Calling the ECS Liva Q2 Mini PC ($185 as tested) a mini PC doesn't do it justice. It's so small that it's more like a mini mini PC. This is a PC that is smaller than a mouse you might connect to it. And while cramming a desktop PC into such a small package is undeniably impressive, this extreme design is not without its drawbacks. For one, it's much slower than your average-size PC...or even your average-size mini PC. For another, storage space is minimal. And despite using a low-power, low-voltage "Gemini Lake" Intel Celeron mobile CPU, it requires a cooling fan that spins near-constantly. You may not require oodles of performance from a mini PC, but you'll want it to run quietly—if not silently—if using it to power a kiosk, a digital sign, or a conference-room device. The ECS Liva Z2 Mini PC or an Intel NUC is a better bet because the larger footprint allows for quieter operation.
Resting in Your Palm
The ECS Liva Q2 is so tiny that you'll wonder how it's a fully functioning PC. It fits in the palm of your hand.
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The Liva Q2 measures 1.25 by 2.75 by 2.75 by inches (HWD), which is smaller in every way compared with the ECS Liva Z2, which is 2.2 by 5.1 by 4.6 inches. The latest Apple Mac Mini is huge by comparison, at 1.4 by 7.7 by 7.7 inches.
Despite its tiny size, the Liva Q2 doesn't feel like a cheap, plastic toy. It's a solidly constructed cube with pleasing, rounded corners.
The Liva Q2 makes use of all four of its sides to provide a PC user with enough ports and connections, but the selection is unsurprisingly limited.
On the front, you'll find the power button, a USB 3.1 port and a USB 2.0 port. With only two USB ports, you'll need to use a hub or juggle your USB peripherals if you, say, need to connect a hard drive to the system and already have a keyboard and mouse plugged into it. With Bluetooth on board (along with Wi-Fi), however, you can free up the USB ports by using a wireless keyboard and mouse. To be clear, a keyboard and mouse are not included with the system.
On the left side, you get a microSD card slot, which you may need to use given the system's meager allotment of storage space.
On the back, an HDMI port and an Ethernet port sit below a large (relatively speaking) vent that allows the system to stay cool.
The only item on the right side is a Kensington lock slot, an important inclusion since the Liva Q2's small size could make it an easy target for thieves.
The system sits on four rubber feet, which have at their centers screws to hold the system together. The rubber feet keep the system from sliding around on your desk, but you might also use ECS's included VESA bracket to mount the system behind your display.
You can remove the four screws to get inside the Liva Q2, but you'll have little cause to do so. There is no option for upgrades, but you might want to open the system every so often to clean it out, since the cooling fan will pull dust and debris inside the case.
A Loud Fan, a Small Drive
You are probably not shopping for a mini PC this small for regular Windows use. Mini PCs are often used to power a display in a digital kiosk or sign, as a dedicated meeting-room device, a lightweight file server, or other light tasks that require the system to be always on but never doing more than one thing at a time. The Celeron-based Liva Q2 struggled mightily with any multitasking I threw at it, but it has just enough oomph to power Windows 10 and a sngle productivity app with only a few hiccups and freezes.
Its performance is certainly underwhelming (as you'll soon see when I get to the few benchmarks it was able to complete in the next section), but more troubling was the system's reliance on a cooling fan, even when sitting idle. The fan runs almost constantly and can be heard easily when the Q2 is sitting on your desk or behind your display.
The biggest reason many of PC Labs' benchmarks won't run on the Liva Q2 is not its low-power CPU but its tiny "hard drive," which in this case is really just a hunk of eMMC flash memory, in essence a glorified memory card built into the system. (Many Chromebooks, bargain-basement laptops, and some other desktop mini PCs use eMMC, as well.) There simply wasn't enough room to store the required files or the output files from a few of the tests. My test unit has only 32GB of flash storage, and less than 12GB of the drive was available with the Windows 10 installation that was in place. (ECS does give you the option of outfitting the Liva Q2 with 64GB of storage, though I could not find that version for sale in the US at this writing.)
Likewise, I got the lowest CPU option of the available Liva Q2 choices. My test system uses the Intel Celeron N4000; you can upgrade to the Celeron N4100 or the Pentium Silver N5000. I did receive the larger of the two memory allotments offered: 4GB, as opposed to 2GB.
Poky Celeron Performance
The Intel Celeron N4000 is the bottom rung of several CPUs from Intel's 2017-vintage "Gemini Lake" rollout. The N4000 is an unthreaded dual-core processor with a 1.1GHz base frequency and a 2.6GHz turbo frequency. It's underpowered compared to modern Core processors but a good fit for a mini PC because of its efficiency; it has a TDP of only 6 watts. (The Celeron N4100 and the Pentium Silver N5000 are also 6-watt designs.)
I compared the ECS Liva Q2 to four other mini PCs: the larger ECS Liva Z2, an HP Z2 Mini compact workstation (really, well out of the Liva Q2's league), and a pair of Next Unit of Computing (NUC) mini PCs from Intel. The Liva Z2 is the closest in price and components to the Liva Q2, while the other mini PCs pack much more powerful components into their tiny chassis.
The Liva Q2 is not built for general use, a fact I quickly came to understand after opening a handful of apps and watching it struggle to keep up. Multitasking is not its strong suit. Frequent lags and freezes occurred when I had multiple apps running or multiple browser tabs open. It was able to handle running a single app without issue, including the ability to stream 4K videos smoothly.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 (Productivity Test) and PCMark 8 (Storage Test)
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, Web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's storage subsystem. You won't see results for it here, though: The Liva Q2 did not have enough free storage to run the PCMark 8 Storage test to completion.
The Liva Q2 posted a low score on PCMark 10, which did not come as a surprise given its low-power Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM. It did manage to stay in the ballpark of the Liva Z2 and its quad-core Pentium N5000 chip, which is a positive result.
Cinebench R15
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
It's highly unlikely you will attempt to use the Liva Q2 for any media editing, but I tried anyway. It was able to run only Cinebench out of our media tests (it did not have enough space to run a Handbrake or Photoshop trial that PC Labs typically runs). To the shock of no one, the Liva Q2 trailed the other mini PCs on Cinebench.
Graphics Tests
The 3DMark suite from UL (formerly Futuremark) measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. Alas, the Liva Q2 was unable to complete either 3DMark test.
Unigine Superposition
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess. We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets.
The Liva Q2 managed to eke out a score on the Low Preset test, posting a measly frame rate of 7fps. As evidenced by this, though it's no surprise given the reliance on integrated graphics on a Celeron chip: The Liva Q2 is about as far from a gaming PC as you can get.
A Case of Being Too Small?
The Liva Q2's performance in the labs does not wholly prevent a recommendation. You have to look at it for what it is and what it is for. For one, this system is not built for speed. It's built for efficiency, in terms of both size and its intended ability to be always on to power a specific usage scenario.
That said, relying on a cooling fan that has to run nearly all the time is not a great fit for a mini PC's efficiency or the ambience where it goes. It not only adds to your electric bill, but it also adds an ever-present whir to your kiosk, conference room, or wherever you might deploy this mini PC.
The tiny Liva Q2 is marvel in terms of design, but it's just too small for its own good. To our eyes and ears, moving up in size to the ECS Liva Z2 or a basic Intel NUC is a trade-off worth making. You'll likely have more than enough room on the back of your monitor for one of these mini PCs, even if they are not quite the mite that the ultra-small Liva Q2 is.
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