMini UN62 can support up to 4K/UHD displays and can also support multi-displays which can work in extended mode, cloned displays as well as multiple output. Performance: 6/10 We connected the Asus VivoMini PC UN62 to our test PC, the BenQ GL2250HM and set the output to the native full HD resolution. Since this is an entry level PC targetting users who are looking to do basic work such as working in the MS Office environment, watching a movie or two on the side and listening to music; we ran a mix of synthetic and real-life tests to get a picture of how this will perform. We ran the PC Mark 8 benchmark and got a score of 2603 on the Home preset, which basically simulates a regular home use-case scenario. This score is decent for an entry level PC. With the Cinebench we got a score of 1.71 points on the multi-core rendering test. When compared with the last mini PC we had tested - the ZOTAC ZBOX Sphere OI520 , this score is lower. But then again, the OI520 houses a Core i5 processor as opposed to the Core i3 seen on the UN62. We also ran some real life benchmarks. For instance converting a 2.5 minute MKV file to MP4 format took around 173 secs whereas compressing a 100MB folder using 7Zip took around 100 seconds. These aren’t the best numbers, but the fact that the VivoMini UN62 completes the tasks without freezing or shutdown of the system is good. Keep in mind that transcoding movies is not a task that is meant to be performed on such a system. Thanks to the SSD storage, the data transfer speed on the UN62 is exceptional. As seen from the chart below it gives over 450MB/s theoretical read speeds and over 320MB/s sequential write speeds. The SSD not only helps with fast transfer of data, but also lets your applications load quickly. Regular tasks such as browsing the web, working with MS Office, watching full HD movies and so on went smoothly. In fact the CPU utilisation while watching HD movies was hovering around 15 to 20 per cent, that still leaves some juice to keep other tasks running in the background. There weren’t any major noticeable issues with the functioning of the UN62. It can work well as a home-theatre PC as well as a 24x7 download rig, as its power consumption is not very high. Verdict and Price in India Asus VivoMini UN62 mini PC comes priced at Rs 39,500 which is definitely on the higher side. This has been an issue with mini PCs in India. Even with ZOTAC ZBOX series, the price points of the mini PCs reaches levels where buyers either get similarly specced laptops or they consider investing in a traditionally assembled PC. At Rs 39,500 you can easily build a decent entry level gaming rig. Agreed, getting a PC in as tiny a form factor as the VivoMini UN62 is no mean feat and that kind of engineering commands higher prices, but India being a cost-conscious market, companies really need to put some thought into making the pricing more attractive, to ensure the growth of the category. In terms of performance, the VivoMini UN62 works quite well as an entry level PC and is able to handle most regular tasks with ease. The SSD speeds things up although comes with limited storage. The barebones UN62 will cost around Rs 26,500. But if you are content with having a spinning hard drive, you can check out the Intel Core i5 processor sporting ZOTAC ZBOX Sphere OI520  which is priced at Rs 32,000 and also comes in a unique form factor.