ECS Liva Z5 Plus Review

About the size of an outstretched hand, the ECS Liva Z5 Plus ($630 as tested) is an affordable mini PC for office, retail, and industrial use. The Liva family is a long-running series of mini desktops along the lines of Zotac’s Zboxes and Intel’s NUCs, and this tiny slab, which can VESA-mount under a desk or behind a monitor, provides ample physical and wireless connectivity. Plus, it comes with a three-year warranty. Effectively a cross between the faster but much pricier Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini and the cheaper but larger MSI Pro DP21, the ECS Liva Z5 Plus earns our Editors’ Choice award for affordable mini PCs.

Configuration and Design: Small But Fully Functional

Measuring 1.5 by 5.8 by 4.7 inches (HWD), the Liva Z5 Plus is small enough to fit almost anywhere. Its footprint isn’t much larger than the 75mm/100mm VESA mounts it supports, though its laptop-style power adapter is external, as is the norm for PCs this size. The Acer Vero Veriton Mini (1.4 by 7.3 by 7.3 inches), the Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini (1.5 by 7.5 by 7.7 inches), and the MSI DP21 Pro (2.2 by 8 by 8.2 inches) are all noticeably larger. The Geekom AS6 (2.3 by 4.7 by 5.1 inches) is closer in size but thicker.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Naturally, since it uses laptop-grade chips, this ECS pumps out performance similar to a mainstream laptop, featuring 13th Gen Intel Core U-series processors (Core i3 through Core i7) with Intel vPro remote management on select CPUs. Our model pairs a midrange Core i5-1335U (10 total cores, up to 4.6GHz turbo boost) with 16GB of RAM. Graphics come from Intel’s familiar Iris Xe integrated silicon, which serves the purposes of this computer just fine. Our unit has just a 256GB SSD, but organizations relying on cloud platforms might not need anything larger.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Most of this desktop is sturdy plastic except for the metal baseplate. Removing the four Phillips-head screws securing the latter provides quick access to the two DDR4-3200 SODIMM memory slots and the M.2 slot for memory and storage upgrades, respectively. The M.2 wireless card (an Intel AX211 card supporting Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 in our model) is also upgradable; its antennas are built into the case instead of protruding externally.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Front ports include one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, and one universal 3.5mm audio jack. Meanwhile, dual 2.5Gbps Ethernet jacks, two HDMI, and one DisplayPort populate the rear. The Liva Z5 Plus supports four monitors if you use an adapter to get DisplayPort output from the USB-C port. ECS also sells a thicker Liva Z5E model with what you see here plus four serial ports or two serial ports and HDMI input.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Our Liva Z5 Plus has a clean, bloatware-free copy of Windows 11 Pro and a longer-than-usual, three-year warranty. ECS doesn’t include any peripherals in the box.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Testing the ECS Liva Z5 Plus: Bite-Size Everyday Performance

To recap, our $630 Liva Z5 Plus review unit has an Intel Core i5-1335U processor, 16GB of RAM, Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, and a 256GB SSD. We’re comparing it with the Acer Veriton Vero Mini ($1,199 as tested with a Core i7-12700T), the Geekom AS6 ($1,009, AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX), the Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini ($909.99, Core i7-13700H), and the MSI Pro DP21 ($471, Core i3-12100). These units all have beefier CPUs than our ECS, but the ECS is also the smallest of the bunch.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The ECS’s PCMark score was comfortably above the 4,000-point bar we set for mainstream PCs, so it shouldn’t have any trouble with office and productivity apps and mild multitasking. The included SSD also appeared reasonably fast in the PCMark test.

Predictably, the ECS fell behind on the CPU tests given it has the most power-frugal CPU here, though it did outperform the MSI in Photoshop by a lot. Its Cinebench score suggests it’s a less-than-stellar option for long-running tasks, but it’s not designed for that kind of work, anyway.

The single cooling fan in this little PC whirred away while running these tests and was louder than I prefer, though my testing room was otherwise dead quiet. I doubt the noise would be distracting or even noticeable on an office or factory floor, but just know that it isn’t silent.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

To further measure GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

Multi-monitor support is more important than 3D performance in this class of desktop. The ECS nonetheless held its own, outdoing the MSI and Acer (the latter notably using the previous-generation Intel UHD 730), though falling well short of the bar set by the Geekom’s AMD Radeon chip. Expect basic 3D rendering performance out of this machine—nothing beyond the most basic casual games or retro titles. Alternatively in visual entertainment, it’s a decent home theater machine.

Verdict: Small Size, Big Value

ECS’s Liva Z5 Plus delivers impressive functionality and value in an extra-compact design. It has abundant connectivity, including built-in Wi-Fi, VESA mounting capability, and a three-year warranty. Its performance isn’t chart-topping, by any means, but it’s at least as competent as a mainstream laptop with its Intel Core U-series chip, and the easily upgradable RAM and storage extend potential longevity if your space or multitasking needs change down the line. Also, ECS prices this bulk-buy-friendly machine just right, earning the Liva Z5 Plus our Editors’ Choice award for affordable mini PCs.