At CES 2017, ECS showcased a number of ultra-compact form-factor PCs. basically building upon their previous LIVA family releases, the new LIVA feature either Intel’s Apollo Lake SoCs (with Celeron Processors N3350 / N3450 / N4200 and 6 W TDP) on the Z and ZE, or Intel’s Kaby Lake-U processors (Intel Core i3-7100U / i5-7200U / i7-7500U and 15W TDP) on the Z Plus.
The Z Plus is obviously the most powerful of the lot, supporting DDR4 memory (the Z and ZE support only DDR3), having better integrated graphics (Intel’s HD 620 versus the Intel HD 500/500 on the Z and ZE models), and having an expected extra energy consumption (an external 65 W adapter on the Z Plus versus a 40 W external adapter on the other two models).
Apart from that, all models support Wi-Fi on the AC protocol as well as Bluetooth, have an HDMI out (pending confirmation on whether this HDMI connector is 1.4b or 2.0 with HDCP 2.2, which impacts the usability of these ultra-compacts as a streaming box/HTPC) and feature 3x USB 3.0 Type-A (5 Gbps) and 1xUSB 3.0 Type-C (also rated at 5 Gbps). All of the models include EMMC memory at 32GB/64GB, as well as one M.2 2242 slot, with the ZE model distinguishing itself from the Z by increasing compatibility for a 1x 2.5″ SATA III HDD or SSD, which makes it a little bigger (117 mm x 128 mm x 51 mm) than the Z and the Z Plus (117 mm x 128 mm x 33 mm).
