There are many proponents of micro systems for many different uses, so I will let others detail the several examples of how they use such machines.
Similarly, for around $100, I do feel like this is a reasonable platform, either to use as-is, or to expand a bit (RAM upgrade, for one).
The funny part to me is the cost difference as the Intel i5 generations become more modern… From 4th to 6th gen is a decent bump, as Skylake did actually feature some improvements in efficiency, IPC performance gains, and a few other minor changes in architecture. I can see that being worth $20. But from 6th to 7th gen, going from Skylake to Kaby Lake? It was the beginning of the worst of Intel’s “generational leaps”, which were already quite rubbish. For my part, I’d pay $5 for that. But those two architectures were so similar that I’ve seen even the best i7-6700K and i7-7700K of those generations, which basically performed within margin of error.
TL/DR: I recommend this class of machine for a variety of potential use cases, and I think that the pricing is relatively easy to rationalize. But I’d prolly stick between the lower two tiers for value, particularly since the last step up will likely present little more than the CPU’s name having changed, rather than a noticeable improvement in any given workload.
Just my thoughts, having owned and worked on many machines of this vintage.
In before @Narfcake chimes in:D
+1 – with some additional caveats. Some 4th gen i5 were dual cores with HT and did not perform to the same level as true quad cores.
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Dell 4th and 6th gen are DDR3, no M.2 for storage.
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HP 4th is DDR3, 6th is all DDR4, all have M.2 for storage albeit 4th gen requires injecting a UEFI bootloader into the BIOS to directly boot off a NVMe.
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Lenovo 4th is DDR3, no M.2. 6th is DDR4, M.2 SATA only in the M700.
My personal pick (and what I have) are the HP machines – primarily because of the M.2 slots.
(Note that I am not staff. I just volunteer to help out on the forums.)
In a nutshell, the 6th Gen would be fine for a kid’s first computer?
If they need a decent school machine, and have no aspirations of this being a gaming console, it is adequate. It might be worth a minor upgrade to RAM, but that is up to you as you see how things work for that scenario.
Cheers!
Yeah, I’m debating pulling the trigger on one of these. I have a VM with a lot of old application software that doesn’t run on ARM and Parallels so kindly forced me to Win 11 on ARM. The only thing I’m debating whether I should get a Dell because the sysprep might be a little smoother. Basically I just want to get it off my old mac and this is a cheap way to do it.