Getting your hands on the CuBox-i2 for the first time is kind of scary. It’s a black, shiny cube that’s about two inches on each side and doesn’t weigh much more than a big smartphone. You can hold it in your palm. It seems less like a useful computer part and more like a fun thing to play with. After you plug it in, your first impression starts to change.
It was made by SolidRun and has an NXP i.MX6 DualLite processor, which is made up of two ARM Cortex-It has one GHz A9 core, one GB of DDR3 RAM, and a GC880 GPU that is built in. That number doesn’t seem very important on paper. It does matter, though. It only needs 5 volts of power, is completely silent (there isn’t even a fan to be seen), and takes up less space than most coffee mugs. The specs are more than enough for what they’re meant to do.
The CuBox-i2 is made for a certain type of user—one who doesn’t need a loud, power-hungry tower on their desk but still needs a real computer to do real work. These are the places where the i2 lives: home theater setups with Kodi, light Linux servers, and home automation hubs. And it works well in those settings with a quiet efficiency that feels almost planned in how it holds back.
When it comes to connectivity, the device really shines. It has an eSATA interface, two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI 1.4 output that can push 1080p video, optical S/PDIF audio, a MicroSD card slot for starting up operating systems, and an 8GB eMMC for storage on board. Gigabit Ethernet is built in, but the SoC limits the speeds so that they don’t affect real-world throughput. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well, which are enough wireless options for most home setups.
It takes a little time to get it to work; this isn’t a plug-and-play device for beginners. Flashing a Yocto or Linux image to a MicroSD card, connecting via serial for setup, and setting up Wi-Fi through the command line is the kind of thing that people who have used a terminal window before will find easy and people who haven’t will find a little scary. SolidRun may have always meant the CuBox line for technically-savvy users rather than regular people, and the way they are set up makes that assumption pretty clear.
That being said, the thermal design is harder to miss. The CuBox-i2 doesn’t have a fan or any other active cooling, so it only loses heat passively. The chassis gets warm when it’s under a moderate load, but it never gets too hot. For a device that can work in temperatures between 0°C and 40°C, it stays well within the acceptable range inside most homes. One of the best things about it is how quiet it is, especially for a media setup in the living room where fan noise would ruin the whole point.
There are a lot of devices from SolidRun that are like the CuBox-i2, from the single-core i1 to the quad-core i4Pro. The i2 is the entry level dual-core processor, which is a good compromise for people who need more than the bare minimum but don’t want to buy the most expensive hardware. It’s still not clear if the platform will get any useful software updates in the coming years, but the Linux and Android support is good enough for most embedded and media uses.
It seems like devices like the CuBox-i2 are worth keeping an eye on, not because they’re trying to compete with mainstream computers, but because they’re not. Small, quiet, good at what they do, and honest about what they are. Because a lot of hardware on the market makes promises it can’t keep, being honest is valuable.
