Even if they're not speed demons, tiny, low-cost mini desktop PCs make it easy to marvel at how far technology has come: full Windows machines reduced to little PC packets.
The ECS Liva Z2 Mini PC (starts at $200; $250 as tested) is a simple but serviceable box useful as a digital-signage driver, a meeting-room device, the power behind a kiosk, or a kitchen PC.
It's small, quiet, and cheap, though it offers little storage and is far from quick.
If you're shopping for a little engine for one of those situations, the Liva Z2 can get the job done without much fuss, and it's easy to upgrade.
That said, it's pretty typical for its class, so know that the Editors' Choice Intel NUC Kit NUC6CAYS and Azulle Byte3 are solid, inexpensive alternatives.
If you need more power, but still want the tiny form factor, consider the Editors' Choice Polywell B250G-i7 or the older ECS Liva Z Plus.
Small, Silent, and Simple
The Liva Z2 is an inconspicuous little box, if not quite as tiny as you'd expect for the class.
At 2.2 by 5.1 by 4.6 inches (HWD), it's obviously miniature taken against a typical desktop, and its footprint is about the size of a CD jewel case.
Still, while it's on the nit-picking side, for a lower-power option it's a little chunkier than some alternatives.
The Intel NUC Kit mentioned above, for example, is tiny at just 2 by 4.5 by 4.3 inches, while the ECS Liva Z Plus ($249.99 at Amazon) and the Azulle Byte3 share its footprint, but are much shorter at just 1.3 and 1.5 inches.
If you want truly miniature, the Intel Compute Sticks are another story altogether, looking like no more than an elongated USB thumb drive, but they are lesser powered.
That said, there is a reason for the Liva Z2's extra thickness that I'll get into in a moment.
ECS is pushing this small box as a quiet, energy-efficient, and multifunctional PC option.
Even if some alternatives are slightly thinner, the Liva Z2 can be thrown in a bag or large pocket, and the fanless design ensures the quiet aspect.
The fanless design also keeps dust from being sucked into the system, removing a concern for maintenance.
That's especially useful if you're tucking the box away somewhere difficult to access.
It also idles at as little as 6 watts, meaning little power draw over a long period.
Each of these factors may not matter much for a standard PC, but for the purposes of this type of system, they do.
Mini PCs are often used for digital signage—powering informational screens, advertisements, or looping videos—in public settings.
Similarly, the Liva Z2 is a good fit as a dedicated meeting-room device, a digital kiosk engine, or a lightweight file server, or for other, similar tasks that require to the computer to stay on, constantly at the ready.
That always-running aspect makes running cool, quiet, and with little power consumption all the more valuable.
And, crucially, you don't need PCs in this vein to be very fast, as they'll typically be doing just one thing at a time, thus the low specs and matching low price.
The Liva Z2 is also easy to upgrade.
Simply removing four screws on the bottom panel gives access to the interior, where you can make several changes.
No, you won't be able to pack a graphics card into the box as with the Zotac ZBox Magnus EK71080 ( at Amazon) , but you can swap out the memory (you get two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots) and the M.2 Wi-Fi card, and pop in a 2.5-inch Serial ATA hard drive or SSD as secondary storage.
The internal bay for the drive is what makes the machine a bit thicker than it otherwise would be.
Our unit comes with just 32GB of flash storage as the primary boot drive, which isn't much by any objective measure.
It's an amount shared by many cheap machines, especially Chromebooks, leaving just enough for a few files and essentials apart from the operating system.
Unfortunately, on a Windows 10 machine like this one, you get even less usable space, as the OS takes up a big chunk of the bytes.
The Liva Z2 I tested only had about 14.6GB of free space out of the box, before adding any files or installing additional programs.
For its generally single-purpose usage cases, that may be perfectly fine, but it's not difficult to quickly butt up against the limitation.
The Liva Z2 is also available with 64GB of flash storage, or as mentioned, you can install a second drive.
You can also order the Liva Z2 with no operating system pre-installed for $200.
You do get a decent number of physical ports on the Liva Z2, including three USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.0 port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and an audio jack.
The wireless connectivity comes in the form of 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2.
