The new Intel NUC boards (made for core M processors) and Nvidia Tegra - based boards are both power sippers. Being made for compact systems, cooling fans and/or dedicated power supplies are usually lavish options. A lot of them run off of a laptop power pack and draw nearly nothing while sleeping. Neither setup is made for hardcore gaming, so I won't even go there.
With an SSD and ample DDR3 or DDR4 memory, both systems dominate when playing movies or surfing the internet. If you get a mainboard that will POST fast, these things can boot in 15 to 30 seconds from dead cold. Coming out of hibernation is like using a cell phone or tablet: maybe 5 seconds. Most of the mainboards either have headers for laptop wifi radio cards or have built-in wifi, so connecting to the outside world is no problem. If you need a hardline, they pretty much all have gigabit ethernet ports.
As far as differences between the processors, I would say they compare like this: The Core M based rigs feel more like a windows laptop: better multitasking and more raw power for complicated calculations and simulations. The Tegra based rigs feel more like a tablet or premium android phone: better image rendering, sound and ultra low power draw.
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