John Darko
Windows 11 in your pocket — that’s the promise of the Surface NUC1, a new touchscreen tablet/PC, not from Microsoft but a company called X+. It looks like the offspring of a Surface Tablet and a NUC device. According to X+’s website, the Surface NUC1 has a “sturdy aluminium housing” and its 2.2 cm-thick chassis can sit upright on the built-in kick stand. Its computing specs run as follows:
- 7″ 1280 x 1080 IPS touchscreen
- Intel Alder Lake N200 CPU (up to 3.7GHz)
- 16GB DD5 RAM
- 512GB NVME M.2 SSD (user upgradable)
- 3600mAh battery
- 3 x USB 3.2
- 1 x USB 3.0
- 1 x HDMI 2.1
- Gigabit Ethernet & Wi-Fi 6
- Folding keyboard supplied
- Windows 11
Price: €260
Are you thinking what I am thinking?
Intel graphics means this won’t be a gaming machine, but the specifications, on paper at least, suggest possible use as a Roon (Core) server and streaming endpoint. The HDMI port could additionally pipe Roon’s ‘now playing’ screen to a nearby TV. Two birds, one stone. But is it powerful enough to run Roon Core in 2025?
Roon’s support page says that for libraries comprising less than 100,000 tracks, we need a minimum of Windows 10, Intel i3 CPU and 8 GB RAM. It then says, “You will need sufficient RAM for Roon as well as any other tasks the machine may perform. We recommend 8GB as a minimum for Roon in addition to the base RAM for the machine. For Linux, Windows, and macOS this will typically result in a system with 16GB RAM or more.” The Surface NUC1 gives us exactly that.
Three question marks remain: 1) Is the N200 CPU powerful enough for Roon’s DSP and/or larger libraries? 2) Could we tolerate seeing a USB connector protruding from the top edge of the Surface NUC1 once an HDD or SSD has been connected? 3) Who is X+? Their website doesn’t say, so I won’t be ordering one until it shows up on Amazon (or similar).
But still, the promise-to-price ratio of this chunky tablet/PC is strong for Roon users.
Further information: X+
