Intel’s Core M Compute Stick is an actually usable computer with caveats

• Intel's Core m3 Compute Stick. Andrew Cunningham

Back in January at CES, Intel showed us a full range of mini desktop PCs that it has been releasing steadily over the course of the year. The first was a new, inexpensive version of its Compute Stick, followed by a new, mainstream Skylake NUC, and finally a quad-core NUC box that wasn't quite like anything the company had done before.

Now Intel has sent us the last device we learned about at the beginning of the year: a Core m3-powered version of the Compute Stick that sits somewhere between the Atom version and the Skylake NUC on the price and performance spectrum. It looks more or less like the Atom version we've already seen, but it introduces a few neat ideas (and enough performance) that it's actually plausible as a general-use desktop computer.

The bad news is the price tag, which at $380 (with Windows, $300 without, and $485 with Windows and a Core m5) is pretty far outside the sub-$150 impulse-buy zone that the other Compute Sticks exist inside. So how well does it work? What compromises do you make when you shrink a decent laptop's worth of power into a stick? And how big is the niche for a relatively powerful, relatively expensive stick-sized desktop, anyway?

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