28 PCWorld JANUARY 2021NEWS
IMAGE: INTELIntel’s NUC M15 laptop is a stylishly
generic notebook for the rest of us
Intel’s first ‘NUC’ laptop features an 11th-gen CPU. BY GORDON MAH UNGW
e’ve come a long way from
Intel’s original Next Unit of
Computing modular
computer (go.pcworld.
com/nxun) that brought tiny computing to the
mainstream. We’ve come so far, in fact, we’re
not sure what’s actually “NUC”-y about Intel’s
new NUC M15 laptop, which is intended as a
“Whitebook” design that other notebook
makers can utilize for their own products.
Intel unveiled its in-house-designed
laptop in November with a list of specs that is
simultaneously welcome and somewhat
confusing. The NUC M15 comes with eitheran 11th-gen Core i5-1135G7 or Core
i7-1165G7 processor, paired with either
8GB or 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM. For ports,
you get two USB-A and two Thunderbolt 4,
plus a full-size HDMI port, lock port, and
headset jack.
We welcome the inclusion of two old
school USB-A ports, but their presence should
tell you about the body of the laptop. It’s a
striking CNC-milled aluminum “unibody” shell
with appealing right angles everywhere. In
many ways, its looks to us like a bigger version
of Google’s original Chromebook Pixel.
The key difference is the screen size: With