We have two of these in house right now including one on my desk 
I personally love them. And I think the reviewer is kind of missing the point about who and what these boxes are for. For instance one of our customers loves them as development and testing boxes.
And I love the size/form factor myself, and my son was positively drooling when I brought one home to play with a few nights ago.
Intel NUC 12 Extreme review: Alder Lake makes for a pricey, portable powerhouse | Ars Technica
In work, over the years, I’ve slowly replaced nearly ALL of the large desktops with NUCs. At home, just behind each tv mounted to the wall, is a NUC. I absolutely love them. My favourite was the NUC8i7HNK. Sure, it’s larger than the standard NUCs, but it was damn fast and featured a lovely Intel/AMD collaboration CPU/GPU ( i7-8705G).
I used a NUC 9 Extreme for a few weeks. It’s a great machine, but it wasn’t for me (fitted a small 2060 as well). The NUC 12 has inherited the same issues with cooling etc. One thing… it would have been nice if the NUC 12’s Element fitted into the Nuc 9’s case.
Finally, this very week, I’ve ordered the following:
With
It’ll be used between my house and my partner’s house. Kind of excited, which doesn’t often happen.
P.s. Yeah, the review is odd. It’s not for everyone. Some people WANT a small machine instead of a full/medium sized desktop. ITX is nice, but I’m glad that we have options.