ECS LIVA X Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC

Introduction and Setup Impressions

Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. ECS made their entry in the market through the LIVA. Despite being an innovative product in the mini-PC space, it did suffer from a few questionable devisions with respect to the chassis design. The placement of the USB ports was not user-friendly, and the unit didn't appear sturdy either. ECS has iterated fast and put out an updated version (with a different chassis and motherboard design as well as a few tweaked internals) in the form of the LIVA X. The following gallery from ECS provides more insight into the LIVA X, and the picture that follows compares it against the LIVA.

Note that the USB ports in the LIVA X are in a more accessible location compared to the LIVA. We also have an additional USB 2.0 port, which is definitely welcome. On the downside, the unit is no longer powered by a micro-USB connector. Instead, we have a wall-wart rated for 36 W (12V @ 3A). The presence of a mSATA slot as well as an additional USB port drive up the maximum possible power consumption, justifying a more powerful adapter.

The specifications of our ECS LIVA X review configuration are summarized in the table below.

The ECS LIVA X kit doesn't come with any pre-installed OS, but does come with a CD containing the drivers. It would be nice to have a (read-only) USB key instead of the CD.

In the table below, we have an overview of the various systems that we are comparing the ECS LIVA X against. Note that they may not belong to the same market segment. The relevant configuration details of the machines are provided so that readers have an understanding of why some benchmark numbers are skewed for or against the ECS LIVA X when we come to those sections. A point to note is that all the PC configurations listed below are completely passive solutions.