Techno Savvy Club

The Chromebit looks and feels nice, not that it especially matters for something that will primarily live buried behind a TV or monitor or receiver somewhere. It's a sleek plastic tube with a bit of heft to it, and it fits in the bare minimum of ports. You've got one male HDMI connector underneath a removable cap you'll probably lose, a power jack on one side, a USB 2.0 port on the end for peripherals, and a security lock slot underneath to deter theft. You don't get a microSD card slot like the one in Intel's Compute Stick, which is understandable since ChromeOS relies overwhelmingly on cloud storage. But there's no microUSB port to power the device using a port on the back of your TV or monitor, an unfortunate omission.

You should prepare to buy Bluetooth peripherals to use with the Chromebit if it's possible, partly because there's only the one port and partly so you don't have wires running up behind your TV or monitor. But if you have a monitor with an integrated USB hub, you can just connect the USB port to your monitor and use the monitor's ports for peripherals instead. You're still talking about USB 2.0 speeds, though, so don't expect lightning fast transfer speeds from connected USB hard drives or SD cards.

The hardware is totally fanless, and while it gets warm during use there shouldn't be any danger of overheating if you stick it behind some screen in a poorly ventilated area.