ASUS NUC 14 Pro Review – The Little PC That Could

Unboxing

The era of Intel NUCs are over – and in comes the ASUS NUCs, since the company took over Intel’s NUC business last year. The ASUS NUC 14 series succeeds the Intel NUC 13 series, and here we have the NUC 14 Pro to take a look. The mini PC is stored in a square packaging, which includes these items:

– AC cord (optional add-on, not included in-package)
– 120W DC power supply (specific to this variant)
– Regulatory documents
– Warranty document
– Safety information document
– VESA mounting plate
– VESA mounting screws
– ASUS NUC 14 Pro main unit

The NUC 14 Pro comes with VESA mounting kit which allows the unit to be attached directly to displays in certain applications (such as POS terminals). Note that some variants with less powerful processors will come with a 90W power supply instead.

Walkaround

As a mini-PC, the I/O layout is straightforward: you have two USB-A and one USB-C port at the front accompanied by the power button, whereas most of the connectivity is located at the rear of the machine. Here, you can find the DC barrel jack, two HDMI 2.1 ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports (which can be used to output displays as well), two USB-A ports, and a 2.5GbE LAN port. This is also where the exhaust is located.

On the sides, there’s not much going on aside from a Kensington lock, though the heatsink can also be briefly seen on the right side of the chassis. On the left side, the grille is purely for cosmetic purpose.

At the bottom, you can find mounting points for VESA installations; aside from that, the machine provides a quick access latch that can be unlocked by turning the screw 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Pull the latch to lift the panel up, which reveals the upgradable SODIMM DDR5 modules and two SSD slots (one M.2 2280, one M.2 2242). For tall chassis variants (which is what we have), there’s also an additional 2.5-inch drive bay located on the bottom plate, with a ribbon cable that handles SATA connections to the drive.

Specifications

ASUS NUC 14 Pro (NUC14RVHV7, Tall Chassis variant)

Full specifications available on the product website. Specifications listed here are as tested – actual configuration may differ.

CPU	Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (6P+8E+2LPE – 16 cores, 22 threads) with vPro technology
RAM	16GB DDR5-5600 (SO-DIMM)
GPU	Integrated: Intel Arc Graphics (8 Xe Cores)
NPU	Intel AI Boost NPU
Storage	Samsung PM9A1a SSD (MZVL2512HDJD-00BT7 – PCIe 4.0, M.2 2280) Secondary M.2 2242 slot available Optional 2.5″ drive bay available (for Tall Chassis variants only)
Display	None
Audio	None
Webcam	None
I/O	Front: 1x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C (20Gbps) 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (10Gbps) Rear: 2x Thunderbolt 4 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10Gbps) 1x USB 2.0 Type-A 2x HDMI 2.1 1x RJ-45 LAN 1x DC-in
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (Intel AX211) Intel I226-V 2.5GbE LAN
Battery	None
Power Supply	120W, DC barrel jack
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro
Dimensions	Tall Chassis: 117 x 112 x 54 mm (0.7L) Slim Chassis: 117 x 112 x 37 mm (0.48L)
Weight	Tall Chassis: 750g Slim Chassis: 600g

Performance

Storage

The SSD used here is the Samsunng PM9A1a SSD designed for OEMs, and it delivers performance pretty much as advertised per Samsung’s specs. Note that NUC 14 Pro offers several storage configurations, so this is only representative of the particular SKU that we have.

CPU

In this tiny chassis, the ASUS NUC 14 Pro runs a laptop chip in the form of Core Ultra 7 165H – a 28W part that represents the higher-end of the Meteor Lake lineup. In this case, though, we’ve observed that ASUS has given the chip lots of leeway in terms of power, with 64W PL1/PL2 giving the chip enough grunt to lead the comparison chart here. Note that TDP limits are fully configurable via BIOS, so you can raise or lower the power limit depending on your needs.

GPU

As far as GPU performance goes, it’s not quite the same level as the Core Ultra 7 155H found on the Vivobook S 14 OLED, but it’s fairly respectable, all things considered. Given that NUC 14 Pro is mostly a commercial-bound machine, you’re not likely to game on it – but for applications that can tap into the GPU, this should be a good indicator on what the performance looks like.

System

On Novabench, the NUC 14 Pro pretty much leads in all metrics (except Memory), which easily hands the mini PC a lead on this comparison. Generally, it’s on the same performance ballpark as the Vivobook S 14 OLED.

For PCMark 10 Modern Office test, the results does show a bit of back and forth between the NUC 14 Pro and the aforementioned Vivobook laptop, though the overall scores once again puts both machines on the same level, with a difference within margin of error.

The Good

The good part of the ASUS NUC 14 Pro comes down to its utilitarian nature – it offers solid performance on a small package, while featuring plenty of I/O for all kinds of applications, even high-speed workloads that can be covered by Thunderbolt.

Upgradability is a plus as well, with SO-DIMM memory and up to three drives can be installed per system, which is more than what most laptops can pack these days. Up to 96GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM modules can be installed (through two 48GB modules). Finally, the VESA mount that comes included in package is a nice plus, for users who may want to direct attach the mini PC onto monitors themselves.

The Bad

There are two minor points I’d like to raise for this PC, and they are: one, under heavy load, the fans can get a fair bit noisy, and if you’re using it in quieter environments you may even hear the subtle coil whine noise. We’re not sure if this is specific to this particular unit since coil whine is a bit of a “silicon lottery” in itself, so your mileage may vary.

Another thing I’d like to point out is the lack of audio outputs. Strictly speaking, you’re probably not going to use this PC as for media consumption, but you couldn’t rule out that this PC may find some use cases in film production environments. A headphone jack would be nice for a just-in-case situation, perhaps?

Verdict

With the NUC lineup now under ASUS’s roof, how does the prospects look like for what Intel used to call “Next Unit of Computing”? Safe to say, NUCs are in safe hands, for now. The ASUS NUC 14 Pro should cover plenty of commercial use cases, and the performance is pretty solid for a PC this size, too.

Keep in mind that ASUS doesn’t publish prices for this model – you’ll have to request a quote for that – though we’ve found similar configuration with Core Ultra 7 155H (non-vPro) that features prices from RM4,000 to RM6,000+. The configuration that we have, with Core Ultra 7 165H (vPro), is likely to be more expensive than these prices given its vPro designation, but your mileage may vary.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the NUC 14 Pro mini PC (NUC14RVHV7, Tall Chassis variant) for this review.