ASUS NUC 14 Pro NUC14RVHv5 Black 2024

A tiny port monster for office work, but the integrated graphics and shaky reliability keep it from greatness. Buy it cheap or buy a Mac mini.

The Core Ultra 5 135H with 32GB of DDR5 and a 2TB SSD handles everyday multitasking without breaking a sweat. Storage and RAM sit in the 83rd to 85th percentile, so you're getting a well-rounded workhorse. The surprise is how much ASUS improved the cooling over the old Intel NUCs. Long-time NUC buyers in our database specifically call out better thermals and easier access to internals. That's a real quality-of-life win. But the GPU is middle of the pack, and gaming performance is a weak spot. This is a productivity machine, not a toy.

The Apple Mac mini M4 Pro is the obvious rival. It's faster, quieter, and more power-efficient, but you lose the port flexibility and Windows compatibility. The Lenovo Legion 90YA003GUS and HP OMEN GT16-0364 are gaming-focused towers that crush this NUC in graphics but take up ten times the desk space. The Dell Tower Plus EBT2250 is a more traditional desktop with better reliability scores but none of the mini-PC charm. For pure office work, the NUC 14 Pro holds its own. For anything with a GPU workload, buy the Mac mini or a proper tower.

Pricing is all over the place. We're seeing USD 670 to USD 1,330 across four US listings, which is a massive spread for what should be the same box. At the low end, this is a steal for a compact workstation. At the high end, you're paying Mac mini M4 Pro money for weaker graphics and worse reliability. Best Buy has the cheapest listing in our data, so start there. If you're paying over USD 900, stop and reconsider.

The ASUS NUC 14 Pro is a tiny box that punches way above its weight for office work and home setups. The headline here is the port situation: 98th percentile. You get Thunderbolt 4, dual HDMI 2.1, three USB-C, seven USB-A, and Ethernet in a chassis that weighs less than a bag of coffee beans. If you need a compact desktop that can drive four displays and swallow a pile of peripherals, this is it. But don't mistake it for a gaming rig. The integrated Intel Arc graphics are fine for spreadsheets and streaming, not for Cyberpunk.

If you're looking for a gaming PC or a machine for heavy video editing, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion or a Mac mini M4 Pro instead. The NUC 14 Pro is for spreadsheets, browsers, and light office work, not GPU-heavy tasks.

Buy the ASUS NUC 14 Pro if you need a tiny, quiet, port-rich Windows machine for office work, home office, or light creative tasks. It's a solid upgrade over older Intel NUCs, and the tool-less design is genuinely nice. But skip it if you want to game, edit video seriously, or need rock-solid reliability. And only buy it at the low end of that price range.