Pros: Fast, perfect HTPC device, Boot Time, Tiny box, USB 3.0 ports, absolutely no tweaking required to get it up and running.

Cons: Mini HDMI port requires adapter - so add another $10

Other Thoughts: First and foremost, I purchased the newer model (NUC 6i5syh) impulsively from Newegg and after reading an overwhelming amount of negative reviews, I cancelled the order and purchased this one....and I am SO glad I did. You may be looking into this product for the same reason - so let me put it very simply. Have you ever been building (or purchasing) a computer, and "needed" to get the top of the line product after reading it has 10% better benchmark results? Only to think once you get it...did I reaallllyyy need that extra 10%? Well let me tell you - in the case of the NUC - integrated graphics are integrated graphics - this box will not compete with a 980ti. BUT - if you are looking into this as either a workstation or an HTPC streaming device, you cannot go wrong - and that extra 10% will do nothing for you. If the reason you are here reading this review is because you saw all the trashy reviews in terms of crashing and driver issues on the 6i5syh, then I will say this - This thing literally took me 20 minutes to set up and be completely up and running:

- RAM and m.2 SSD went in easy, no issues.
- Put in the windows 10 bootable USB - didnt even have to enter BIOS, it automatically booted and installed windows in a few minutes.
- To my amazement, the drivers that windows installed worked perfectly without issue. It took me longer to go to the Intel website and download all the drivers before buying this thing than it did to install windows.

Now of course, if you want to get a little more aggressive, you can tweak the drivers and BIOS settings, etc etc etc - but I didn't have to. This thing runs like a dream (FAST) and zero bugs on Windows 10, and I didn't have to do a darn thing other than install the hardware and windows.

If you want to deal with bugs and driver issues, not to mention a higher price (I found this thing for 319.99) - get the newer model. But if you want a proven entity with a large number of positive reviews, an extremely easy setup process, and an overall cost (soup to nuts) of $500, get this one. I highly recommend it. It would be very hard for me to believe the newer model is any faster for the uses I described above. Gaming wise - I can't speak to - but I just use Steam in home streaming from my gaming computer, and its perfect, so there will never be a need for dedicated gaming use on this thing - and as I said, the 6i5SYH isn't maxing out 2016 games anyway, so whats the point.

One more thought - if you are deciding between this one and the RYK - get this one. There is room for an additional HDD and its only marginally taller.

Here is my setup and it works absolutely perfectly:

NUC5i5ryh - $319.99
Samsung EVO 850 m.2 SSD - $84.99
16GB Kingston Hyperx DDR3 1600 RAM - $61.98
Windows 10 Pro (newegg will not allow me to input where I got this) - $35

Total cost +/- $500. (Saves me $100 per month due to cancelling my cable subscription - so its a no brainer)

I hope this review helped your decision making process.

Pros: Quiet, Runs all of my embedded development IDE's flawlessly (Microchip, TI, Freescale, Eclipse), flawless driver support (so far) from Ubuntu, supports dual 25" monitors and the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard & mouse, plenty fast for my needs (I do not give a darn about gaming). I configured it with a MIL-STD 128G SSD, a cheap 2.5" 750GB HDD for backup, and 16GB of 1600MHz RAM on it. If I ordered a NUC again, I'd buy the smaller version and skip the 2.5" HDD support. Ultra-stable. I've not had any reliability issues with this system. It is rarely turned off or suspended. It just works. It has over 4200 hours of runtime on it without a single glitch. Spend the extra money for good memory and a quality SSD.

Cons: My first NUC had an i3 CPU on it with a similar configuration to what I've described above. I could not get it to boot Linux off the internal SSD. I tried everything. It booted fine from USB. It appeared to be a BIOS problem. I returned it and exchanged it for the i5 version. I gave this NUC 4 stars instead of 5 because of the previous poor experience with the i3.

Not that I'd really notice in daily use, but I'd put 64GB of memory on it if it supported it.

It took two separate follow-on orders to finally get the correct video cables to support my two HDMI monitors. I wish Intel would have standardized on two identical monitor connections. I don't care which standard they use - just both the same would have reduced the open-box to fully-functional-system time.

Other Thoughts: After 32 years of embedded software development on Bill Gates' DOS/Windows systems with their seemingly built-in planned obsolescence, lack of tools to figure out why the performance always degrades over time, constant and time-consuming updates and virus checks, I finally was fed up enough to give Bill the boot. Moving to a Linux platform was a huge investment in time for me. I work on contract and of course am not paid to learn a new system. I went "all in" with this i5 NUC. Ubuntu Linux isn't for everyone, but it was completely worth the learning curve and not beyond a developer's skill level to get it running well. After living with it for 6 months I am In Love and would find it difficult to return to the house-of-cards virus-prone Windows environment.

Pros: It is very small in size which is what I am looking for and it has all the ports I need. Saves space compared to my mid-tower. It is of very good quality and very easy to set up

Cons: Haven't found one ...

Pros: I like the NUC form factor. I have two other NUC machines and they have performed well.

Cons: This unit died on me after 3 months. Now I'm in the throws of trying to get it warranty replaced with not much satisfaction. I don't keep boxes after something has been working for a month. I'd need a storage unit alone for that if I did. Now, without the original box, Newegg won't accept the return. (Gee.... I've only done 10's of thousands of dollars of business with them over the years .... guess that stands for nothing).

Other Thoughts: It is hard to say what is wrong. It won't even boot into BIOS so it is a hard failure of some kind. Replaced the SSD, Memory and power supply, none of which fixed the situation. Hopefully Intel will accept the return.

