It's been a few weeks since the Higole Gole10 arrived for an in-depth review, and during all this time I had the chance to use the device in various environments - even took it with me when traveling for the holidays.

People are always asking what the device is for and what it really does that a tablet cannot - and they are intrigued.

Higole found a nice niche : having a touchscreen Windows 10 computer around with full-sized ports and that you can actually carry with you and use with or without an external keyboard has proven to be very useful in a number of situations, some of them explained below.

Setup and first boot

It's quite easy to setup the Higole Gole10 Mini PC - you just have to connect the power adapter and turn it on.
For the purpose of the review, I've connected the tablet mini PC to a Dell monitor and I've used both the built-in touch screen and my Minix Neo K2 wireless keyboard, which I always keep nearby as a second keyboard for the reviewed devices.

When you connect the device to a monitor you can right click on the blue Windows background, then "Display settings", and you can choose to Duplicate the displays (default option), extend them, or show only one of them. So if you want to close the Gole10's built-in display and only use the monitor you can do so here. The touchscreen and the touch-sensitive Windows logo on Gole10 will continue to work.

A little disappointment was to find out that Windows 10 is NOT activated. But fear not, you can activate it yourself by right-clicking on the "This PC" icon on Windows Explorer, then the last option from the contextual menu, "Properties". The last section on the page is about the activation.
If there's a red warning saying "We can't activate Windows on this device because you don't have a valid digital license or product key. Error code: 0xC004C003" - simply click on the Troubleshoot link below and Windows will automatically solve the problem and activate itself. Make sure you are connected to the Internet first.

If connected to the Internet, soon after the boot Windows will start to inform you that you will need to upgrade it - the Fall Creators update arrived and, sooner or later, the device will update itself anyway. So I decided to proceed with the update within 15 minutes of playing with the device.

After the update there are only ~12 GB left on the device. But fear not, you can reclaim most of the space by simply using the Windows 10 Disk Cleanup utility: press the Windows key, type "Disk clean-up", choose the "Clean up system files" option, and Windows will compute the space that could be made available again.
I was able to go back to roughly the same space used before the up.

But the Gole10 device does come with a few nice surprises.
Although it comes with the Home, and not Pro version of Windows 10 I found that it does have (at least) an enterprise feature : TPM 2.0 is enabled - as I found out by running tpm.msc, so basically you have access to better, hardware-based security.

The Device Manager reveals a few more details about the device - the SanDisk DF4032, Realtek RTL8723BS 802.11bgn 2.4G Wi-Fi Chip, Kionix KXTJ9 3-axis accelerometer.

Using Higole Gole10

Besides the bigger screen, the biggest improvement from the Gole 1 Plus we reviewed earlier, is the sound : with Gole10 the speakers are better positioned on the front of the device, and the results are showing - better, more powerful sound.

The device can sit on the table either in the "classic mode" or on a side, which makes easy to use in a variety of scenarios.

The new front stereo speakers are impressive (at least when compared to the previous model) - Gole10 is much more suited to be used as an online radio player or an touchscreen IPTV device, two use cases that might be less interesting but definitely cover a lot of the overall usage hours.

But there's more to that, of course. For instance, a touch-enabled control system (I will fully test this in a few weeks).
And this is not counting the "industrial use cases" Higole happily mentions.

Higole Gole10 as an HTPC

One of the use cases that fits this device as a glove is a Home theater PC - a touch-enabled player is fun to have around.
The performance is on-par with the other devices with the Intel Atom Z8350 SoC - so no Youtube 4K, but pretty decent overall.

I've covered the Z8350 flaws when it comes to media rendering : lack of 10-bit HEVC, bitstream HD audio, no 4k or 3D ISO.
Once we get that out of the way, we end up with a decent HTPC for 1080P content, with all SD and HD files playing correctly.

Controlling Kodi with the built-in screen in dual-screen mode certainly beats any IR remote (or any remote for that matter) ... as long as you have a long enough HDMI cable.
For TV series or favorite movies, online or offline, Gole10 and KODI v17 worked just as expected.

IPTV, online radio and plain ol' Youtube work quite nicely out of the box also. Unexpectedly, I got better performance results (less CPU and memory) with Microsoft Edge when running 1080P Youtube.

Higole Gole10 benchmarks

As usual, I left the benchmarks for the end - here are the results for the most used benchmarking apps on Windows 10.

Results are consistent with the similar devices I've tested. One thing I noticed - the device did not overheat even after a few hours of intense benchmarking.

Higole Gole10 review conclusions

I have to say that the new Higole device really impressed me and aside for the lack of internal battery, it is quite useful to have around.
Compared with the Gole1 Plus, I've enjoyed the bigger screen and the new stereo front speakers, which provide a much better audio experience.
For a price in the same ballpark as the Windows 10 license, and a screen-less TV box/Mini PC, Gole10 brings a good-looking, touch-enabled, 10.1 inch IPS screen.
With projected 24/7 use, IPS touchscreen, multiple full-sized Ethernet and USB ports, stereo speakers, this device brings more to the table than a regular tablet or Windows mini PC and it's design will fit perfectly in any environment.
There is much to be done with Gole10 before it will inevitably become obsolete and eventually retiring it to a glorified photo-frame or CCTV monitor.

So if you're looking for a new computer that takes little space, can be used with or without mouse and keyboard, I can recommend the Gole10.
I for one will still use this one in the foreseeable future.

If you're thinking about getting one yourself, you can find it on GearBest for $168.99.
Looking for a coupon? You can try the GBCNA one for 14% off (almost $24).