It still has everything you could hope for though

Jan 19, 2015 14:57 GMT  ·  By

We've seen our share of mini personal computers, but the one that CompuLab has just introduced beats them all. All micro PCs, laptops, desktops, nettops, HTPCs, all of them. You can balance everything a computer can do on a single finger.

CompuLab is a maker of small fanless computers based in Israel, but the new MintBox Mini is a level of magnitude beyond anything even they made before.

The system is based on the Fitlet mini-PC and measures 108 x 83 x 24 mm, which is the same as 4.25 x 3.27 x 0.95 inches. Barely enough room for five USB ports to fit next to each other on the side. The long side.

Indeed, CompuLab could barely fit three of them along with the audio jacks and power buttons. That means the front I/O panel has two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 connector, the audio and microphone jacks, and the power button.

The inner specs of the MintBox Mini PC

For a computer no larger than half a wallet, the newcomer is certainly a capable piece of work, powered by an AMD A4 6400T accelerated processing unit.

This APU may not have any legendary abilities, but it does possess four cores clocked at 1 GHz each (1.6 GHz Turbo), as well as Radeon R3 graphics.

The chip is backed up by 4 GB of DDR3 random access memory, RAM for short. You've gotta love those high-capacity DRAM chips. It's even possible to install 8 GB if you're feeling magnanimous, even though one might argue that 4 GB is already too much.

As for storage, there are 64 GB NAND Flash inside, pretty much what we'd expect from something with room only for semiconductors, and thus, the equivalent of memory cards.

Solid state storage has the extra benefit of high speed data access and copying. The operating system will boot nearly instantly and so will programs.

Speaking of which, Linux is the OS intended for use on this device, although no one will stop you if you want Windows instead. As long as you have it on a bootable USB drive anyhow.

Availability and pricing

The CompuLab MintBox Mini PC will ship in the second quarter of the year (2015) for $295 / €254.