Intel NUC 7 Home Unboxing, First Impressions

Desktop PC’s are often thought of as large hunks that take up a bunch of space, but with the amount of AiO’s and small-form-factor PC’s there are right now, that doesn’t have to be the case. Intel’s NUC line of tiny PC’s isn’t new. They’ve been around since the Sandy Bridge generation of Intel processors, which to some people, was a long time ago.

Today, we’ll be checking out the Intel NUC 7 Home, a sweet spot NUC that on paper, is perfect for simple home, office, and school use. But first, let’s see what’s inside the box.

Aside from the NUC itself, you get the power adapter, VESA mounting hardware so that you can stick it behind your monitor and be done with it, and of course, the documentation.

Moving on to the NUC, the overall design is decent but misses a huge opportunity due to one flaw. It’s nice and compact with a good amount of air vents, a nice selection of ports, and has a solid feel thanks to its aluminum chassis. The aluminum has a very nice color and texture to it, but the NUC does not look premium overall due to the shiny plastic top cover. It is a huge dust and fingerprint magnet and gives the computer a cheap look.

As for I/O, the NUC 7 Home does it right. For starters, the front panel has two USB 3.0 ports, a combo audio port, and the power button.

The left side has a micro SD card slot and Kensington lock. Found here as well as at the opposite side are the main air intakes of the chassis.

The back is where the party is at. The main air exhaust is found here, as well as the DC power input, HDMI out, Ethernet, two more USB 3.0 ports, and Thunderbolt 3.

It may seem pretty barebones to some of you, but consider that this is a machine intended for basic Windows use. All the included I/O will pretty much be all the intended users will need.

The NUC can easily be kept out of sight via an included VESA mount that allows you to mount it behind your monitor.

The power supply has a few features that are very welcome. It has a long cable with an included velcro strap and a modular wall plug system, which includes plugs for pretty much every region.

This particular Intel NUC 7 Home is powered by an Intel Core i5-7260U, Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB SATA HDD paired with a 16GB Intel Optane module. On paper, these specs should be more than adequate for home, office, school, or media consumption use. Actual testing will have to wait ’til our full review.

Intel NUC 7 Home specs:
Intel Core i5-7260U
Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics
4GB DDR4-2400MHz RAM
1TB SATA 3 HDD
16GB Intel Optane Memory
Thunderbolt 3
Intel Dual Band Wireless 802.11ac
Bluetooth 4.2
Intel Gigabit LAN
Micro SD card slot
Windows 10 Home

The Intel NUC 7 Home is available at PCWorx for Php31,990. See listing here.