Pros: Runs quiet and fast. Fits in the palm of your hand, supports both HDMI and DisplayPort. Comes with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth built-in. Great as a high-powered HTPC, or office/school PC. All drivers installed automatically from Microsoft with install of Windows 10 (from a USB stick). Wall-wart A/C adapter is thin, doesn't take up too much space and comes with lots of international power adapters. Comes with VESA-compatible mounting hardware for mounting to the back of a monitor, but it looks great on its own on a desk or next to a TV.

Cons: Might not play nice with all SSD's. Had trouble with a SanDisk Z400s in the SATA slot, which had been bundled with NUC's by Newegg for a while. Tried two different combos from Newegg, both would simply lock up with the hard drive light lit solid, leaving only the mouse pointer operating on the desktop and nothing else, forcing hard shutdown. After returning the first NUC combo and having the replacement combo fail on me the same way, I tried a Samsung EVO 850 in place of the SanDisk, and all was well. Maintaining 5 Eggs because it may have simply been a bad batch of SanDisks, but with the Samsung the NUC has so far been problem free.

Other Thoughts: The Bluetooth plays nice with little Bluetooth keyboards, using a Hisgadget Rechargeable Mini Wireless with Trackpad, works from across a small room. Would also recommend a short, like 3 inch male-mini-HDMI to female-regular-HDMI adapter so as to reduce stress on the mini-HDMI socket.
At first the fan may sound loud, but go to the BIOS with F2 and turn down the duty cycle to about 30, and it will idle almost silently.

Pros: This is a pseudo-edit for my post yesterday. I just discovered that only USB 3.0 devices will prevent unexpected restarts. I've done a lot of testing today with USB 2.0 flash drives and a USB 2.0 SD card adapter, all of which failed to block the restarts. But every USB 3.0 flash drive I own (lots of them) and my USB 3.0 SD card adapter all prevent the restarts.

Cons: Its really hard to state a con about this great little NUC, so I offer only silence here.

Other Thoughts: Earlier I reported that a USB DVD drive failed to block restarts. Of course it was a USB 2.0 device, specifically Asus External Slim DVD-RW SDRW-08D2S-U. I now suspect that a USB 3.0 Blu-ray drive might block restarts, but have no way to prove it.

Pros: Compact, ample features, great performance, low power use, quite quiet, economical, easy to assemble, nice to look at, and easy to love.

Cons: None if you are a Windows 10 user.

Only one if you are a Linux use, and this inspired -1 star: Always restarts unexpectedly 2 seconds after a shutdown. Enormous frustration over this is revealed in web searches for this and other NUC models, and also for laptops and motherboards fitted with certain Intel processors. Posts for the NUC5i3, 5i5, and 5i7 models started within days of product releases, and persist to this day (20151215) unresolved. Visit the Intel Community to see more than you want to read about this. See my 'Other thoughts' for a workaround to this problem.

Other Thoughts: This loveable little NUC has so much to offer that, despite the irksome nature of the unexpected restarts, I was determined to keep it. After several days of tweaking settings, trying various Linux distributions, and searching for solutions I accidentally stumbled on a solution. The Intel Visual BIOS involved here is version 350, dated August, 2015.

As it happens, an installed USB storage device at shutdown will distract whatever gremlin is causing the restart. A USB flash drive or USB hard drive works. A USB SD card adapter also does the job, even if no SD card is in the socket. A USB DVD drive does not work. The device can be in place before or after startup as long is it is present at shutdown.

Whatever is used should not be bootable, otherwise you must deflect unwanted boots at the next startup.

There are now four NUC5i5RYH in my extended household, two of which were purchased from Newegg. They all behave identically; 100% unexpected restarts with any Linux distro I installed but never with Windows 10.

My wife's NUC has both Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu 14.04.3 installed, each on its own SSD with its own boot manager (not the typical dual-boot setup). The default boot is to Windows, and shutdown is uneventful. Without the USB preventative installed her shutdown procedure from Ubuntu was to allow the restart to default boot to Windows, then shut down from there.

I posted this workaround on one of the long-running Intel Community threads last night. Early this morning one of the frustrated users replied that the USB device solved the problem. He also tried it on the newest Visual BIOS version 352 (November 30, 2015) which still does unexpected restarts, and reports that the USB device squelches these. I hope lots of other frustrated users can also benefit, and I especially hope that Intel engineering gets wind of this and solves the problem.

To conclude, don't let this problem discourage your NUC purchase. It is an elegant little machine and the problem will eventually be solved. Meanwhile just leave the USB device in place and enjoy your NUC.

Pros: easy to put together. had no issues with loading Win 10, Office 16 and updating drivers. Makes a great office pc and pc for the kids to do homework on. may get another NUC just for the kids.

Cons: mini HDMI jack very loose fitting. using an adapter was too heavy and didn't work very well. buying a normal HDMI to mini HDMI cable seemed to fix the issue.

Other Thoughts: Makes a great office pc and pc for the kids to do homework on. may get another NUC just for the kids.

Pros: Small that's all.

Cons: Not as good or as fast as others I have used. Biggest problem for me was the Mini HDMI port. Very flimsy and started to lose connection when jostled.

Pros: Looks nice. Too annoyed to say many good things about this product.

Cons: Bad HDMI output

Other Thoughts: This is the 1st NUC I ordered. It had a bad HDMI port. Slightest wiggle resulted in No Signal on monitor. Ordered a second NUC, that one had the SAME exact problem. Finally, I saw another reviewer had the same problem I'm having.