Andrew Cunningham

Mini desktop PCs are a well-established market segment at this point, and they follow pretty much the same template. Take laptop or low-power desktop CPUs, slap them on a small motherboard that uses laptop-sized RAM and storage, and pop it all into a little case with lots of ports. It’s not an exciting formula, but it gets the job done. Today’s ultraportable laptops offer enough speed for most common tasks, and there’s no reason to provide a bunch of room for add-on cards and other upgrades that many users will never perform.

But what if there were another option that walked the line between a mini desktop and an old-school mini tower? A little PC with the virtues of a mini desktop, but one that could still be expanded and customized relatively easily? That’s the line the HP Elite Slice tries to walk. It’s a conventional business-focused mini desktop on the surface, but it also has a port on the bottom that allows you to stack it on top of other modules, adding and removing functionality as needed.