ECS Liva X review: Interesting form factor, but nothing outstanding to merit a recommendation

When it comes to mini PCs, Zotac and Asus were the only players we had seen so far. But motherboard maker ECS too has released its own series of small form factor PC. Called the Liva X, ECS’s foray into the small form factor PC comes in an era when Intel is already releasing its Compute Stick. Let us have a look at the product and see if it offers more than what we have already seen on the mini PC market. Build and Design: 7/10  Considering it is a small form factor PC, portability is a prime consideration. The Liva X delivers on that front with a 135 x 83 x 40mm metal body which is quite light too. The metal build has minimal flourishes, with just a slightly angled design on top with the Liva branding. Since this mini PC is a fanless device, there are air vents on the right and left hand side as well as the base. Four rubber feet which conceal screws to open up the Liva X, are present on the base. Features: 6/10  In terms of internal specifications, the Liva X has quite an entry level set. Powered by an Intel Celeron N2808 processor which is clocked at 1.58GHz, the Liva X has 4GB RAM. In terms of storage space it comes with a 64GB flash storage. You will have to install the OS as this Liva X variant does not come with any onboard operating system.  In terms of ports, you get two USB 2.0 ports and a USB 3.0 port up front, just beside the power button. On the rear side you have the D-Sub port, a LAN port, an HDMI port, power in port and an audio jack. Both the sides are clean with slits for cooling and a Kensington lock on the right hand side. Performance: 5/10 We installed a 64-bit Windows 8.1 OS on the drive and ran some of our benchmarks. Considering the Liva X houses an Intel Celeron processor, it is only meant for the most basic tasks. It does tend to stutter with HD and full HD videos, so if you have a lot of those, then this is not a device you should be looking at enjoying that content on. If your work involves surfing the web, working on office documents and so on, the Liva X is good with that. Of course, with some heavy websites you will experience slowdown with fast scrolling, native video players of some sites may also stream poorly. Gaming is out of the question with this hardware. In terms of benchmark scores, Cinebench R11.5 gave a paltry 0.7 points and 3D Mark gives around 552. In terms of data transfer speeds, Crystal Disk Mark gave around 164 MB/s sequential read speed and a 75 MB/s write speeds. It took over 3 minutes 30 seconds to compress a 100MB folder with 7zip. In short, this is not a device you will get good results with, if you use it as a traditional entry level desktop. Verdict and Price in India The ECS Liva X is priced at Rs 17,550 and is available in the market for around Rs 15,500. This is certainly a high price to pay for a device which has the absolute basic entry level performance. Not to forget the fact that you will need to invest in an OS, a keyboard/mouse, a monitor, if you don’t already have these with you. You would be much better off investing in a Micromax Canvas Laptab or the Asus X205TA as they at least come with a bundled OS. The ECS Liva X does not have anything impressive to offer for us to recommend it. Just like some overpriced mini PCs we have seen in the past, the Liva X treads the same path. If you are still sold on the compact form factor of the ECS Liva X, you may want to check out its 2GB RAM/32GB storage variant which comes with Windows 8.1 at Rs 9,999. Maybe it will make more sense in digital signages and other specific industry needs, but as a home PC, the Liva X does not really have much to bank on.