Panache brand by Vardhaman Technology has launched Air PC, a compact PC-on-stick similar to the Intel Compute Stick, running full Windows 10 earlier this month. How different is the Air PC from the Intel Compute Stick, let us find out in the review.
Box Contents
- Panache Air PC
- Micro USB charger (5V-2A)
- HDMI extension cable
- USB OTG cable
- Warranty information
Hardware and design
The design of the Air PC is similar to the Intel compute stick, including the compact size. There is a Panache branding, along with a Intel Inside branding on the front. There is also a LED light below the Intel branding.
It has a HDMI slot on the top that connects directly to your TV or a monitor. You can also use the bundled HDMI extender cable if your TV is wall mounted so that you can’t connect the Air PC directly to the TV.
The Air PC measures 110.9x38x9.8mm and weighs just 46 grams, so that you can easily carry it in your pocket. On the right side there is a power button, a heat sink grill, micro USB slot for power and a full USB 2.0 slot. Since it has a USB slot, you can easily connect accessories such as mouse, keyboard or even a joystick. You can connect a USB hub to connect multiple accessories to the Air PC. Since it runs on Windows, most of the accessories are automatically recognized by the PC stick.
On the left side there is a heat sink grill, a micro USB OTG slot and a microSD card slot. The Intel Compute Stick doesn’t have this micro USB slot. With the bundled OTG cable, you can connect another accessories to the Air PC. This is definitely a good addition. The microSD slot accepts cards up to 128GB.
Even though the Air PC comes with a power adapter in the box, you can even power the PC stick even by connecting it to the USB slot in your TV or even use a power bank. We connected a keyboard to the USB slot and a USB dongle of a wireless mouse using the OTG converter that completes the set up. There is a power indication button on the front that glows in Blue color when the Air PC is on. Since the PC stick uses HDMI to transmit audio, it doesn’t have any separate AUX out. You can always connect Bluetooth speakers since it has Bluetooth support. The Asus VivoStick PC that was introduced last month even has an audio jack and two USB ports.
Software, Connectivity and Performance
Coming to the software, the Air PC runs on Windows 10 Home 32-bit OS out of the box, so you can install all software that you normally install on your desktop. If you have a touch screen monitor, you will get a more intuitive experience.
We have the 32GB storage variant, out of which 25.5GB is usable, out of which you get about 17.6GB of space once the setup is complete. You also get a free one year free subscription of F-Secure Internet Security, but it doesn’t come with free office 365 subscription like some Windows tablets. You can use the built-in music player or Windows Media Player to play music or install other third-party music player or online music streaming software. It can also play 1080p videos smoothly, but it can’t handle 4K videos. Coming to connectivity, it has WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, standard USB 2.0 and micro USB slot. You can even connect a hard disk to the Air PC.
Coming to the performance, it is powered by a 1.33GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F 22nm processor with 2MB L2 Cache and Intel HD graphics that is found in most Windows tablets in the market. The performance is decent and multitasking was smooth to run several apps in the background, thanks to 2GB RAM. Running Google Chrome browser definitely takes up more RAM, but it doesn’t slow down until you open over 20 tabs. You can play casual games without any issues, thanks to the built-in Intel HD graphics, but it can’t handle high-end games. It doesn’t have any heating issues.
Conclusion
Priced at Rs. 9,999 for the 16GB version and Rs. 10,999 for the 32GB version, the Panache Air PC is a bit costly compared to Intel Compute Stick that is now available for as low as Rs. 8,400 for the 32GB version. For an additional micro USB slot, the price of the Air PC is a bit steep.
Even though the Panache Air PC runs full Windows, it can be a decent home media PC that can also do things like browsing, document editing and more. It is definitely not as powerful as a PC, but powerful enough to be deployed as a thin client, as we had said earlier. A thin client is something like a portal to a more powerful computer that’s usually a server its connected to. Most of the work happens on the server, which can be local, as well as in the cloud, so all the thin client would need to do is be powerful enough to render the UI, which the Panache Air PC or other portable compute sticks can handle with ease.