Better wireless helps Intel’s new Compute Stick deliver on its potential

The new $159 (£130) Compute Stick.

Andrew Cunningham

The new $159 (£130) Compute Stick. Andrew Cunningham

Compared to the old stick, it’s a little larger and a little more attractive.

Andrew Cunningham

Compared to the old stick, it’s a little larger and a little more attractive. Andrew Cunningham

iPhone 5 for scale.

Andrew Cunningham

iPhone 5 for scale. Andrew Cunningham

Compared to the old stick, it’s a little larger and a little more attractive. Andrew Cunningham

iPhone 5 for scale. Andrew Cunningham

New stick on the left, old on the right. The new one gives you an extra USB 3.0 port.

Andrew Cunningham

New stick on the left, old on the right. The microSD slot is unchanged.

Andrew Cunningham

The stick comes with an HDMI extender.

Andrew Cunningham

The micro-USB power adapter.

Andrew Cunningham

From left to right: Core m5 stick, Core m3 stick, Atom stick, and first-generation Compute Stick.

Andrew Cunningham

The Core M sticks have microSD and USB Type-C ports on the left side, while the Atom version has one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, and one micro-USB port.

Andrew Cunningham

USB 3.0 port on the right side of the Core M versions, microSD slot on the side of the Atom version.

Andrew Cunningham

Conceptually, Intel’s Compute Stick is an interesting alternative to a Roku, Fire, or Apple TV box. It’s as small and unassuming as a Roku Stick, but it’s a full Windows (or Linux) PC capable of a much larger and more versatile list of skills.

In practice, though, the first-generation Compute Stick was mostly notable for its rough edges. You don’t expect much from an Atom-powered computer with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, but its flaky Bluetooth and weak Wi-Fi helped dilute whatever potential it had.

Enter the next-gen model, which updates the processor and the design but is most notable for big wireless upgrades. When done well, second-generation models can be even more exciting than brand new ideas. Time gives companies new technology to work with, and feedback from the public gives them ideas they may not have had themselves and a list of things to prioritize. Is the new Compute Stick a dongle that fulfills the promises of the original, or should you… stick with a larger computer?

Revisiting the old Compute Stick

Most of the stuff I wrote in our review of the original Compute Stick back in April still stands, but a lot has happened between then and now. Intel has released several BIOS updates and a few driver updates for the graphics, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. And while it shouldn’t change performance all that much, anyone who bought the stick with Windows 8.1 installed can upgrade it to Windows 10 provided you don’t run into disk space limitations. The following impressions are based on a clean 32-bit Windows 10 installation with the latest BIOS and drivers.

We’ve run new benchmarks that I’ll discuss later on, but it should be said that Intel has done an admirable job addressing at least some of the wireless issues I ran into in our original review. With both a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse connected, I no longer had problems with laggy or inconsistent connectivity. Range is still a problem, especially for mice—a Bluetooth mouse will still work if you get more than three or four feet away from the stick, but movement becomes less precise and harder to control.

Wi-Fi is still scattershot, too. The stick only supports the 2.4GHz wireless band and the signal drops off fairly quickly because of how small the antennas need to be to fit in this stick. Even right next to my wireless router, download speeds were slow, and heavy disk activity still seems to hurt general wireless and system performance.

So that’s where the old stick is a few months after being introduced; it’s better, but it’s still flawed in ways that software and firmware updates aren’t going to fix.

What the new stick does and doesn’t fix

You can tell that the second-generation Compute Stick was designed specifically to respond to complaints about the first model. The second USB port (USB 3.0, a nice bonus) is a dead giveaway, and while not functionally important, the sleeker design does make the Compute Stick look more like a serious piece of hardware and less like a tech demo.

The internal upgrades are a big deal, and the new wireless adapter is probably the most important. Intel has tossed out the barebones Realtek Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter in favor of its own homegrown Intel 7265 802.11ac adapter, which takes the Wi-Fi from “technically capable of connecting to a network” to “the best you can get in something this size.”

The new Compute Stick maxes out at 867Mbps when connected to a compatible router, and support for the less-crowded 5GHz band may help your real-world connection speed in a lot of cases. As with the last stick, performance drops off a bit more quickly than it would for a standard laptop because of the small antennas used in something as tiny as the Compute Stick, but download and file transfer speeds are drastically improved in my two-bedroom apartment.