The inclusion of dual HDMIs is handy if, indeed, you mean to use the Liva Z2 for digital signage and intend to power two screens.
You can ouput through both ports for multiple displays, and HDMI 2.0 allows for 4K video at 60 frames per second (as well as higher data transfer rates and higher color bit depth than HDMI 1.4).
Performance: On Par for Pentium
As you'd guess from the price, the Liva Z2 didn't blow me away in my benchmark testing.
The test unit I have in hand includes a 1.1GHz Intel Pentium Silver N5000 processor and 4GB of memory.
The N5000 is a low-end chip from Intel's "Gemini Lake" generation with the company's UHD Graphics 605 integrated silicon.
This low-wattage, four-core processor is fine for lesser workloads, with the ability to burst up to 2.7GHz for more strenuous moments. You can buy the Liva Z2 with a choice of two Celeron processors, as well, if you truly don't need horsepower. Its performance was indeed on the poky side, given the usual test suite PC Labs runs on desktop systems.
But that's not to say that the level of performance isn't reasonable or acceptable given the target use cases.
Its score on the general productivity test PCMark 8, at the Work Conventional setting, was on the low side among small, inexpensive PCs, falling in line with the Core m3 version of the Intel Compute Stick and slightly edging out the Intel NUC Kit NUC6CAYS mentioned earlier.
The Liva Z2's media-processing scores edged out those two devices, as well as those of the Azulle Byte3, which is also a fanless mini PC design.
That said, you really shouldn't rely on the Liva Z2 for media editing at all—even the quickest among slow machines is still slow.
All of these scores, while showing the Liva Z2 is indeed a full Windows 10 machine for $250 that can run the length of our test suite, demonstrate that you shouldn't rely on it, except in a pinch, for concerted media-file work.
It is perfectly serviceable, though, for web browsing and other low-lift tasks.
If you jump further up the mini-PC price ladder (say, by a few hundred dollars, such as to the Liva Z Plus and its Core i5 processor), it's a different story.
See How We Test Desktops
The same applies to anything relying on graphics acceleration or 3D capability.
The integrated graphics had trouble even completing our 3D tests, churning through the simulated images in slideshow-like fashion.
The single-digit frame rates on the gaming tests Heaven and Valley and the low scores on the UL 3DMark tests tell you all you need to know, even if the other machines in this price range fall into the same basket.
This is a system for display and playback tasks, not rendering or proper gaming.
As a machine for passive digital signage, these processing-intensive tasks generally won't come into play.
If you're considering this model for a more active use case, the Liva Z2 was fine for tooling around the desktop and web browsing, in my experience.
It also streamed 4K YouTube content to a 4K display over the HDMI 2.0 port just fine.
It's obviously no powerhouse, but you can load up a few browser tabs and programs without too much slowdown.
Anything beyond that, though, and you'll be able to tell the gears are churning.
Solid for Single-Use Applications
Like many niche products at both the high and low end of the price spectrum, the Liva Z2 shouldn't be your go-to home desktop.
If you're shopping for one of the aforementioned scenarios, though, which largely involve simple or repetitive tasks, it should fit the bill just fine.
It's cheap, it's quiet, it won't drive up your electric bill too much, and it can be upgraded modestly with little hassle.
As long as you don't need to store much data locally, or process it quickly, the Liva Z2 can do the job.
Plus, if you're doing a tech audit in an educational or public installation and looking to update desktop machines that run on a host of existing monitors, this machine's low energy draw could save you big on your electric bill.
You can find alternatives up and down the price range (mini PCs can vary greatly, available from $130 to nearly $2,000) that may suit your needs better.
But the Liva Z2 may be your best bet for a low-cost,storage- and memory-upgradable machine that's fully operational out of the box.
Pros
Compact, quiet fanless design.
Easily upgradable memory and storage.
4K output over HDMI.
USB-C connection.
Built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
View More
The Bottom Line
The ECS Liva Z2 is a quiet, low-power mini desktop for niche use cases.
It isn't fast enough to be a main PC for most folks, but it's an inexpensive option for digital signage, kiosks, and similar environs.
