Introduction

Elitegroup Computer Systems, known to most of us as ECS, was formed in 1987. From their humble beginnings, they have become an industry-leading OEM that manufactures a large number of products for themselves and other vendors. ECS currently offers mini-PCs, laptops, motherboards, tablets, and other IoT devices under their various brands and has expanded into many markets. Even if you have never directly bought an ECS-branded product, it is still highly likely that you have used or owned one they manufactured. With each passing year, ECS continues to grow, offering a larger and more diverse portfolio of consumer products.

In today’s review, I take a look at the ECS LIVA Z3 Plus. Compared to previous releases, ECS has bumped the specification up, leaving the older Pentium Silver series behind in favor of mobile CPUs, including the Intel Comet Lake-U Core i7-10710U SoC, i7-10510U SoC, i5-10210U SoC, and i3-10110U SoC. Our review sample comes equipped with the i5-10210U. Overall, it remains extremely compact and retains the ability to be mounted to a monitor or television with its VESA mount. Thanks to its HDMI 2.0 port, it is capable of 4K @ 60 Hz. While the company has moved away from eMMC in favor of an M.2 SSD, it sadly still stubbornly continues to offer only 4 GB of single-channel memory. So without further ado, let’s take a closer look at what ECS is offering with the latest generation of its LIVA Z mini-PCs.