Intel Compute Stick Review: Don’t Buy It

Who wants a cheap HDMI stick that can turn any TV into a full Windows computer? Everybody, right? That’s what we thought. Oh god were we wrong. When Intel announced the $150 Compute Stick at CES, we figured it could become the ultimate miniature PC for all kinds of people. Too bad it’s terrible.

Theoretically, there are loads of things you could do with a computer this tiny. You could work from it, of course, or browse the web from your couch. Watch Hulu without a subscription. Stream games from another computer. My editor Sean Hollister was excited to load Steam on it, plug in an Xbox 360 wireless adapter, and play lightweight games like Nidhogg buy app reviews with buddies on a big screen without lugging a console around. I was dubiously optimistic I could turn the Stick into a Kodi media streamer, accessing videos from my desktop PC over my home network.
Do some of these things work? Sure. But using this under-equipped PC is a giant pain in the ass—to the point that it’s probably not worth it.
What is it?
An attempt to cram an entire desktop computer into a tiny $150 HDMI-dongle that you plug into any TV—that doesn’t quite stick the landing. Boy, it sure sounded good on paper, though: a quad-core 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage all in a compact, pocketable package? Yes please. The Compute Stick’s tiny case even features a full-sized USB port and a MicroSD card reader. What’s not to like? As it turns out, almost everything.
Using It
The Intel Compute Stick, above everything else, is a failure of expectations. Intel’s website claims that “it’s ready to get to work or have some fun, right out of the box.” Not so much. The Amazon Fire TV is ready to have some fun right out of the box. Google’s Chromecast dongle is ready to go right out of the box. The Compute Stick is not. To get started, it needs things that aren’t in its box—namely a mouse and keyboard.
Intellectually, I knew going in that the Compute Stick wouldn’t come with input devices, but I didn’t quite grasp what that meant. Setting up the Compute Stick for the first time was a painful crash course in reality. When it tried to walk me through the Windows setup process (fun!) I rooted through my office for a spare mouse. Soon it needed me to type something, so I dug up a keyboard too. That’s when it suddenly dawned on me that I needed to have two USB devices plugged into a single port—and that I was screwed.
Okay, there are some other options. I could (and did) buy app installs a USB hub. It worked okay. The Compute Stick can only supply 500mA of power, but it was enough to connect a couple of simple peripherals—though I did run into issues with hungrier devices, and a different USB hub failed. Eventually, I remembered that I could buy a Logitech couch keyboard with a Unifying receiver that can connect a bunch of mice and keyboards to a single tiny dongle. Honestly, it’s the only option that makes sense.

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