Even if they're not speed demons, tiny, low-cost mini desktop PCs make it easy to marvel at how far technology has come: full Windows machines reduced to little PC packets.
The ECS Liva Z2 Mini PC (starts at $200; $250 as tested) is a simple but serviceable box useful as a digital-signage driver, a meeting-room device, the power behind a kiosk, or a kitchen PC.
It's small, quiet, and cheap, though it offers little storage and is far from quick.
If you're shopping for a little engine for one of those situations, the Liva Z2 can get the job done without much fuss, and it's easy to upgrade.
That said, it's pretty typical for its class, so know that the Editors' Choice Intel NUC Kit NUC6CAYS and Azulle Byte3 are solid, inexpensive alternatives.
If you need more power, but still want the tiny form factor, consider the Editors' Choice Polywell B250G-i7 or the older ECS Liva Z Plus.
Small, Silent, and Simple
The Liva Z2 is an inconspicuous little box, if not quite as tiny as you'd expect for the class.
At 2.2 by 5.1 by 4.6 inches (HWD), it's obviously miniature taken against a typical desktop, and its footprint is about the size of a CD jewel case.
Still, while it's on the nit-picking side, for a lower-power option it's a little chunkier than some alternatives.
The Intel NUC Kit mentioned above, for example, is tiny at just 2 by 4.5 by 4.3 inches, while the ECS Liva Z Plus ($249.99 at Amazon) and the Azulle Byte3 share its footprint, but are much shorter at just 1.3 and 1.5 inches.
If you want truly miniature, the Intel Compute Sticks are another story altogether, looking like no more than an elongated USB thumb drive, but they are lesser powered.
That said, there is a reason for the Liva Z2's extra thickness that I'll get into in a moment.
ECS is pushing this small box as a quiet, energy-efficient, and multifunctional PC option.
Even if some alternatives are slightly thinner, the Liva Z2 can be thrown in a bag or large pocket, and the fanless design ensures the quiet aspect.
The fanless design also keeps dust from being sucked into the system, removing a concern for maintenance.
That's especially useful if you're tucking the box away somewhere difficult to access.
It also idles at as little as 6 watts, meaning little power draw over a long period.
Each of these factors may not matter much for a standard PC, but for the purposes of this type of system, they do.
Mini PCs are often used for digital signage—powering informational screens, advertisements, or looping videos—in public settings.
Similarly, the Liva Z2 is a good fit as a dedicated meeting-room device, a digital kiosk engine, or a lightweight file server, or for other, similar tasks that require to the computer to stay on, constantly at the ready.
That always-running aspect makes running cool, quiet, and with little power consumption all the more valuable.
And, crucially, you don't need PCs in this vein to be very fast, as they'll typically be doing just one thing at a time, thus the low specs and matching low price.
The Liva Z2 is also easy to upgrade.
Simply removing four screws on the bottom panel gives access to the interior, where you can make several changes.
No, you won't be able to pack a graphics card into the box as with the Zotac ZBox Magnus EK71080 ( at Amazon) , but you can swap out the memory (you get two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots) and the M.2 Wi-Fi card, and pop in a 2.5-inch Serial ATA hard drive or SSD as secondary storage.
The internal bay for the drive is what makes the machine a bit thicker than it otherwise would be.
Our unit comes with just 32GB of flash storage as the primary boot drive, which isn't much by any objective measure.
It's an amount shared by many cheap machines, especially Chromebooks, leaving just enough for a few files and essentials apart from the operating system.
Unfortunately, on a Windows 10 machine like this one, you get even less usable space, as the OS takes up a big chunk of the bytes.
The Liva Z2 I tested only had about 14.6GB of free space out of the box, before adding any files or installing additional programs.
For its generally single-purpose usage cases, that may be perfectly fine, but it's not difficult to quickly butt up against the limitation.
The Liva Z2 is also available with 64GB of flash storage, or as mentioned, you can install a second drive.
You can also order the Liva Z2 with no operating system pre-installed for $200.
You do get a decent number of physical ports on the Liva Z2, including three USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.0 port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and an audio jack.
The wireless connectivity comes in the form of 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2.