Here are real-world examples to show just how much better the wireless in the new Compute Stick is: In a Speedtest.net connectivity test, the old Compute Stick sitting within two feet of my Wi-Fi router downloads at about 3.04Mbps and uploads at about 3.83Mbps, while the new stick connected over 802.11ac downloads at about 58.94Mbps and uploads at about 64Mbps (I pay for a 50Mbps connection, so that’s really the limiting factor). I tried to do a file transfer test where I moved a 2.6GB file from a file server to the stick and compared results, but the first-gen Compute Stick’s wireless is so flaky that it would’ve taken hours to complete the transfer. The new one did it in a little under two minutes. It’s a big change.

Bluetooth (also provided by the Intel adapter) doesn’t improve as drastically, at least not compared to a first-gen Compute Stick with a fully updated BIOS and drivers. Connectivity and responsiveness is problem-free if the Compute Stick is hooked to a monitor on your desk and the mouse and keyboard are within a couple feet of it, but if you’re five or six feet away (if it’s connected to the back of your TV and your mouse is on the coffee table, for example) it becomes less responsive and harder to control.

For this Atom-powered version of the stick, 32GB of internal storage is still a limitation that will keep even the lightest users from using it as a primary system. The microSD card slot can help a little with that, but this is still best thought of as a basic, low-power computer for specialized tasks—kiosks, lightweight HTPC and streaming duty, that sort of thing. Improvements to the GPU might make it slightly more suitable for lighter or older games than it used to be, but more on that later.

And the small fan that cools the Stick is still annoying, at least if you’re sitting within a couple feet of the device. It kicks on with little provocation with a quiet-but-insistent whine. It’s not a huge deal for HTPC use, since you’re sitting farther away from it and you’ll probably be watching something that drowns out the noise it makes anyway, but for desktop use it’s noticeable enough to be annoying.

Power is still provided via micro-USB, not USB Type-C like the more powerful Core M Compute Sticks that Intel will be launching in the next couple of months. The company says that current specifications for power delivery over HDMI still don’t provide enough juice to run the Compute Stick but that the SuperMHL spec may change that when it becomes more widespread.

The Stick’s power adapter is a wall wart with a cable that’s long enough for most desks and entertainment centers. The cable is longer than the one that came with the first Stick, but you also can’t easily unplug and replace it if it doesn’t work for you. Some standard micro-USB phone and tablet chargers may also work, but If you use an adapter that can’t quite provide enough power, you might run into instability or unexpected shutdowns (the adapter is a 5V 3A model, so take that into account).

Software and first-time setup

The Compute Stick ships with a 32-bit copy of Windows 10 Home, presumably to ease the memory pressure—32-bit Windows asks for a minimum of 1GB of RAM and 64-bit Windows asks for 2GB, and you usually need to double those numbers for decent performance.

If you want to run 64-bit Windows anyway, you can. Atom processors are fully 64-bit capable and have been for some time. You’ll just need to provide your own install media, change the OS from 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows in the BIOS, and make sure to grab the 64-bit drivers from the Intel support site (Intel tells us that both the 32- and 64-bit drivers should be available next week). The Core M Compute Sticks will only support and ship with 64-bit Windows, which shouldn’t be a problem since they all include 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

You run into a wall (of sorts) right after you plug the Compute Stick in: it’s obviously intended to be used mostly with wireless peripherals, but unlike OS X or Chrome OS, the Windows setup wizard still doesn’t automatically scan for Bluetooth keyboards and mice if it doesn’t detect input devices. At a minimum, you’ll need a hardware mouse or keyboard to make it through the setup wizard, make it into the Bluetooth settings, and add wireless peripherals. The presence of two USB ports makes this easier than it was with the first Stick, but it’s still a pain.

Intel hasn’t added bloatware to its Windows installation, which is admirable—the only non-standard app here that isn’t installed with a driver is Intel’s Remote Keyboard app, one of the many pieces of software that let you use your iOS or Android phone as a remote keyboard and trackpad for your computer. Setup is easy, at least. Install the app on your phone, choose a PC with the Remote Keyboard app installed and running, and use your phone’s camera to take a picture of the QR code that appears onscreen; after you do that, you’re paired. That said, if you want to use this kind of tool with the Compute Stick, I’d pick one that uses your phone’s default software keyboard since Intel’s leaves a lot to be desired.

