ASRock Beebox Mini-PC Review: Beebox’s Braswell beats Bay Trail-M

ASRock Beebox Mini-PC detailed review

With everyone getting on the mini-PC bandwagon, ASRock has gone ahead and launched yet another Mini PC series under the brand name Beebox. Centered around Intel’s Braswell architecture these Mini-PCs pack a little extra power than their Bay Trail-M competitors and that too for a lower TDP thanks to the newer 14nm manufacturing process. The unit we’d received had a flashy gold nish making it quite the attention grabber. There are plenty of ventilation grooves all over the device and the SoC has a small fan which channels hot air through a small plastic shroud straight out of the casing. The external gold chassis is made out of plastic and feels sturdy thanks to the reinforcement provided by the inner metal chassis. For an MRP of Rs. 17,999 they’ve included a USB Type-C port on the front and an IR remote which you’d have had to purchase separately in most of the cases. Performance wise it performs better than the ECS Liva and the Gigabyte BRIX N2807 and with mini-PCs it’s purely down to the SoC which in this case happens to be a generation ahead of the other two. However, this particular unit costs a lot more than the competitors that we’d tested earlier and this fact underlines the performance increment. The price-to-performance argument needs to be re-evaluated considering the street price to paint a better picture. 

Here is a look at the specifications of the device.

CPU: Intel Quad-Core N3150; 
Memory: 2GB DDR3L 1600 MHz; 
Expansion Slot: mSATA + 2.5-inch HDD; 
Storage: eMMC 32GB; 
Audio: Realtek ALC283; 
LAN: Gigabit Ethernet; 
Ports: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.0 Type-C; 
Dimensions (LxWxD): 110 x 46 x 118.5 mm; 
Warranty: 1 year