Second-generation Intel Compute Stick review: still a $159 niche PC, but the new wireless adapter fixes the major flaw of its predecessor
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel's first Compute Stick arrived as a $149 Windows-on-HDMI experiment whose debut review flagged barely acceptable performance and too few ports as the cost of its size and price. At CES, Intel previewed a refresh promising faster wireless and USB 3.0 at a higher price, and this review is the verdict on whether that trade was worth it.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the second-generation stick get the wireless problem fixed, but the entry price moves from $149 to $159, making the fix a paid upgrade rather than a free revision.
- Andrew Cunningham's verdict keeps the product in niche territory: the core limitations of the original design carry over even with the adapter improved.
Second-order effects
- The $10 price bump narrows the gap to Intel's own mini-PC line, where the $500 Core i7 NUC already positions itself as the performance option — pushing stick buyers to decide between portability and real compute headroom.
- A fixed wireless adapter makes the stick more viable as a thin client or display-dongle deployment, which pressures rivals in the HDMI-compute space to match the connectivity spec at the same price point.
Third-order effects
- If the stick survives as an iterative product, the form factor looks set to specialize rather than generalize — Intel's later Movidius USB stick repurposed the same plug-in format for AI acceleration instead of general-purpose Windows computing.
- Cheap HDMI compute settling into a permanent niche suggests the market splits between full mini-PCs for work and disposable dongles for signage, kiosks, and embedded uses.
The trend: HDMI-stick PCs are iterating on their weakest components while ceding general-purpose computing to mini-PCs, with the plug-in format drifting toward specialized accelerator roles.