The other minor software-related problem with the Compute Stick as it’s being shipped is that Intel didn’t get the Windows 10 November Update included in the default software load. This has happened with several OEM systems that we’ve received lately, and it’s just going to be a reality of life with Windows 10. Right out of the box, you might be facing a big download and lengthy install process to upgrade to the latest revision of the OS.

This is especially problematic for the Stick because the slow-ish storage makes the update take forever and because the install process leaves behind multiple gigabytes of files needed for uninstallation. That space can be reclaimed with the Disk Cleanup utility, but not all users will necessarily be aware of it.

Internals and performance

The new Compute Stick swaps out the old Atom (codename Bay Trail) for a newer quad-core x5-Z8300 Atom (codename Cherry Trail). These chips have been making the rounds for a while—the Surface 3 is one of the earliest and most prominent examples, but similar processors also end up in a lot of budget Chromebooks and PCs under Celeron or Pentium branding.

Bay Trail was probably the first Atom chip you’d really want to use daily, given the poor CPU and miserable GPU performance of its predecessors, but it was never in danger of competing with even the lowest of the low-end Core chips. Cherry Trail’s graphics still lag behind the faster integrated GPUs that Intel ships with its higher-end chips, but the new Compute Stick could make a decent machine for older PC games, emulators, and Minecraft­-level titles.

Across the board, Intel has been prioritizing GPU performance over CPU performance for the last few years. That applies to the Atoms just as much as the high-end Core i7 chips—single- and multi-core performance doesn’t budge much here. We’ve run Geekbench in 32-bit mode by default since that’s what the Compute Stick ships with, but we’ve also included numbers run in 64-bit Windows 10 to show you the small increases you’ll see if you decide to install it. Just be aware that you’ll run out of RAM and storage a bit faster in exchange.

The GPU charts show impressive gains—well over twice as fast for GPU-bound tests. Look at the overall scores for 3DMark and you’ll see how the weak CPU can still hold games back, though.

A couple more interesting wrinkles about the GPU that won’t show up in charts: the GPU supports more modern APIs like DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.2, and OpenCL 1.2, all things that Bay Trail couldn’t do. The new Compute Stick can also drive a 4K display at up to 30Hz. It’s not great at driving a 4K display—Intel says the Atom version of the Stick focuses on providing a good experience at 1080p, while the Core M models are better for 4K—but it’s an option if you have a 4K TV and want to give it a try.

Disk performance doesn’t change much from the first-generation model. It’s still reasonably responsive when you’re booting or launching apps, but once you start trying to write a lot to disk at once (as you do when you install those big Windows updates) things slow down a lot.

Aside from playing with the Compute Stick to test things and run benchmarks, I attempted to use it as a primary computer for a couple of days—I connected it to a 1920×1200 display, hooked up a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, and speaker, and ran Chrome and Spotify and Word and Outlook and Slack and all the stuff I normally run. Surprisingly enough, the experience wasn’t terrible, but you definitely notice that 2GB of RAM limit quickly. You can minimize and maximize app windows or switch between tabs pretty quickly, but the system takes a few seconds to redraw or reload things as it pages to and from disk.

Power consumption

Power consumption continues to be a strong point for the Compute Sticks, which are more or less comparable to Roku boxes and similar hardware in terms of power draw. The new Stick is essentially comparable to the old one, though the more powerful GPU draws a couple of extra watts under load.

Conclusions

If you wanted to buy the first Compute Stick but were put off by the various wireless and setup problems reviewers had with it, the good news is that this model is much better. Jumping from barebones 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to the same 802.11ac adapter you get in high-end Ultrabooks is a big leap that can’t be overstated.

Even with the wireless fixed, the Compute Stick still isn’t a general-purpose desktop, and its hardware is a little light even for use in a computer lab or classroom—you run into that 2GB RAM limit quickly, though if you don’t care about that, it could still be useful for those sorts of applications. Intel pitches it as a way to make a TV into an impromptu computer, as a thin client or as a particularly versatile sort of TV streaming stick.