Ayaneo, which is generally identified for making handheld gaming consoles, simply absolutely revealed the brand new Retro Mini PC AM01 after teasing it just a few weeks in the past. It says it plans to ship the AM01 earlier than the top of the 12 months — and I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I’m not tempted to get one. The AM01 received’t win any benchmarking contests, however it’ll nearly actually be the best-looking pc you personal.
Let’s simply state the plain right here: Ayaneo says it’s “paying homage” to the Macintosh, which is a sort approach of claiming, “We copied the thing pretty much exactly.” This system is the spitting picture of Apple’s ’80s-era pc, proper right down to the floppy drive and the rainbow sticker. (Ayaneo made the sticker a flag form as a substitute of an apple, although — there’s paying homage after which there’s paying lawyer charges, you understand what I imply?) It’s smaller than a Macintosh, however it’s beige and rectangular and even has a black area the place the outdated display screen would have gone.
Inside, although, the AM01 is one thing very totally different. For an early hen worth of $149 ($199 for everybody else), you get an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U — an almost five-year-old chip — together with eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage. All the best way on the high of the road, for $379 early or $459 retail, you get an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor — itself nearly three years outdated! — plus 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. All of the reminiscence is expandable, too. It’s fairly low cost regardless of the way you slice it, however you will get a way more highly effective mini PC for the value. It’s simply that the majority of these mini PCs are ugly black bins.
What the AM01 actually has going for it’s extensibility. This factor has 5 USB ports (one USB-C and 4 USB-A), plus HDMI, DisplayPort, a headphone jack, ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. You may get it with Home windows 11 or purchase the “bare” model and set up Linux or SteamOS or no matter else your coronary heart wishes. Some individuals will purchase the AM01 and use it as a pc; most will set it up as a retro gaming console, a Plex server, and extra. Ayaneo’s even providing the AM01 in a bundle with NuPhy’s mechanical keyboards and 8BitDo’s wi-fi controllers.
Ayaneo is launching the AM01 on Indiegogo, which all the time necessitates caveats about which corporations to belief together with your cash, however it does have a historical past of delivering and a rapidly enhancing observe report of system high quality. It additionally appears to be invested within the mini PC area — the corporate has additionally been teasing the AM02, which borrows the unique NES design for an much more gamer-y vibe. No phrase but on when that’s popping out, although.
The AM01’s many SKUs are up for preorder now, and Ayaneo says it plans to start out transport them in December. I could or might not have already began clearing area on my desk.