What Is It? – A little while back we looked at the Asus Chromebit, a small HDMI stick that can be plugged into a TV to turn it into a working Chromebook computer, for under $100 plus a keyboard and mouse. It is not, of course, the only computer-on-a-stick, so now here’s the Asus VivoStick PC TS10 which is very similar, only it creates a Windows 10 computer out of your TV. It looks like a small candy bar, but with an HDMI connector on one end. There are also two USB ports, one USB2, the other USB3, a headphone jack, and of course a place to plug in the necessary power adapter. Asus includes a short cable in case of a tight fit for the stick because of other HDMI cables attached to your TV, such as from your DVR or DVD player. Through Windows, the VivoStick connects to your Wi-Fi, and there’s Bluetooth for wire-free keyboard and mouse (they are not included). It has a quad-core Intel processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage space. It comes with one free year of 100 GB of Asus WebStorage, and after that you can pay them for it or use Google Drive or other cloud storage. With a Vivo app, you can control your TV’s Windows 10 from your smartphone, doing away with the keyboard and mouse. Another app lets you mirror content from your phone on the TV. The VivoStick also comes with a holder you can attach to the back or side of your TV to hide the stick or not leave your dongle dangling.
Is It 50+ Friendly? – If you can work a Windows computer, you can easily use the VivoStick. As with other sticks, just because you have a big screen TV doesn’t necessarily mean you can sit all the way across the room and see every function clearly, unless it’s just running a video.
Frustration Factor? – Because of the smartphone app, you can get away with not adding a keyboard and mouse to this stick, but that means you are typing on your phone’s small screen. But isn’t the idea of this to have a much larger screen?
Is It Worth The Money? – I’m still not quite who these computer-on-a-stick things are supposed to be for, since for not too much more money you can get an inexpensive notebook to carry around, and while these sticks fit in your pocket, you still need the power adapter and likely the HDMI cable. There are business uses for turning a TV into a PC, such as a store display, but to take a PC stick travelling, I don’t know. Unlike it’s Chromebit brother, the VivoStick PC can be controlled from your smartphone, so you can leave a keyboard and mouse at home, but it does cost more than the Chromebit model, $129 at Amazon.
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