The presentation of Lunar Lake caused quite a stir in our community. As much for the technological promise as for the desire to equip ourselves with a truly powerful and autonomous laptop. But Intel’s promising chips are going to go beyond the world of ultra-portables. We already know that the next MSI Claw console will be built with Lunar Lake, and now we know that Asus is going to integrate it into its next NUC Pro.
An ‘AI’ NUC equipped with Lunar Lake (and graphics performance?)
As you know if you follow mini PC news, Asus acquired Intel’s NUC brand and business some time ago. In December this year, Asus will launch an NUC series equipped with Lunar Lake SoCs. For the moment, the brand has refused to reveal the exact specifications, but obviously these models will be marketed as ‘AI’ Mini PCs, as we saw at IFA… Hence the presence of the ‘Copilot+’ button on the front of this NUC.
Otherwise, this mini PC has the same aesthetic codes as Intel’s own NUCs. All we can notice is a rounding off of the corners with a small increase in size: the case now measures 130 × 130 × 34 mm instead of 117 × 112 × 37 mm on the previous version. As for the rest, we’ll be able to take advantage of all the connectivity provided by Lunar Lake, including 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports (1 x on the front and a second on the rear). In addition to TB4, you’ll have to make do with a single HDMI output instead of two on the previous NUC 14 Pro. USB-A is still present, and there’s also a 2.5 Gbit LAN port. WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are included for wireless connections.
For further details, and in particular the performance of this mini PC whose SoC could express itself more ‘freely’ than in an ultra-book, we’ll have to wait a little longer. But this type of machine is also expected to deliver graphics performance, where AMD reigns supreme… for the time being.