ACEPC AK1 PRO,Mini PC Intel Celeron Processor J3455 Windows 10 Pro (64 bit) Desktop Computer [4GB/32GB/Support 2.5" SSD/mSATA SSD/Gigabit Ethernet/Dua-Band WiFi/4K]

This is a scary good value – Windows 10 Pro in a mini PC with decent hardware for just over $200. Let's be clear, no mini PC is any kind of gamers’ powerhouse, but with an added motherboard SATA, it's decently snappy in terms of basic performance doing the usual stuff that mini/micro PCs do. You're pretty much going to have to buy an mSATA drive (I'm very happy with the Samsung Evo 500 GB model that I ordered from Amazon with this) because what's included on the motherboard is only 32 GB, and that barely holds the operating system and that only leaves you with a spare 10 GB or so.Here's the beauty of this system – you can take the mSATA card out with you, put it in your wallet, where it's not even the size of a credit card, and drop it into another one of these in another location, and have your entire system essentially transportable in your wallet. This of course means that you might buy two of these for two locations that you transit back and forth between, meaning essentially that you don't have to carry a computer with you ever between those locations. This is HUGELY convenient. Even if you're not intending to use it that way (which is how I'm using it), this is still a killer deal:PROS:1) Decently powered hardware, especially for the money, including 4K video from an Intel motherboard video chip – keep in mind that after you subtract the cost of Windows 10 Pro, you're paying only about $100 for the entire box and hardware.2) Despite the Celeron processor, the system is decently fast, and it has four cores although cache size of course isn't anything to write home about on one of these cheaper Intel chips.3) Decent performance playing full HD video files with no lag or artifacts.4) Decent performance playing Apple lossless files – able to decode and provide very good audio.5) Boots in about 10 seconds from the mSATA card – not too far off the pace of some much faster machines running much more expensive SSDs.6) Windows 10 Pro included!7) Lots of USB ports – three USB 3.0s and one legacy 2.0 for your keyboard and mouse receiver8) Decent Bluetooth 4 (not sure what version - 4.2?)9) Aesthetically, it's actually rather nice too, with neat blue lights around the border of the top while running and red lights while suspended.10) Easy to clone the operating system from the little micro motherboard SSD onto a decent mSATA card, once you've got the basics of it set up. Then you're up and running, and you have a backup system partition.11) Easy to tack on to the back of your 4K monitor/TV set, and create a very compact invisible PC for presentations, playback of various video files, audio etc..CONS:1) Instruction booklet that comes with the hardware is a joke. It's tiny, illegible, in poor English, and doesn't even tell you how to get into BIOS. Appears to be written by someone minimally fluent in English – how shocking!2) No screws to hold the mSATA in place on the motherboard – you will have to find those yourself.3) Not much else. Like I said, this is a phenomenal value!This thing illustrates why China is really kicking our butt. Why can't we make stuff like this in the USA?

Updating this review to 4 stars. I installed an mSATA drive and that helps a lot. Personally I would suggest viewing the 2.5 inch expansion bay as more of a bulk file storage option. Throw a 1 TB laptop drive in there along with whatever size mSATA you want to use for the OS.One thing that was an extremely pleasant experience was with ACEPC's support staff. They proactively reached out to me after my initial review and offered an exchange if needed. They come with a one year warranty and it seems that they back that up. They not only emailed me the first time but followed up several times as I took some trouble shooting steps. Major kudos for them for being so on their customer service game.Now that I have it setup and the additional drive in, it is a smoking fast home theater box. It also seems capable of handling other reasonable workloads at the same time. Obviously with this level of hardware you are not going to be doing any serious data crunching but that is not what these are for. If there was an option to upgrade the RAM it would easily be 5 stars.Side note, spend the extra money and get Windows 10 Pro. The home edition locks out some features like local group policy editing that are useful in turning off some Windows features that eat up resources.All in all this is a good little PC and I was seriously impressed with their customer service. Very attentive and accommodating.It should be noted that the bottom expansion box is NOT really SATA. It is for a SATA drive but is actually a USB C-Type connection so you are basically plugging in a USB drive. This is not the best idea to clone an OS to and run off of. I have an mSATA drive on order to see if that corrects the issues I have had.The PC has been randomly changing boot order in the BIOS. I set to boot to the SATA and about 20% of the time it boots to it. It will also randomly boot to PXE, UEFI, the on board storage and a couple of times would not boot at all. I finally just disabled all the other boot options to force it to the drive I wanted. Not sure if this is a problem with the fact that the drive is actually just a USB drive or not.Once you get it booted, be prepared to spend a good amount of time tuning this thing. Out of the box the Windows 10 anti-malware service pretty much tapped the CPU and made everything else on the box unusable.So far running something like Kodi for home theater usage has been working, once I got the Kodi bugs figured out.You will absolutely be required to expand the storage on this thing as 32 GB is just simply not enough for even Windows after a few rounds of updates and app installs.I have also experienced some flakiness with the networking on the box.All in all, if you spend the extra money for an mSATA drive to clone to and want to spend the time getting Windows configured in such a way to allow this to be used the way you want it to be, it has potential. That being said, it is certainly NOT a turn key boot and go solution as advertised.The issues with Windows are obviously not the fault of the manufacturer but they do exist and should be something you consider before purchasing.The hardware issues like randomly changing boot order and flakiness with the networking may well indicate I got a bad unit. I am planning to see if the mSATA drive offers any resolution to these problems, if it does not, I will likely be returning it.The price point is nice but by the time you start having to add mSATA drives for 65 bucks for 250 GB and possibly a keyboard/mouse the cost of ownership rises by a significant margin.I purchased it to replace an Android Kodi box and wanted Windows to add some functionality. If all you want is a streaming device, you can do better for about 1/3 of the money and less headache and frustration in setup.If you want a full Windows desktop capability, spend the extra money and get beefier hardware. My price for this was a little over 200 but by the time you add an mSATA drive you are right at 300 total. I happened to have a keyboard and mouse available. The other cost is time, and only you can decide what your time is worth to get this thing running properly

Easy to add SSD. Has everything you need in a computer (minus peripherals like speakers etc). I tested it with a CAD render and it was actually not bad. Not a render farm substitute, but not shabby.After one month of simple use as a slide show source to s multichannel video mixer => dead. Totally.First the connection to an SSD unit failed (lower portion connected by C connector. So Just left off. But a month later = a stone. No trace of any life at all. No boot anything.

Great little machine. I am able to clone the windows 10 from the onboard 32GB storage to the SSD drive I added and boot windows from the SSD after doing some research in YOUTUBE. The machine exceeded expectations -- it runs Windows 10 well, and handles web browsing, email, video, and light gaming like a champ.

I wanted to replace my android media player with a mini-PC so that I could use more of the Windows programs that I am used to with it. The APECP mini-PC came with Windows 10 Pro and it talked you though the initial setup which only took a few minutes. I set it up with its internal 32GB internal memory and an external USB connected hard drive until I could get an internal 2.5 drive for it. It works great using the hdmi output with my TV and a wireless keyboard and mouse that I already had. The PC seems fast, and I don’t get any lag when playing back large 1080p HD movies that would often not play smoothly on my android box. It has 32GB Overall, this is exactly what I was looking for to work as a media server for my TV and it performs great. I also want to setup security cam software on it and use it as a NVR for my security cameras.