ECS Liva Q1L Mini-PC Review – Tiny thanks to sandwich design

1 - Einführung und technische Daten 2 - Optik und Haptik 3 - Innenaufbau 4 - BIOS 5 - Benchmarks: CPU, SSD, Cache 6 - Benchmarks: GPU 7 - Stresstests 8 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit

Summary and conclusion

In my opinion, you don’t often come across the name Elitegroup Computer Systems on the German market, although they offer the cheapest systems in the price comparison. And there are also rather normal models, not only exotic ones like tested here in this article. As the various tests have already shown, normal desktop operation and use as an everyday computer is possible, but probably not the actual goal. The Windows updates alone took ages after the installation, despite the quite fast eMMC storage. By the way, Windows shows it as SD card in the task manager, for whatever reason.

I simply see the bottleneck here in the Pentium CPU from 2016, which quickly runs out of breath despite 4 cores / 4 threads. But as the dedicated Linux option in the BIOS suggests, it doesn’t always have to be software from Microsoft. And I think that is exactly the purpose for such a system with two LAN ports. Unfortunately, the Proxmox VE installer could not do anything with the onboard memory and aborted the formatting, but Ubuntu Server 20.04 can be installed without any problems. And it’s a great way to set up a Docker environment that controls smarthome functions, prevents network-wide advertising via PiHole, and serves as a small NAS. These and similar services rarely need a lot of power, so the Q1L is more suitable for this field of use thanks to diverse connectivity options with only about 0.19 liters of volume and low power consumption. A stronger Raspberry Pi, but not limited by the ARM CPU and also supporting x86.

I would like to mention one more conspicuous feature, and that is the total current that can be accessed via the USB ports. I have a 15.6″ display, my wireless receiver for mouse / keyboard as well as an external 2.5″ HDD connected, which has not been a problem with any mini-PC so far. With this one, however, the hard disk was then switched off every few seconds, presumably not so much power can be provided at the same time. However, this is not surprising for the small power supply. I then transferred my various programs for the test via USB stick, which was no problem.

This system fills an interesting, but probably also very small niche. For what it presumably wants to be, I can certainly attest to good suitability. There should hardly be anything comparable in this size, but there is probably a good reason for that. The target group is very small, so sales in this market niche will also be limited. If you know exactly what your requirements are and have been looking for just such a system, ECS will provide you with a tailor-made offer. For the rest, there was at least one interesting curiosity to see here, showing an impressively creative solution for a lot of technology in a small space.

The test sample was provided by ECS without obligation. There was and is no influence on the tests and results. There was also no compensation for expenses and no obligation to publish.

The price comparison box usually placed here is unfortunately not possible for this item because the Q1L mini PC is not categorized. Therefore, here is the direct link from Geizhals.de, in Germany only the version with N3350 is available:

=> ECS ELITEGROUP Q1L N3350 4G/32G/Blue