Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

I have a sweet spot for small form factor units and Shuttle has a lovely offering with the DS57U. A year ago these puppies where trendy as they can be excellent Home Theater PCs as remember, this unit is passively cooled and does not make any noise whatsoever. The reality anno 2015 however is that Android got popular and for under 100 USD/EURO you can find pretty terrific HTPC / media-player units that do offer quite a bit more opposed to what we tested today. Also for a purpose as HTPC an optical audio output is a must and that one is missing. You can manage an SPDIF passthrough through HDMI though but yeah it's lacking that as a feature.

Performance

We tested this unit with just one stick of SODIMM memory, that would be single channel then. Combined with Windows 10 the experience however is pretty nice, the OS doesn't feel slow and if you combine it with an SSD or MSATA storage unit, that will greatly speed up the OS and your end-user experience. So not just for HTPC usage this unit is interesting, it's a perfect little net PC as well. Though while fast enough for a bit of low level PC usage, we definitely would have liked to see more processor performance. Then again you are talking to the guy that runs a PC performance enthusiast website.

Mind you that if you do want something more poweful, Shuttle can make that happen. The DS57U has three stronger brethren now with the DS57U3, DS57U5 and DS57U7 coming with an i3, i5 and even an i7 Broadwell built in. The latter sells for a whopping 800 Euros, for the barebones this is. They're all fanless and the price is mainly caused by the CPU.

As small as it is, the DS57U offers plenty generic features and functionality you may expect from a small PC. And it really is that, a small PC. Speed and performance wise you can compare it to an entry level laptop and then a little more. The Dual core processor offers just enough punch if you combine it with Windows 10. The embedded GPU has a really OK video processor that can accelerate high-definition content all by itself, and 1080P is not a real issue. Though the GPU has very few shader processors, they are enough to apply say a little image sharpening through the playback software with software like Media player Classic. We'd recommend you using something like Kodi though. So yeah, content playback really is nice, but arguably also at its limits. The shader processor count really is tiny so you do not have a lot of extra reserves left, and that goes the same for the processor. But hey, it works, well, really well ... if you stick towards 1080P MKV (x.264) content + some post processing and through HDMI outputting a DTS audio stream. Overall we feel the Shuttle DS57U is a pretty flexible product with all the connectivity you really need, like 4x USB 2.0 and 2x USB 3.0, 2x Gigabit LAN, Display port, HDMI, a card reader, and WiFi (albeit it has mediocre range).

Concluding

Compared to a small media player this product offers much more flexibility. It is a PC, and as such you can configure it in any way to your liking. Do keep in mind though that you'll need to install and setup everything yourself, to some that is a great little project, others hate that. We think the proper combination is to install Kodi and then use Media Player Classic Home Cinema edition as playback software for your high-definition content. All the decoding on and post processing 1080P content did not make this unit consume more than roughly 20 Watt. And that's an achievement all by itself as well. And if that is your target, well then that makes this a really interesting purchase. Otherwise it makes for a pretty okay internet PC. We do hope to see units like these with faster processors in the future though we also understand that this unit is passively cooled, which is tricky with a faster CPU. But overall, for low-level purposes, definitely recommended. The price of the unit with Intel Celeron 3205U processor as tested today is just 215 EUR/239 USD.

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