ECS announced plans to update four of its existing PCs with Intel Kaby Lake and Apollo Lake processors later this year.
Diving Into Apollo Lake
ECS has three systems that will ship with Apollo Lake, the first of which will ship in July. That will be the ECS SF20BA, an existing system, that at present has a Broadwell-M SKU but will receive the Apollo Lake update. We can’t be sure what type of RAM the system will use, nor how much RAM and storage space the PC will have, but the case and its measurements will remain the same at 305 x 202 x 19.9-23.8 mm (LxWxH). It will also continue to use an 11.6-inch display.
The other two systems with Apollo Lake will ship in December. These systems are larger; the SF50BA is a 15.6-inch notebook, and the SF40BA measures 14 inches. ECS couldn’t tell us what type of memory would be used in these systems either, nor say for sure what type of storage options would be available, so the only aspect of the system that we're certain will be reused is the chassis.
Lonely Kaby Lake
ECS showed us just one notebook that will come with Kaby Lake, and it will be available in December. This will be a larger 15.6-inch system with a 1080p display that measures 382 x 266.95 x 25.5-30.3 mm (LxWxH).
Clues
These devices help give us a timeframe for Apollo Lake and Kaby Lake mobile products. Desktop Kaby Lake chipsets are not expected until Q1 2017, so it appears Intel is sticking to a mobile-first deployment strategy. As Kaby Lake marks the transition to a smaller fabrication process, it is possible that this system could be pushed back, just as we saw with Broadwell.
There is currently no price set on these new systems.
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