Pros & Cons
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- Compact size
- Potent productivity performance
- Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 7
- Memory and storage are easy to access and upgrade
- Three-year warranty
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- Fan gets loud under load
- No 3.5mm audio jack
Asus NUC 15 Pro+ Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 1 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Desktop Class | Small Form Factor (SFF) |
| Graphics Card | Intel Arc 140T |
| Operating System | Windows 11 |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 9 285H |
| Processor Speed | 2.9 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 32 |
When it comes to mini desktops, Apple is probably the best-known name on the market, thanks to the Mac mini. Of course, you can find Windows PCs that are just as diminutive and plenty powerful, like this Asus NUC 15 Pro+ (starts at $615; $1,199 as tested), the latest and highest-end model from Asus' take on Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) initiative that it inherited a few years ago. (NUC systems come either as complete mini PCs or "barebones" boxes containing everything but the storage, memory, and operating system installed.) The NUC 15 Pro+ packs a lot of potency into a petite frame; however, its price tag doesn't stay tiny if you start adding upgrades. We still recommend the Editors' Choice-award-winning Apple Mac mini for high-end mini desktops, though that requires adopting macOS, of course, and spending more than this NUC if you want the muscular M4 Pro CPU. But if Windows is non-negotiable, the NUC 15 Pro+ is a very solid mini PC option.
Configurations: Watch Your Wallet
When configuring the NUC 15 Pro+, you have quite a bit of flexibility. For example, you can buy it without storage or memory for $615 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 255H processor. Adding 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage brings the price to $799. If you select a Core Ultra 7 255H without storage or RAM, you’ll pay $755, while 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage bump the price to $1,049. The highest-end configuration, reviewed here, has a Core Ultra 9 285H processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $1,199.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Note that if you buy the NUC 15 Pro+ in kit form and add your own storage and RAM, you must provide a copy of an operating system and install it yourself. On the plus side, Asus makes it very easy to access the two RAM slots and the SSD slot: Just remove one screw and pop the latch, and the bottom opens outward.
This model can take up to 128GB of DDR5 memory via the two SO-DIMM slots. (The system also supports CSODIMMs, the compact version of CUDIMM modules, for higher-speed memory support.) The single slot for M.2 storage supports PCI Express 5.0 SSDs, though the included 1TB drive is a PCIe 4.0 stick.
Design: Tiny But Noisy
With its silver all-aluminum chassis, the NUC 15 Pro+ almost certainly takes its design cues from Apple’s Mac mini. It doesn’t look quite as solid, though, and the large vents along each side give it a different vibe; if you turn the machine over, the bottom's decidedly industrial. (Of course, part of the reason for that look is that you can open the NUC 15 Pro+ and replace the RAM and storage, something you certainly cannot do with an Apple desktop.) The only ornamentation on the NUC 15's exterior is an Asus logo on the front, and you don't even get that with the kit version.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)One big downside to the design is fan noise. A CPU as powerful as the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H can run hot, and the fan tends to get quite loud while the desktop churns through demanding tasks. Unfortunately, that included every benchmark test I threw at it. We run our benchmarks in performance mode, so if you are willing to downshift and slow down, the NUC 15 Pro+ will get quieter. But the fan often ran, no matter the mode, during testing.
Sizewise, the NUC 15 Pro+ doesn't take up a lot of room at 1.6 by 5.7 by 4.4 inches (HWD). The power supply is much smaller, and it’s easy enough to place under a desk. By comparison, the Mac mini measures 2 by 5 by 5 inches (HWD).
Ports: A Bevy of Connections
The NUC 15 Pro+ is no slouch when it comes to connectivity. Up front, the box has two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a single USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 connection. On the back are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, two HDMI outputs, two USB-A ports (one 3.2 Gen 2 and one 2.0), an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, and a Kensington lock notch.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Oddly enough, the system lacks a 3.5mm audio port and, therefore, has no analog audio output. This doesn't preclude the NUC 15+ Pro from using other forms of wired audio, but you’ll have to use the other ports or an adapter for that.
You can also go with sound via Bluetooth: The NUC 15 Pro+'s wireless connectivity is fully up to date, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 radios inside.
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Two additional key notes: This model comes with a three-year warranty from Asus, standard; that's significantly longer than the more typical one year in the mini PC space. This particular Pro model also supports Asus' NUC Pro software suite. We didn't formally test this pair of utilities, but they enable management functions such as remote app relaunching and reboots, activity logging, and controlling failover schemes. These are especially handy for NUCs installed in a location without immediate physical access for admins and IT.
Performance Testing: A Spicy Showing, But No Match for M4 Pro
For comparisons, I pitted the NUC 15 Pro+ against a handful of other mini-PCs: an admittedly much pricier config of the Apple Mac mini with the M4 Pro ($2,199 as tested), the Geekom A6 Mini ($499 as tested) with a slower AMD Ryzen 7 6800H chip, and the older Asus NUC 14 Pro ($869 as tested) with the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, tests a system in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput. Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
There's no way around it: In the cross-platform benchmarks that run on both Windows and macOS, the Mac mini was significantly faster than this particular Windows crowd. If you’re deciding between the Mac- and Windows-based mini desktops, the Apple machine here is in a different class. Of course, it should be; the test model of the Mac mini we had was about $1,000 more than our NUC test unit.
Among the Windows mini PCs, though, the NUC 15 Pro+ was a star. In Geekbench 6.3 and Cinebench 2024, the machine turned in much faster results in both single-core and multi-core testing, and it was about a minute faster than the runner-up in our HandBrake video conversion test. It was a similar story with the Pugetbench Photoshop benchmark, as well. As I noted earlier, these tests spun up the NUC 15's fan, making for a surprisingly loud little desktop.
Graphics Tests
We challenge each reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad's regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance. Note that Apple's Mac mini is compatible with only some of these tests.
The NUC 15 Pro+ benefited from its faster Intel Arc 140T integrated graphics, turning in significantly quicker results than the other Windows mini-PCs. Again, however, the Mac mini took the overall lead, thanks to numerous advanced GPU cores in Apple's M4 Pro.
Based on these performances, this NUC will handle all multimedia just fine (at up to 4K) and even the odd casual game (at up to 1080p). However, this system will likely bottleneck anything beyond that and moderate content creation tasks. As for the Mac mini with M4 Pro comparison, the chip inside this NUC outpaced the basic M4 inside a 14-inch MacBook Pro in all but a few tests. However, the M4 model is considered an entry-level system starting at $600, and the M4 Pro midrange at $1,400 to start.
Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 9 255H is Intel's second most potent mobile processor available right now. This reveals a power ceiling for the NUC 15 Pro+ that the Mac mini can clear for another few hundred dollars, assuming you can tolerate macOS.