review

Azulle Access3 fanless Windows 10 Pro mini PC stick

Tuesday, November 06, 2018

A media center personal computer like the Azulle Access3 Windows 10 Mini PC is exactly what you need if you are planning to stream 4k video, play retro gaming emulation and stream from your main gaming PC or streaming services like gForce and Shadow.
What's neat about the Azulle Access3 PC stick is its USB-flash drive form factor. The Access3 only weighs 132 grams and measures 14.2cm long, 6cm wide and 1.9cm thick.
The Azulle Access3 Windows Pro PC is designed to be plugged in directly into a HDMI port on your TV but you also get a male to female short HDMI cable extension that you can use instead.
1ft long HDMI cable extension
Windows 10 Pro comes pre installed in the Azulle Access3 PC stick and it's powered by the Intel Gemini Lake N4100 chip which is a quad core system-on-a-chip (SoC) with a base frequency of 1.1 GHz and turbo burst frequency of 2.3 GHz.
The Intel Gemini Lake N4100 integrates a dual Band 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Wifi chip, Intel UHD Graphics 600 GPU, 4GB of Low Power DDR4 RAM, 32GB of internal storage and a 4MB level 2 cache memory bank which increases overall performance of the four CPU cores, making the Azulle Access3 chip as good as the old Celeron N3450 and the old Pentium N4200 chips.
For basic computer tasks like browsing the Internet and running a few office programs like Microsoft Word the Azulle Access3 mini PC stick performs well.
The Intel UHD Graphics 600 GPU has a clock speed of up to 700 MHz so it's a low performance graphics card but it supports DirectX 12 which allows every single CPU core to talk to the graphics card simultaneously, giving a significant performance boost.
small status led located on top of the unit
While you can game, the Azulle Access3's Intel HD graphics is still only suited for low spec PC games such as Dirt Rally, Pillars of Eternity, Portal 2 and Sims 4.
You can run most older steam games too like Half-Life 2 in 60fps at low settings, as well as low spec emulation gaming on emulators like PPSSPP, redream and Dolphin gamecube.

Azulle Access3's graphics card also supports H.265 and VP9 4K video codecs both of which are great for 1080p and HD video playback streaming even over slow Internet connections. Video playback is smooth and reliable without any choppiness, drop of frames or audio and video desync.
The Azulle Access3 PC stick spec is listed with only support for 4K at 30fps but the Intel Gemini Lake N4100 is able to handle 4K at 60fps mp4 video playback. The Azulle Access3 can easily handle 4k content from Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu.
If you have a high Internet connection, you can also watch smooth YouTube 4k streaming on Kodi via the Microsoft Edge browser. As far as heat, the Azulle Access3 is a fanless mini PC so it gets very hot after long usage but it doesn't overheat which is a good thing. The outer casing is made of thick thermoplastic which helps when handling the Access3 when hot.
On one side, you find two USB 3.0 ports, the micro USB DC jack, and a power button. The HDMI out connector is located on the front of the Azulle Access3.
The AC Wifi/Bluetooth 4.0 antenna and a micro SD card slot are built-in on the other side of the unit which supports up to 256GB.
AC Wifi is built-in to the Azulle Access3 PC stick so you can connect to an Internet network wirelessly but you also get an Gigabit Ethernet port on the back of the Azulle Access3 PC stick, along with a 3.5mm audio jack and a kingston lock port.
The Azulle Access3 PC stick features Wake-on-LAN (a.k.a WoL) which is a super useful feature to have if you plan to access the Azulle Access3 PC stick remotely via TeamViewer while keeping the Azulle Access3 PC in a low-power state to save electricity. Speaking of power consumption, the Access3 only uses a maximum of 6 watts so it's a low power device.
PXE (Pre-Boot Execution Environment) network booting is another BIOS configuration enabled in the Azulle Access3 that is good to have enabled in a PC to troubleshoot or diagnose the PC without the utility CD by bypassing the normal boot procedure.
Auto Power ON is also enabled and it's a handy function too especially if you leave in a place with regular power cuts or power outages as it allows you to power on the Azulle Access3 Windows 10 Pro PC remotely after a power cut.
5V/3A micro USB power adapter

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