The inclusion of dual HDMIs is handy if, indeed, you mean to use the Liva Z2 for digital signage and intend to power two screens.
You can ouput through both ports for multiple displays, and HDMI 2.0 allows for 4K video at 60 frames per second (as well as higher data transfer rates and higher color bit depth than HDMI 1.4).
Performance: On Par for Pentium
As you'd guess from the price, the Liva Z2 didn't blow me away in my benchmark testing.
The test unit I have in hand includes a 1.1GHz Intel Pentium Silver N5000 processor and 4GB of memory.
The N5000 is a low-end chip from Intel's "Gemini Lake" generation with the company's UHD Graphics 605 integrated silicon.
This low-wattage, four-core processor is fine for lesser workloads, with the ability to burst up to 2.7GHz for more strenuous moments. You can buy the Liva Z2 with a choice of two Celeron processors, as well, if you truly don't need horsepower. Its performance was indeed on the poky side, given the usual test suite PC Labs runs on desktop systems.
But that's not to say that the level of performance isn't reasonable or acceptable given the target use cases.
Its score on the general productivity test PCMark 8, at the Work Conventional setting, was on the low side among small, inexpensive PCs, falling in line with the Core m3 version of the Intel Compute Stick and slightly edging out the Intel NUC Kit NUC6CAYS mentioned earlier.
The Liva Z2's media-processing scores edged out those two devices, as well as those of the Azulle Byte3, which is also a fanless mini PC design.
That said, you really shouldn't rely on the Liva Z2 for media editing at all—even the quickest among slow machines is still slow.
All of these scores, while showing the Liva Z2 is indeed a full Windows 10 machine for $250 that can run the length of our test suite, demonstrate that you shouldn't rely on it, except in a pinch, for concerted media-file work.
It is perfectly serviceable, though, for web browsing and other low-lift tasks.
If you jump further up the mini-PC price ladder (say, by a few hundred dollars, such as to the Liva Z Plus and its Core i5 processor), it's a different story.
See How We Test Desktops
The same applies to anything relying on graphics acceleration or 3D capability.
The integrated graphics had trouble even completing our 3D tests, churning through the simulated images in slideshow-like fashion.
The single-digit frame rates on the gaming tests Heaven and Valley and the low scores on the UL 3DMark tests tell you all you need to know, even if the other machines in this price range fall into the same basket.
This is a system for display and playback tasks, not rendering or proper gaming.
As a machine for passive digital signage, these processing-intensive tasks generally won't come into play.
If you're considering this model for a more active use case, the Liva Z2 was fine for tooling around the desktop and web browsing, in my experience.
It also streamed 4K YouTube content to a 4K display over the HDMI 2.0 port just fine.
It's obviously no powerhouse, but you can load up a few browser tabs and programs without too much slowdown.
Anything beyond that, though, and you'll be able to tell the gears are churning.
Solid for Single-Use Applications
Like many niche products at both the high and low end of the price spectrum, the Liva Z2 shouldn't be your go-to home desktop.
If you're shopping for one of the aforementioned scenarios, though, which largely involve simple or repetitive tasks, it should fit the bill just fine.
It's cheap, it's quiet, it won't drive up your electric bill too much, and it can be upgraded modestly with little hassle.
As long as you don't need to store much data locally, or process it quickly, the Liva Z2 can do the job.
Plus, if you're doing a tech audit in an educational or public installation and looking to update desktop machines that run on a host of existing monitors, this machine's low energy draw could save you big on your electric bill.
You can find alternatives up and down the price range (mini PCs can vary greatly, available from $130 to nearly $2,000) that may suit your needs better.
But the Liva Z2 may be your best bet for a low-cost,storage- and memory-upgradable machine that's fully operational out of the box.
Pros
Compact, quiet fanless design.
Easily upgradable memory and storage.
4K output over HDMI.
USB-C connection.
Built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
View More
The Bottom Line
The ECS Liva Z2 is a quiet, low-power mini desktop for niche use cases.
It isn't fast enough to be a main PC for most folks, but it's an inexpensive option for digital signage, kiosks, and similar environs.
