We keep being able to build smaller and smaller computers, but eventually you reach a point where, well, there just is no point anymore. This is proven by a Chinese manufacturer: iLife. The company’s most recent product is the iLife MP8 Micro PC, which it showed off alongside some other products at the Global Sources Electronics Fair 2019 last week, as spotted by Notebook Italia.
(Image credit: Notebook Italia)
We have no specific information about the measurements of this little PC, but in the videos and photos, we see it fitting in the palm of a female reporter's hand. We estimate it to be about 2 x 2 x 2 inches. Consequently, much of it is covered with its ports: HDMI, USB Type-C, two USB 3.0 ports, a MicroSD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack. There is no sign of a power connector, so we can assume that it runs off of a USB-C wall adapter.
Specifications are as small as the unit’s physical dimensions. It runs on a quad-core Intel Celeron N4100 CPU, along with 4GB of LPDDR3 memory and 64GB of solid-state storage.
The MP8 Micro PC exists in two variants: one with a metal casing and one with a plastic housing. The metal one has a flat top with vents along the sides near the top, whereas the plastic unit exhausts at the top. They both have a small fan inside to keep things cool.
Sadly, we have no information on pricing or whether the unit will come to U.S. shops at all. But we reckon these units are proof of concepts, used by iLife to showcase its manufacturing abilities to partners. There likely isn't a huge market for such tiny PCs.
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Surprisingly it can run Windows 10? How is that surprising? The N4100 is roughly equal in power to the i5 4300U, which I have in my Surface Pro 2, and it still works pretty well, even with its 4GB of RAM... which this little box of joy seems to match. The only thing that turns me off is the UHD 600 graphics, which are absolutely abysmal. Although, this would probably make for an interesting little toy. It'd probably do emulators well, YouTube, movie watching, internet, and might even be able to play older games, and maybe even Minecraft.
In places where space is at a premium like a dorm room, or even a hotel room where you only have a TV, this could be a useful little computer. I want one to play with now... although, a Raspberry Pi 4 would probably be a cheaper purchase and can do most of those things.
The N4100 is roughly equal in power to the i5 4300U
The N4100 uses Intel's Atom cores (typically used for low power mobile devices like tablets), not the same Core architecture used for their mainstream desktop/mobile parts. Your 2C/4T 4300U is a fair bit faster than this 4C/4T celeron, even in multi-threaded performance.
Well, can find some comparisons between Intel Celeron N4100 and Intel Core i5-4300U here at Notebookcheck. Intel's Core architecture has single thread performance advantage...
