This Macintosh-inspired mini PC is brief on energy however lengthy on attractiveness

Ayaneo, which is usually identified for making handheld gaming consoles, simply totally revealed the new Retro Mini PC AM01 after teasing it a couple of weeks in the past. It says it plans to ship the AM01 earlier than the tip 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, but it surely’ll nearly actually be the best-looking laptop you personal.

Let’s simply state the apparent right here: Ayaneo says it’s “paying homage” to the Macintosh, which is a sort manner of claiming, “We copied the thing pretty much exactly.” This machine is the spitting picture of Apple’s ’80s-era laptop, 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 realize what I imply?) It’s smaller than a Macintosh, but it surely’s beige and rectangular and even has a black area the place the previous display screen would have gone.

Inside, although, the AM01 is one thing very totally different. For an early chook 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 prime of the road, for $379 early or $459 retail, you get an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor — itself nearly three years previous! — plus 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. All the reminiscence is expandable, too. It’s fairly low cost irrespective of the way you slice it, however you may get a way more highly effective mini PC for the value. It’s simply that almost all of these mini PCs are ugly black packing containers.

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 can get it with Windows 11 or purchase the “bare” model and set up Linux or SteamOS or no matter else your coronary heart needs. Some folks 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 firms to belief together with your cash, but it surely does have a historical past of delivering and a shortly bettering observe document of machine 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 begin transport them in December. I could or might not have already began clearing area on my desk.