Recently, I received a laptop that I have been using for two weeks. Now, I would like to share my unboxing experience and talk about the performance of this laptop. Perhaps some of you are not familiar with what NUC is, please see the image below. Open Intel’s official website
Upon opening the official website, it is clear that NUC is a series of benchmark mini PCs designed by Intel to lead the mini PC market. It includes laptops, desktops, and pocket-sized computers.
The first generation NUC M15 features the 11th Gen Core processor, and now the 12th Gen M15 is available with i7-1260P and i5-1240P configurations. Let’s take a look at how this 12th Gen M15 performs. The laptop I received is the Intel® NUC M15 laptop kit – LAPRC710, equipped with the i7, which is not yet officially on sale. The packaging is the same as the previous generation, but this time it is a minimalist blue.
With its blue exterior packaging and laptop appearance, I will briefly discuss the machine’s configuration information.
The CPU is the Intel Core i7 1260P with 4 large cores and 8 small cores, 16 threads, a maximum turbo frequency of 4.7GHz, 18M cache, TDP of 28W, and guaranteed minimum power of 20W. The body is equipped with LPDDR5 5200MHz 16GB onboard memory and a Samsung 1TB SSD.
Additionally, the M15 also has options for a barebones system without a hard drive and one with a hard drive; the version without a hard drive does not have EVO certification, while the version with a hard drive does. The packaging only includes a power supply, which is produced by Full Han, with an output of 20.0V 3.25A, a power of 65W, supporting 5V 3A and 15V 3A PD fast charging.
There is also a safety and regulatory information document. The laptop has an all-aluminum silver body, maintaining that fruity flavor, and the machine’s mold design is quite good, making the body particularly thin. This laptop is positioned as a business laptop, with a size of 15.6 inches.The appearance still features a minimalist design, with no logo, which looks quite nice. You can stick your own logo to make it unique.
Upon opening, the narrow bezels on all sides look very comfortable. Moreover, the 15.6-inch body without a numeric keypad allows each key to be larger, making typing much more comfortable.
I personally prefer larger keycaps, but that is just my personal preference; some people like to have a numeric keypad.This keyboard might be a drawback.
There is a 1080p camera above the screen, which compared to the previous generation now adopts a depth camera. However, the camera is quite small, and the infrared face recognition is almost unnoticeable, which is a good point. It also supports Windows Hello facial recognition unlocking, which is faster and more convenient than entering a password. The 4.0 hard drive allows for instant system access upon opening the lid.
This depth camera can be very useful during video conferences, supporting virtual backgrounds, background blurring, and beauty effects. It makes video conferences much less awkward.
The back of the machine is quite simple, showing only the SN and specification model information.The bottom cover uses hexagonal screws, requiring a T6 screwdriver… which is generally not found in most homes.The bottom’s circular vent for cooling is not particularly large.
In terms of ports, it provides two Thunderbolt 4 (which also support charging), 2 USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 HDMI, and 1 headphone jack. From the perspective of a thin and light laptop, this is quite acceptable, at least it provides sufficient USB-A ports.
The whole machine does not have the slanted cut surface that most thin and light laptops have to show its thinness; it has a square shape, resembling a mobile workstation.
Due to its square design, the M15 does not appear particularly thin; in fact, the M15’s thickness is only about 15mm,
which is quite thin. Including the charger and power cable, the weight is around 2005g, which is quite acceptable considering the all-metal body.
The M15’s other feature is the fully laminated mirror screen, which is a high-quality touchscreen. There are not many machines in this price range that offer a touchscreen, supporting 10-point capacitive touch. Unfortunately, it does not support pressure-sensitive pens; it is designed for finger touch—originally, I thought this design was a bit useless,
but after seeing Windows 11, I understood: it was all planned! With Win11 supporting Android apps, future laptops will likely need to be equipped with touchscreens, and the M15 is Intel’s way of telling those OEM manufacturers: design it like me!
The Intel NUC M15 laptop supports 180° opening and features an ultra-narrow bezel design.
