Chuwi's Quad-Core Intel-Powered Larkbox Should Be World's Smallest PC, Starts at $169

Chuwi LarkBox (Image credit: Chuwi)

Chuwi has revealed the pricing and specifications for the LarkBox, touted as the world's smallest PC. The LarkBox lives inside a 0.6-liter PC case that measures 2.4 x 2.4 x 1.7 inches (61 x 61 x 43mm). Chuwi compares the mini PC to the size of a lemon, and it weighs just 4.5 ounces (127g). 

Despite its diminutive size, the LarkBox comes with a tiny cooling fan that actively cools the device's internals.

Although Chuwi previously teased the LarkBox with a Celeron N4100 (Gemini Lake) processor, but it's instead launching with the more powerful Celeron J4115 chip. The Celeron J4115 (Gemini Lake Refresh) still retains the four-core, four-thread configuration as the Celeron N4100 but is faster. The Celeron N4100 comes with a 1.1 GHz base clock and 2.4 GHz boost clock. The Celeron J4115, on the other hand, ticks with a 1.8 GHz base clock and 2.5 GHz boost clock. Chuwi estimates a performance uplift of up to 15% with the new chip.

The LarkBox utilizes 6GB of LPDDR4 memory and was slated to have 128GB of storage. However, Chuwi has upgraded the LarkBox with a M.2 2242 SSD slot to support up to 1TB. It's a welcomed upgrade, since it would open the door to installing more applications and storing more information than just the operating system. There's also a microSD card reader for storage expansion.

Although the LarkBox isn't a gaming PC, it can drive resolutions up to 4K without much hassle. Since Intel doesn't list the Celeron J4115 in its ARK product database, we don't know much about iGPU. The previous Celeron J4105 rocks the UHD Graphics 600 solution with up to 12 Execution Units (EUs) and clock speed spanning from 250 MHz to 750 MHz. The iGPU not only outputs at a 4K but does so at a 60 Hz refresh rate.

For connectivity, the LarkBox provides two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, one HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone jack, plus Bluetooth 5.0 support. Chuwi doesn't mention it, but we expect the LarkBox to come with Wi-Fi 5 connectivity.

The Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for the LarkBox launches on June 23. The retail price for the LarkBox is $199, but early backers can snag it for just $169. If you subscribe to Chuwi's newsletter, you'll receive a 25% discount.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • bit_user
    That's a big lemon!
    ; )
    Reply
  • joe_griggs
    No network? WiFi? RJ45?
    Reply
  • Exploding PSU
    There are quad-core Celerons?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    exploding_psu said:
    There are quad-core Celerons?
    Yeah, the Celeron name has been applied to SoCs built around their low-power, Atom-derived cores:

    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J4115+@+1.80GHz&id=3679 These are much slower than their desktop cores, although the next-gen Tremont cores are a lot better.
    Reply
  • Exploding PSU
    bit_user said:
    Yeah, the Celeron name has been applied to SoCs built around their low-power, Atom-derived cores:

    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J4115+@+1.80GHz&id=3679These are much slower than their desktop cores, although the next-gen Tremont cores are a lot better.

    Heh, the more I know, I thought they're exclusively 2-cores affair
    Reply
  • bit_user
    exploding_psu said:
    Heh, the more I know, I thought they're exclusively 2-cores affair
    I'd take 2 Skylake cores over 4 Goldmont+ cores, though. The only time you might do better with Goldmont+ is on pure power-efficiency (if you don't need a lot of performance, that is).

    Like I said, the next wave of low-power cores from Intel (i.e. Tremont) should be much more interesting.
    Reply