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The Amazing Azulle Access3 Tiny Stick PC - Reviewed
7K views
Jun 22, 2024
Once you remove the display and input devices, it turns out that the core elements of a PC computer are pretty tiny nowadays. So tiny that you can create a powerful and fully functional computer that's smaller than a deck of cards. That's just what Azulle has done with the amazing Access3 Fanless Mini PC. It looks like an oversized USB stick but there's a lot more going on... Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ had a chance to plug one in and test it out with various real-world tasks. In this video review he shows how it works and lets you see video streaming performance, app launch performance and more... Check it out at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Ste0So
View Transcript
0:00
An entire PC on a stick. Let's check this out
0:10
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at this. Now, all right, it's not really a stick. It's a little bigger than that, but this is the Azul
0:17
Axis 3 fanless mini PC stick. Now, what do you notice is missing? There's no display
0:25
There's no keyboard, there's no mouse, no input, no output, except there are port
0:30
So let me fold that down a little bit. So this is actually an extremely interesting little device because they have jammed a whole heck of a lot of technology in here
0:39
Basically, you have an HDMI plug on one end and you have USB and Bluetooth so you can choose what kind of input device you want to use
0:48
We'll get back to that in a minute, but this particular one is running the Intel Celeron Gemini Lake N4100, which is a 1.1 gigahertz CPU
0:59
So not crazy fast, you can actually save a little more money, and you can get the QuadCore Apollo Lake and 3450
1:07
Either way, you get the Intel HD Graphics, the 500 GPU. This particular unit has 4 gigabytes of RAM and 32 gig of storage, which, as you can see in this spec
1:19
basically means that you have 13 gigabytes free once you have Windows 10 Pro installed on it
1:25
Now, there are some OS options. We'll get back to that. And so this also features dual band 2.4 and 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi, a one-gibabyte Ethernet port on the end, and Bluetooth 4.0
1:39
And the HTML can push out 4K at 30 frames a second, which is good because I use this with a 4K TV
1:47
Now, if we take a tour on the side, then you can see there are two USB 3.0 slots
1:54
There's a micro sd slot that you use for charging because it comes with a charger
1:59
I'm going to show you that real quick. Charger and micro USB on the end of it
2:04
So tiny bit clumsy but hey this thing needs power right And then there the power switch On the end you have 3 millimeter audio out You have Ethernet and you also have the Kensington Lock mechanism
2:18
So if you want to have this in a computer lab and you want to make sure no one walks off with it
2:23
because seriously, you could totally slip that in your pocket. Then that would be how you'd do it
2:27
And let's see, on the other side, you have the antenna to make your Wi-Fi work better as needed
2:33
and a microSD slot. So you can actually put in more memory or actually just have a lot of data that you want to just put on there, for example, a bunch of movies
2:43
Now, this particular configuration I got ran with Windows 10 Pro, and you can obviously also put something else on it
2:52
You can buy it actually with Linux on it. And I got to say, I think Linux might be the way to go with something like this
2:58
We'll see that in just a second on the demo. Now, I want to point out before I show you some live demos that on a 4K display, this ran at 3840 by 2160
3:11
That is a lot of bits. That is a lot of pixels. And to actually make it even marginally functional, I had to change the size of text and icons to 250%
3:21
Otherwise, they were so darn small. I couldn't even understand what was going on
3:25
So, all well and good, let's get into some demos. Now, the first demo I'm showing you here is actually a live capture of Microsoft Edge
3:35
So you can see here, I start out with YouTube and had some synchronization problems with the YouTube video
3:41
But now let's switch over to Netflix. And you can see when Netflix shows the little demo of this new up-and-coming show, that it actually runs very smoothly
3:58
And when I scroll down, everything works perfectly well
4:08
Now, I couldn't actually do a full screen capture because that's not how that software worked
4:13
So now I going to switch to just videotaping my TV screen and you can get a little bit different sense of how this all works It is definitely pretty cool to plug a device in and just suddenly you running Windows on your TV This obviously would be great for if you were traveling for example and in a hotel room
4:33
Now I'm gonna launch Microsoft store and you'll see some performance stuff here about how fast it launches
4:41
And then we're gonna go and look at what apps need updates actually quite a lot of them
4:49
But you can see how fast this is or perhaps isn't. You know, all in all, it's a pretty innovative and rather unique device
5:03
I think there's a lot to like about this. Again, I'm not sure this is an optimal environment for running Windows 10
5:10
so I think I would rather actually buy this with a Linux installed
5:14
and that is an option from Azul. So now, before I actually get to the price and give you my final summary
5:21
Let me ask if you can go ahead and click on that subscribe button. Really appreciate when you subscribe to my channel and give me some feedback
5:28
Are you interested in these sort of devices? And if you would get a PC with this form factor, what would you do with it
5:34
Oh, and one thing I did want to also say, two more things. Number one, I ended up having to use the included HTML extender cable
5:43
So you plug it into the HDMI on the unit and then you plug this into your TV
5:49
And I needed to do that because this was a little. little wider than the actual space on the side of my Vizio TV
5:56
So this by itself, I couldn't get to plug in. And then the other thing that was important is I had a wireless Logitech keyboard
6:04
This is not a Bluetooth keyboard, but it means it has a tiny little doohickey that you just plug into USB
6:11
So easy enough, I just plugged it into the side of the Access 3
6:16
And now I was ready to go. And this is sort of optimal because it's a keyboard
6:20
and it also has a track pad on it. So it gave me all the controls I needed
6:25
to be able to actually sit back on the couch and manage my PC running on my television
6:31
Really kind of a cool concept. So the concept of it is very slick The performance of this particular unit was not anything I would write home about but if I were to take this with me to for example a hotel room and plug it in and wanted to use it
6:48
as an entertainment server or something, then it has decent enough horsepower as long as you have a good
6:53
internet connection. You could definitely use this for that, or you can use like the microSD or just
6:59
drop it directly onto the drive that's actually in the unit. You could drop a bunch of movies or TV
7:05
shows on here and you would be good to go as long as you remember to have an input device to
7:09
control it so is that your cup of tea it might be it's kind of a fun hackery sort of thing to like
7:16
walk up to a tv plug something in and boom you're running pc you're running windows you're running
7:21
linux whatever it is you want to do so as for me i feel like i'd rather just have a more powerful
7:27
laptop but of course they're entirely different beasts so maybe that's not a fair comparison i will say
7:33
the price is very pleasant. So this, Azul, Access 3, and this is with the Gemini Lake N-4100 CPU
7:42
4 gig of RAM, and 32 gig of storage is 21999 at AzulTech.com. And then depending on configuration with
7:53
RAM and storage and CPU and all those sort of variables, you can actually make it less
7:58
expensive or a little bit more expensive. So really interesting would be done
8:03
It's probably interesting to drop a Linux on it and see how that performed. But either way, this could be a really nice and highly portable
8:10
Look at how small this thing is. Highly portable media center for you to take with when you're on trips
8:16
when you're in a hotel room, when you're visiting with your in-laws, whatever it is
8:20
wherever you need an escape. Here is your escape outlet. So with that, I'm going to plug it back in
8:25
and I'm going to go ahead and watch that new show on Netflix, which means I'll catch you in my next video
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