The barebones NUC with Core i5-8259U CPU is now shipping for just under $400 USD with the promise of Optane support, Hyper-Threading, and an integrated Iris Plus Graphics 655 GPU.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-quietly-launches-family-of-NUCs-equipped-with-Bean-Lake-CPUs-and-Iris-GPUs.323008.0.html
It'd be nice if Intel Iris became the new baseline for integrated graphics. Intel HD 620/630 should be completely axed,
Now that you can run full linux on chromebooks, I wish all Intel chromebooks came with Intel Iris aswell (kinda like MBP 13). I might even consider getting something like a $1000 pixelbook if they just came with 28W TDP Intel Iris and speakers/SSDs comparable to what apple uses.
These desktop NUC's should really come with Vega M GH/GL graphics at a very minimum too. That would make things far more interesting.
Ofcourse, it'll never happen. But hopes and dreams right?
And iirc, the 28w tdp intel iris cpu's never came to xps 13 or surface pro, only the MBP 13 used them. They stuck to 15w parts so this should be corrected or explained alittle more clearly in the article.
Can these NUCs be powered via the USB-c / thunderbolt port?