Review on Kingdel Fanless Industrial PC with Intel i5 Dual Core CPU, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro - Powerful Mini PC for Enhanced Productivity by Albert Tucker

I got the model with 8 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD and i5 dual core processor. It has a clock speed of 1.8 GHz (instead of the advertised 1.7 GHz - BONUS!), with a maximum Turbo Boost of 2.6 GHz. THE GOOD: There's so much going on with this little guy it's hard to know where to begin. I think I'll start with speed, it has some pizzazz. I have other small PCs. OK. To make them cheap and low-power, they have Celeron or Atom processors, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB SSDs. They're good for the purposes I use them for, but they're slow to start and once set up feel like 15 year old machines - pretty sluggish by today's standards. Not so with this thing! Out of the box, the boot time (pressing the power button to be ready) was less than 19 seconds. Office applications (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.) are fast, web browsing and media playback are smooth. The next thing I like is the passive cooling. As advertised, this is a fanless computer. In fact, the factory configuration has no moving parts at all, so it's dead quiet - there's literally no sound from it. This makes it ideal as a media center PC. The fact that it doesn't blow air through a fan also makes it a great computer for use in industrial environments where dust can cause major problems for computers. Other tiny PCs I own boast of this, but since they're in a sleek plastic case, they tend to overheat and shut down for self-preservation, which is really annoying. This Kingdel computer is excellent as a fanless PC due to its rather unique and very efficient case design. Instead of flat plastic (which I think looks nice), it has an aluminum body with ribs on the top and two smaller sides. The CPU is (at least) attached to the inside of the case, making it a large heatsink that passively cools the computer by releasing heat into the surrounding air. Unlike the inefficient design of my other fanless PCs, this one works very well - my home stereo feels hotter than this PC. I stress tested it for over 12 hours, but the case's hottest spot only reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit. My test environment had an ambient temperature of around 74-75 degrees. The computer has a fairly industrial feel due to the heatsink case, but I don't find it unattractive in any way. It reminds me of a car stereo amp you might see installed in the trunk with a subwoofer. The next thing I like about it is the connectivity. This computer has as many ports as computers that cost a lot more and are a lot bigger. On the back of the device there are 2 video outputs (1 HDMI, 1 VGA - it can transmit a 4k signal), 4 USB 3.0 ports, two WiFi antenna ports (supporting both 2.4GHz and 5GHz), 2 Ethernet ports . , 4 RS232 COM ports (still widely used in industrial environments) and a 12V power input. There are 4 USB 2.0 ports and a power button/LED on the front panel. I didn't check if it has Bluetooth or not. The computer comes with cables and mounting screws to add an additional hard drive or SSD for storage. Inside there is room for a laptop drive of any kind. According to the documentation, drives up to 2 TB are supported. Access to install an additional drive is via 4 screws on the underside of the PC (you will need to break the manufacture date label to access one of these). It also came with a decent HDMI cable - I'd rate it 6ft long and flat. It supports 4k and Ethernet. Finally, there is power consumption. I connected the wattmeter to the power supply and during the stress test it drew less than 20 watts. To be fair, I tested the PC in its factory configuration with no additional internal or external drives. The power adapter is rated for a maximum of 60W, so adding internal storage and charging USB ports with bus-powered devices shouldn't be a problem. THE BAD: There really isn't much to say here. External power supply - outwardly it is identical to many power supplies for laptops. I don't think it's particularly bad, but some people might. I think that's a good thing when it comes to making the PC run slower. Because of my education and background in electronics, I know that power supplies generate heat, so this design helps reduce heat inside the computer. I wish the location of the USB ports was different. It would have been nice to have a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the front and a couple of USB 2.0 ports on the back instead of clustering them on one side or the other, but this thing is so small it really doesn't weigh too much is still to come to them. This is a very minor inconvenience. The computer came with the "Kingdel" user already set up, no password and with a desktop icon set already set up. I don't like it for several reasons. I don't like Windows 10's default settings, which send MUCH more information to Microsoft than their business. I don't like the lack of a password protecting the computer. This means I don't know what else is uploaded that I don't need/need. This is fixable since I'm an IT pro, but it's annoying. I also don't like that there is no way to create media to completely clean and reinstall Windows and the necessary drivers. I'm guessing that all the required drivers are the default drivers that come with Windows based on the list of hardware I've looked at (Intel networking and video etc), but I'm not sure. I will create an image of the hard drive before proceeding to test with other operating systems. I recommend doing this as a backup anyway, so you can reinstall Windows if (if) the SSD dies - all electronics eventually break. This is not a "gaming" computer. Oh sure, it'll play Minecraft and other games that don't need much bulk, but don't expect to play serious high-end games on it. It is designed to be used as an industrial equipment controller, media center computer for watching Netflix, Revain Prime, Hulu, etc., office PC and the like. It would be great for a trading system in a store/shop. You're not going to use it to produce professional audio, edit a feature film, or host a Minecraft multiplayer server (you'd be shocked at how much processing power it takes!). In non-technical terms, this is a computer-controlled Honda. It's frugal, it performs well and it does a lot of things well, but it's not a Ferrari. RESULT: If you need a physically small, quiet computer for office, industrial, or media playback, this is a great machine that I highly recommend. I recommend it as an IT professional. EDIT: After testing the computer with everything I listed in this review back in May, I installed an external storage system on it and used it as a file server on my home network. It is now November and as such the computer is working properly. EDIT #2: I have recommended this little guy to clients for the use I mentioned above. The newest is the admin user by default instead of kingdel but with the same default shortcuts. It also came with a newer version of Windows 10. I scanned all of the clients I installed (10 on December 18, 2020) and none had the malware issue that the other reviewer mentions. However, I continue to uninstall any software I don't need, create a new user with admin privileges, and remove the default user.