Asus VivoStick News: Smallest Windows 10 Computer to Replace PC? (VIDEO)
Asus recently announced its Asus VivoStick at the IFA 2015 this week as its entry into the Stick PC game.
Taking computing to an even more miniscule level, Asus, the world's largest PC vendor, debuted the Asus VivoStick in Berlin during a pre-IFA event on September 2. It is presented as an ultra-miniature PC.
Billed as the world's tiniest desktop, the VivoStick has the appearance of a large USB dongle with an HDMI plug that would fit into a TV or display. Running on preinstalled Windows 10, it carries the latest Atom chip version, previously codenamed "Cherry Trail," and sports 2GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC flash internal storage.
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Despite its size, Asus has been able to include a USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, a microUSB slot for a power adaptor, and a headphone jack connector. The VivoStick also features Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 media access control.
Asus is marketing the dongle as a PC and while its USB ports can connect both keyboard and mouse while it is plugged into a TV or a handheld device for an easier set-up process, it isn't clear how its 32GB of internal memory, a sizeable portion of which will be consumed by the Windows 10 OS, can manage the memory-intensive tasks of browsing across a number of tabs while running multiple apps at once.
It will also be apparent to users that the Asus VivoStick won't be the best product to use for memory-intensive PC games.
With a price point of $130, which is $20 less than the more poorly reviewed Intel Compute Stick launched in April, it is likely PC users will continue to keep their more powerful devices for their main computing tasks or memory-heavy games until larger internal storage and RAM options, as well as near equal performance to desktops can be found in a PC stick.
