Beelink L55 Review – An Intel Core i3-5005U Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu 18.04

With the shortage of Gemini Lake processors, some manufacturers have taken to releasing new mini PCs using older CPUs. The Beelink L55 is one such example and uses Intel’s Broadwell I3-5005U CPU which is a dual-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor with Intel’s HD Graphics 5500.

The L55 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC and physically consists of a 128 x 126 x 46 mm (5.04 x 4.96 x 1.81 inches) box case with a front panel that includes the power button, a headphone jack and a couple of 3.0 USB ports and then on the rear, two more 3.0 USBs, two 2.1 USBs, HDMI (1.4), DP and two gigabit Ethernet ports. Note that there is no SD or micro SD card slot. The full specifications include:

The L55 comes with either a 256GB or 512GB (as tested in this review) M.2 SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home version 1809 together with a single slot of 8GB DDR3 RAM. The L55 also supports the addition of an optional 2.5” SSD:

In the box you get the SSD power and data connectors, a couple of HDMI cables, a mounting bracket for attaching the device to behind a monitor together with a power brick and cable (excluded from the picture below):

Starting with a quick look at the hardware information shows it is aligned to the specification:

With Windows fully updated to version 1809 build 17763.557 I ran my standard set of benchmarking tools to look at performance under Windows:

The results need interpreting carefully otherwise they could be misleading when compared to other Intel mini PCs. This is because mini PC benchmark results are heavily influenced by the quantity and type of memory and storage installed:

Broadly speaking however the L55 benchmarking performance appears on par with the latest Gemini Lake processors.

Having completed all the benchmarks Windows update then offered a feature update to version 1903:

So I both upgraded and re-ran all the benchmarks:

Comparing the results from the two Windows versions shows that they are both very similar and given the margin of error no substantial performance improvement or degradation was observed.

Next, I shrunk the Windows partition and created new a 100GB partition so I could install and dual boot Ubuntu using an Ubuntu 18.04.2 ISO:

After installation a brief check showed everything working including Wifi, Bluetooth and audio:

I then ran some basic commands to look at the hardware in more detail:

Interestingly when I ran Octane the result was much lower compared to that of Windows at 14,613 vs. 18,680:

Whilst the benchmarks indicate comparably good mini PC performance I next looked at real-world usage and the implications of using an older GPU by playing videos under Windows using both Edge and Chrome browsers and in Ubuntu using both Firefox and Chrome.

In Windows neither 4K@30fps nor 4K@60fps videos were available in Edge so the highest resolution were 1080p videos which played fine:

Whilst in Chrome 4K@30fps could load but not play:

However, Chrome was able to play 1440 @ 30fps:

Also available in Chrome were 4K @ 60fps and 1440p @ 60fps videos however they resulted in the frames being dropped and were unwatchable, and even at 1080p@60fps the video was juddery with dropped frames:

Playing videos in on Ubuntu was a similar story to other Intel processor-based mini PCs. With Firefox 4K@30fps was unwatchable:

but was fine when played at 1440p:

Firefox 4K@60fps and 1440p@60fps videos resulted in the frames being dropped and were unwatchable,

but fine when played at 1080p with all 45 frames being dropped right at the start of the video:

Chrome in Ubuntu was similar to Firefox. 4K@30fps was unwatchable but fine when played at 1440p:

Again 4K @ 60fps and at 1440 were unwatchable. However, even at 1080p @ 60fps the video was juddery and dropped frames

The following table summarises the results:

Playing videos using Kodi on Windows with a VP9 codec encoded video software was used for decoding resulting in high CPU usage and juddery video:

whereas an H.264 codec encoded video used hardware to decode and was fine:

Videos encoded with H.265 or HEVC did not play with one simply crashing Kodi and the other juddery with skipped and dropped frames:

In Kodi on Ubuntu VP9 videos also used software to decode and resulted in some skipped frames:

However, H.264 codec encoded videos again used hardware to decode and played fine:

Videos encoded with H.265 or HEVC both used software encoding and either kept stalling:

or were juddery with dropped and skipped frames:

The lack of codec support and hardware decoding noticeably limits the use of the L55 as an HTPC.

The following table summarises the results:

As can be seen above when software decoding is used it creates high CPU usage resulting in higher internal temperatures. The L55 includes a fan which is slightly audible under these conditions as it cycles up and down:

I measured 31db right next to the device when the fan was at its lowest and up to 48db at its loudest when it made what can best be described as a whooshing sound.

Cooling, however, was effective and under Ubuntu, I ran both a VP9 and an H.264 video in Kodi for 20 minutes each and the internal temperature remained under control with an average of around 55°C for software decoding and 49°C for hardware decoding:

The external temperature of the device reached in places a maximum of 30°C however the ambient temperature was only 12°C being winter here.

I also briefly looked at gaming performance. Playing CS:GO on Windows with the default settings of:

 

 

resulted in a frame rate average of a rather low 8fps:

Changing the video settings to low and dropping the resolution to 720p:

and the frame rate average improved to a playable 27fps:

For CS:GO on Ubuntu and installed within a container, see the instructions.

the default frame rate was slightly higher at an estimated average of around 15fps:

Changing the video settings to low and resolution to 720p the frame rate average improved to an estimated 25fps:

I also installed and ran the UNIGINE Heaven benchmark under both Windows:

and Ubuntu:

Interestingly but maybe not unsurprisingly the results differed with Windows scoring 141 at 5.6fps and Ubuntu scoring 116 at 4.6fps:

Therefore the L55 offers limited gaming performance.

Given the optional storage expandability of the L55 I also briefly installed an internal SSD using the provided connectors:

and confirmed it worked under both Windows:

and Ubuntu:

In both cases, it was recognized as the first drive as ‘disk0’ in Windows and ‘sda’ in Ubuntu.

At some point in the removal of the SSD I must have knocked the memory board as after reassembling the device it refused to boot. Normally when the unit is switched on the blue light on the front comes on and there is a single beep before anything is displayed on the screen. The problem I had was that the blue light still came on however instead there were three beeps and nothing else happened. After raising the issue with Beelink they indicated that it was a memory issue and probably that the memory was not inserted completely. Although I then reseated the memory several times it did not fix the issue. Fortunately I had a spare 4GB memory module and on replacing the installed 8GB stick with this 4GB stick the device then rebooted. I then swapped back the original 8GB memory and the device has continued to boot fine.

As it has just been released I tried Debian 10 “buster” as a live image running from USB using both the Gnome and LXQT ISOs. Both had an issue in that there was no Wifi or Bluetooth OOTB as the Wifi card’s firmware needs to be updated.

Network connectivity throughput was measured on Ubuntu using ‘iperf’:

Under Ubuntu, I tried bonding both Ethernet ports together and enabled 802.3ad on the connected router however there was no further speed improvement.

Power consumption was measured as follows and is higher than comparable Gemini Lake devices:

• Powered off – 1.5 Watts
• Shutdown – 1.0 Watts (Windows)
• BIOS*  – 12.5 Watts
• Boot menu – 8.0 Watts
• Idle – 8.2 Watts (Windows) and 7.9 Watts (Ubuntu)
• CPU stressed – 14.1 Watts (Ubuntu)
• Video playback** – 12.1 Watts (1080p in Windows) and 14.1 Watts (1080p in Ubuntu)

* BIOS (see below)
** The power figures fluctuate so the value is the average of the median high and median low power readings.

Finally, the BIOS is fully unlocked:

I’d like to thank Beelink for providing the L55 for review. It currently retails at around $299 for the tested configuration and can be purchased on sites such as GearBest, GeekBuying or Aliexpress.

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