ECS LIVA Review: The Nettop Rises Again
by Ganesh T S on July 18, 2014 9:15 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
Coming to the business end of the review, it is clear that ECS must be applauded for trying to resurrect the nettop by cutting the appropriate corners while delivering a better performing machine (compared to older nettops) in a fanless chassis. The absence of SATA and SODIMM slots reduce the BOM cost and the eventual end-price for consumers (which is the reason the ECS LIVA is cheaper than a Bay Trail NUC). The use of a micro-USB conenction for power gives rise to interesting use-cases. For example, a TV with an USB port delivering around 10 W of power should be enough to run this unit for almost all common tasks.
On the flip side, the LIVA kit does have aspects that can be fixed by ECS. One of our major peeves was the positioning of the two USB ports. The placement between the micro-USB power inlet and the HDMI port makes it very difficult to utilize the USB ports (particularly for thick thumb drives). One or both of the USB ports need to be either in the front or on the sides. In addition, the Celeron N2806 SoC inside the LIVA kit doesn't have Quick Sync enabled. At the same price point, Intel has a new stepping which includes Quick Sync (the Celeron N2807). Quick Sync can enable some interesting use-cases. It would be good on ECS's part to integrate a Bay Trail-M part with Quick Sync enabled in the LIVA kits. In terms of storage, 32 GB of eMMC turns out to be very less after installing a couple of Windows updates. 64 GB should be the minimum, particularly since flash storage needs plenty of free capacity in order to maintain performance.
Back to the bigger picture, the question here is obviously the effect of LIVA on the nettop category. ECS has managed to put out a product which delivers better performance per dollar and better performance per watt compared to previous generation nettops. The category itself (small, underpowered machines used for basic computing tasks) has received a boost thanks to Chromebooks (and, in turn, Chromeboxes). The potential market for the LIVA could be further expanded if ECS were to get Chrome OS to run on it (though I personally prefer the flexibility offered by Windows), or if Windows were to be supplied for free (given that Microsoft is essentially not charging license fees for certain classes of products now, in order to compete with the Chromebooks and Chromeboxes). The ability to run Windows on this miniature unit, while being fanless in nature, should prove to be a great selling point for the unit. I do hope ECS will make note of some of the suggestions above (particularly with respect to the motherboard / chassis design) for future products in the LIVA lineup.
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dylan522p - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Yes Vent is not demanding at all unless you are getting DDOSed or you have like hundreds on it.coburn_c - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I'm going to shamelessly plug OpenELEC for nettops. I'm running it on an old e-350 and it's fantastic. I tweeted them about steam streaming support and they said its a mid-term goal. It really is excellent.Rocket321 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Would love to see a model with 2x Gigibit LAN + Wifi AC as a x86 router offering. They could drop the eMMC down to 8GB or include an empty SD slot to help with cost.varg14 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I think it is way overpriced....now if it had 64gb of memory and just another gb of ram for a total of 3GB and then costed $150 I think it would be a great system to just surf the net and stream movies from your network. I would get 3 of them for the other 3 TV's I do not have a HTPC hooked up to.Heck 2 years ago I purchased 2 Gateway refurbished computers for a total of$560 with operating systems included. Both were Sandy based..I picked these up when it was on sale for 329$ that included a 7200rpm 1TB HDD 6GB of DDR3 1333 a wireless card and a great I3 2120 cpu i added a 7750 his icooler video card for $80 and it games very well considering the power supply is only 300 watts and has no pci e power connector, but not a problem the silent dual slot his 7750 icooler takes all its power from the pcie 16x slot....a great HTPC and light gaming rig to compliment my 2600k EVGA GTX 770 Classified 4gb ACX sli gaming/server tower along with another gateway slim u11p i picked up for 229$ that had a g530 CPU on a h-61 chipset 4GB of DDR3 1066 and a 5000GB 7200rpm drive then added a asus 6570 1gb LProfile card for $40 and clocked it to 800mhz games ok too :) I also picked up a i3 2125 for $40 since I use The Smooth Video project that ups the 24fps MKVs to 60 FPS and also uses madvr and MPHC I had to add the discrete video cards. It was well worth it since the picture is better on my Panasonic VT30 55" Plasma then a discrete Blu ray player. I highly suggest Trying the SVP project if you have not yet tried it. It comes in a neat easy to install package with everything included MPHC, MADvr and SVP. Movies and TV shows look a heck of a lot better at 60fps then at 24 or 30 fps. Also when it installs it detects your hardware so it does not overpower your system which is inportant since If I turn everything up to the max it can bring my 2600k @ 4.8ghz to its knees. MADvr I set up to use around 80% of my GPU also on all 3 of my rigs.
Rocket321 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Keep in mind $180 is the MSRP, it may retail around there for a couple of months and then drop based on demand. Plus all your used stuff takes the 1-year warranty out of the mix.jospoortvliet - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
And there is the power usage, size and noise side of things... You pay more for this and live with its limitations because it is small, quiet, and uses little power.HangFire - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I'm really saddened to read the comment " As consumers realized that they could get much better performance per watt from other platforms, the shift to tablets well and truly buried the old nettops and netbooks." It's a shame no one at AT remembers the role of Microsoft in making netbooks what they were, by pushing out Linux and imposing debilitating hardware restrictions on the low-cost models. We could all be typing on 9" micro-laptops with hi-rez displays and quad core CPU's for under $400 right now if it wasn't for the old thrice-convicted monopolist and monopoly abuser Microsoft.kmmatney - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
The problem was that not enough people wanted the Linux netbooks... It was too much of a niche market.zepi - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
I don't think this is true. There are multiple Chromebooks in Amazon.com top 10 most sold laptops.Chromebook is exactly what you are referring to: a small laptop with minimal Linux + browser combination for dummies.
wireframed - Saturday, July 19, 2014 - link
As kmmatney said, no one wanted Linux. Sure, everyone wanted a cheap nettop, and they bought the Linux one. Then they got home, tried to install their Windows programs, and none of them worked. When people were told "Oh, you can't run any of your apps on this, you have to find other (often crappier) ones instead", back it went.Linux/AltOS advocates seem to forget the OS is, for most people, completely beside the point - the apps are what matter. Linux could be the finest OS in the world, and it STILL wouldn't matter if the apps we need don't run.