Giroro :
The last time I looked at NUCs (Skull Canyon in particular) they were mostly i7's surrounded by a lot of marketing about how Intel's very-best integrated graphics could technically run DOTA 2 and play 4k video.
I don't know if every generation has a gaming SKU, but most NUCs are
not marketed towards gamers.
Giroro :
as far as I know the push for NUCs were the reason Intel released their (now cancelled) Iris Pro graphics.
No, I'm sure that was for high-end ultrabooks. Then, as with the rest of the NUC lineup, they just took a handful of laptop SoCs and stuffed them into NUCs to sell on the side.
Giroro :
It always felt like intel was branding NUCs as "small form factor with no compromises", because their low-end SOCs (Atom, Apollo, Gemini lake,) can go so much smaller than a NUC.
Well, you can use them for embedded or maybe tablets, but they cancelled the SoCs for anything smaller (e.g. phones). You have to go all the way down to wearables and IoT, before Intel has any x86 to offer (in the form of their 32-bit Edison chip).
Giroro :
I think the market for a $150 NUC (add your own storage and OS) probably isn't very large when for the same price you can get an entry level Windows 10 tablet or laptop - which have the bonus of a functional screen and battery.
That's really kind of apples & oranges. These NUCs have wired ethernet, toslink, more USB, and can accommodate more RAM and much more storage than those laptops - which typically have both their (single-channel) RAM and EMMC storage soldered down. NUCs also have microphone arrays, and I don't know if those usually work on laptops if you're using it with the lid closed.
Someone who wants portability will not even look at the NUC, whereas someone who doesn't care about portability will get a smaller footprint, more features, and better performance with the NUC.
Giroro :
Even for a Linux-powered terminal at a library or POS or something like that, I think this is a hard sell over an all-in-one style computer.
Among their peers, these NUCs are definitely premium-priced. However, if you compare features and performance with the all-in-ones you mention, I think it's hard to do
much better than a NUC.
I find it interesting that you're even arguing this point, since you've indicated that you really haven't followed this product line. You would do well to familiarize yourself more with the NUCs and competing product offerings, if this is something that interests you.