MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick Fanless N4000 4GB Ram 128GB Mini Computer Stick Windows 11 Home HDMI 4K 2.4G/5GHz Wi-Fi 5 BT4.2 Gigabit Ethernet Micro PC on Industrial IoT, Digital Signage, WMS, MES, NAS

I occasionally need a Windows machine to run some windows only software, and rather than running a virtual machine, I thought I'd break down and buy an actual Windows machine.I wasn't expecting this to be a super powerful game machine or server and it isn't. It's just a nice little desktop Windows machine. Small, portable, with reasonable performance and enough memory and sold state disk to make it useful. As an example, this PC works well with Zoom, but don't expect anything more than the basic background, or filters. It just lacks the processing power for the fancier effects.This model shipped with Windows 10 Pro, and per the manufactures recommendation, I allowed it to self-update to Windows 11 Pro. All of the questions I had and the information I needed were addressed on the manufactures website.I'm happy with this purchase, it is just what I wanted.

I don't know if I'd be comfortable leaving this sticking directly out of a horizontal HDMI port (it's a bit on the large size for that without some sort of support), but the PCG02 does make for the most adorable little desktop PC, and at least the N100 variants are powerful enough to handle pretty much anything a casual home user would want to throw at it (i.e. no heavy gaming, but it should be able to handle web browsing without issue).I personally installed Batocera on it for a tiny little gaming machine that can handle up to at least N64 without too much issue (I didn't try anything more demanding than that).Pros:+ A dedicated 12v, 2A USB-C power input that negotiates PD properly, so you can easily power it off of an appropriate power bank or Power Over Ethernet splitter.+ A separate, fully-featured USB-C port that can be used for data, power, or video. The fact that this is a separate port from the power port means you can use a power bank and a pair of AR Glasses at the same time, and this PC is small enough that I would be willing to call this sort of setup pocketable. Alternately, you can use this with a monitor with USB-C video in (that provides passthrough PD power) for a single-cable setup.+ Multiple USB-A inputs so you can have both mouse and keyboard plugged in at once. It feels a little weird to call this out specifically, but after setting up some Raspberry Pi Zeroes, a small computer with multiple full-size USB ports shouldn't be taken for granted.+ Silent.+ Tiny. It's a bit bigger than, say, one of the old Compute Sticks, but it's still smaller than most laptop power bricks by a wide margin.+ Has some mounting holes. These are intended to be used with the included VESA mount, but since they're just standard M3 screw holes you can use them to mount to other things as well.Cons:- A bit pricey, especially at full price. I bought this at $140 with a coupon, but even then you can find similarly-specced mini-PCs for significantly less (though generally larger, louder, and without USB-C power input).- No built-in POE support. This is an exceptionally rare thing for mini-PCs to have, but it's easy to compare this to the Minisforum S100 (since they're both similarly-sized and specced N100 mini-PCs) and POE is the big selling point there.- Not a gaming PC. Probably not going to be a good choice for stuff like video rendering, either.- It gets toasty, since no fan means all the heat dissipates into the case. While I don't think it's likely to actually burn you unless you're abusing the poor thing pretty bad, it gets warm enough to be uncomfortable to touch for more than a couple seconds.- Power brick is 12v only. Don't plug it into anything else or it may fry whatever you connect it to.

Worked great

Little bit laggy, but works for our use case as basically a display of a still image in our office. Upgrade if you plan to use it like a computer

Easy to install, and works faster than my laptop.

I bought this in conjunction with a NAS for streaming content across my home network, this works like a charm! I would buy again should the need ever arise.

Great for Astro photography. Able to remote in and control the computer, mount and camera from the comfort of the house. Looking forward to using it this summer in the field.

I must have gotten a dud or something after reading other's great reviews. My old chromebook i bought used for $12 is faster and more useful than this thing even not being windows. At least it can do anything browser related without problems.Before even turning it on I was very disappointed that it comes with a huge block of an AC power adapter that it apparently requires. This is no where in its description. It says it is powered by USB and nothing more. That alone makes this purchase null for me as the whole point was running from USB outlets.Since I had to open it in order to find this out, I figured I might as well see if the rest of it is okay. It took me over an hour to get my keyboard and mouse to pair with it and the mouse would not scroll, so that was annoying and will make my work almost impossible to do that i bought it for. Also the mouse is crazy slow even on the fastest speed. I have to pick the mouse up and move it over 2-3 times to get across the screen.After that i went to the updates. Nothing out of the ordinary there aside from nearly two hours of updates from a brand new Windows 11 computer. That seems a bit much considering my home internet is very fast.By this point the stick was so hot i could barely touch it without it burning my fingertips.After all updates done and restarting, etc. I was like, okay, lets do some basic things to see how it functions. Holy crap was it slow. Just clicking on the start menu took anywhere from 10-20 seconds to come up after clicking. 30-40 seconds to load just the basic google search page. Every move you make is in slow motion with lots of waiting.I managed to finally get logged in to HBO Max to see how streaming a video was. (at this point i didn't have high hopes) Yea, it just can't do it.I was really hoping this would at least be on par with a super cheap basic laptop without the bulk since i already have the monitors and whatnot. Sadly it can't even run itself let alone putting anything else on it. I'm guessing that's why they slide in the stuff about not being able to return it because they know it's crap.In summary, just get a cheap used laptop, it will be better.