If you rip the motherboard out of a NUC you'll probably end up with a board of a very similar size. The laptop style cooler takes up more space than the board.
The dimensions are different (more square, more USB ports, no GPIO) but they're not as big as you may think. A NUC is about twice the size of a Beaglebone with much better performance and software support, plus the advantage of being able to pick your own RAM and storage options.
For something like a picture frame you can easily use a NUC. For an e-reader you'd run into form factor issues for the cooler, but for something that low spec an ESP32 would be even more compact without sacrificing much.
But the void has been already filled if by Minisforum and many others.
I just got an N100, Dual NIC, 8GRam, 256G mSata SSD with a 9W TDP for AUD $270.
I have quite a few NUCs, and they are awesome. It's a shame Intel is getting out of the platform. But, for the money this one I got last week is incredible.
It's surprisingly fast and runs on the smallest plugpack I ever saw for a full PC (and it's probably hollow).
Running Linux of course. Installed Bookwork and everything works.
The dimensions are different (more square, more USB ports, no GPIO) but they're not as big as you may think. A NUC is about twice the size of a Beaglebone with much better performance and software support, plus the advantage of being able to pick your own RAM and storage options.
For something like a picture frame you can easily use a NUC. For an e-reader you'd run into form factor issues for the cooler, but for something that low spec an ESP32 would be even more compact without sacrificing much.