As a benchmark product from Intel, the design of the Intel NUC M15 laptop offers an excellent experience in both appearance and usability.
The keyboard of the Intel NUC M15 laptop is a full-size keyboard,
with a distance between keys in the main working area approximately equal to the length of a keycap plus a gap. It also features backlight control, with adjustable brightness and duration.
After looking at the appearance, let’s take a look inside the machine. The layout of the body is quite similar to that of a certain fruit brand; this layout is indeed better for thin and light laptops. It supports a single M.2 slot for PCIE 4.0 SSD. It would have been better if there were an additional M.2 interface.
The most eye-catching feature inside is the large battery, which occupies a significant amount of space, with a capacity of 72.04Wh and 4740mAh. However, this layout makes the inside of the machine very tidy and has a certain fruit brand’s style. It uses dual fans for cooling to suppress the 8-core 28W TDP i7-1260P.
The only M.2 interface is located in the center, supporting 2280 PCIE 4.0 X4 specifications. This unit comes with a PM9A1 1T! The corresponding SSD has a thermal pad, allowing it to rely on the large metal shell for heat dissipation.
On both sides are speakers with two2watt speakers, and the sound quality is quite good.
After looking at the appearance, let’s move on to performance testing
The previous generationM15 had a simple console function, but this timeM15 12has undergone a significant upgrade in the supported functions compared to the previous generation, with many new features added. The previous generation was criticized for requiring Amazon Assistant to light up the light bar, which has been improved.
It now supportscustom light bars and has added audio tuning, with Intel Smart Sound Technology for improved sound quality.
The CPU is the i7-1260P, manufactured using Intel’s 10nm process.
The memory is Micron chips, and the Master Lu recognizes it as 2GB *8; this is just for reference, the official parameter is dual-channel, which should consist of 8 2G chips making up 16G,
The screen is from BOE.
The screen parameters can be seen as 141ppi, brightness of 400 nits, and 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.The wireless network card is WIFI 6E AX211 with a maximum speed of 2.4 Gbps and integrated Bluetooth 5.3, Battery health note: The M15 has always been like this, brand new from the factory is not 100%.
Due to the 12th generation mobile platform, AIDA64 has not yet been able to accurately identify all information.
CINEBENCH R20 score: 3011cb, single-core score: 600cb
In the burn-in test, the temperature remained around 75-78 degrees, and the touchpad’s sides felt warm but not hot to the touch. There was no noticeable temperature difference. The temperature felt quite high at the vent below the screen, which is understandable. After 10 minutes of burn-in, the large core frequency fluctuated around 2.76GHz, while the small core was around 2.19GHz. The overall main frequency was around 2.4GHz.
In PR, 4K preview is very smooth; it can handle light 4K editing well, unlike ordinary laptops that cannot manage video editing. The Intel NUC M15 can not only handle it but do it quite well. For example, exporting a 4K video of 2 minutes in length can be completed in under 20 minutes.
Final Thoughts
The most profound experience I’ve had during my time with the NUC M15 is the one-handed lid opening and instant face unlock to the desktop. Secondly, the smooth touchpad experience is something I only experienced with a certain fruit brand.
The other aspect is the battery life. During the day I used it to write this article, from around 10:30 AM to about 4 PM, the remaining battery was at 10%, prompting me to enter power-saving mode. I’m very satisfied with this battery life. It also supports fast charging.
However, this product uses CNC integrated molding design, which has a higher manufacturing cost.
The downside is that currently, if you install the system and drivers yourself, it can be quite troublesome, unlike domestic brands that use a driver installation tool for one-click installation; this requires manually downloading the official driver package and installing it. Another point is that the unit I received is a sample machine, and the CPU power release was only around 23W. The i7-1260P can release up to around 50W.
However, with the 12th generation Core’s heterogeneous core architecture, whether it’s for document processing, gaming, programming, or video editing, the Intel NUC M15 can handle it all. I can only say that if you want a laptop that is both lightweight and capable of handling everything, with a design suitable for gaming and online classes, considering the current prices of the 11th generation M15, the 12th generation is also a good choice!
