My very first article about Chinese mini PCs was about Rikomagic MK802, an Android 4.0 HDMI TV dongle with a cortex A8 processor, 512 MB RAM and 4GB flash, and the device was selling for $74 at the time. Ten months later, it appears that for the exact same price you can now buy UG007B, an Android 4.2 mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3188 quad core Cortex A9 processor with 2GB RAM, and 8 GB Flash.
Here are UG007 IIB specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3188 Quad Core ARM Cortex-A9 Processor up to 1.6Ghz + Mali-400MP4 Quad-core GPU
- System Memory – 2GB DDR3 RAM
- Storage – 8GB Nand Flash + microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
- Connectivity
- Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n (MediaTek 5931 in CDT-K25931 module)
- Bluetooth 3.0 (MediaTek 6622 in CDT-K25931 module)
- 3G support via external USB dongle
- USB – 1 x USB 2.0 Host + 2x micro USB host
- Video Output – HDMI
- Video Codecs – Mpeg1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, Divx, Xvid, RM8/9/10, VP6
- Video Container Formats – MKV, TS, TP, M2TS, RM/RMVB, BD-ISO, AVI, MPG, VOB, DAT, ASF, TRP, FLV etc…
- Audio Codecs – DTS, AC3, LPCM, FLAC, HE-AAC
- Audio Formats – MP3, OGG, WMA, WMAPRO
- Power – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – 10.1×3.8×1.3cm
- Weight – 40g
I could not find information about what’s included in the package.
Onebir, a regular reader (and tip giver), contacted the Aliexpress seller who confirmed the device can be pre-ordered and should be available within 10 days (by the end of the month). Since I found the price to be quite aggressive compared to other quad core mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6 or AllWinner A31, I decided to look around a bit, and I could even find some online stores selling it for $69.99, but they expect the device to ship within 2 or 3 weeks. Geekbuying also mentioned the device in a blog post a few days ago, but AFAIK it’s not for sale on their site just yet.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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with linux and vga output i think this should be a good desktop pc (something like atom cpu) 😀
I can’t believe it’s only been 10 months.
Amazing how much “innovation” happens when you’re not held back by a monopolist and insane ‘eye-pee’ laws.
Interesting comparison. UG007 IIB >= 4*MK802, more or less (4 cores, 4 times the RAM, better ARM version, Bluetooth)
Which I think means these things are improving at about 15% *a month*…
Only i need sata for ssd or hdd and linux in, internal hdd or ssd, not outside. Then nice computer with low power consumption.
“4 times better” = 300%, not 400% as could be deduced from your “15% a month”. So I would say 12% is closer to the truth and it still looks REALLY impressive, giving hope for things to work significantly better even without proper drivers, but I hope this is/will be changing in good direction as well…
@renw0rp Ooops – yes indeed. Thanks for the correction! :p I wonder how long this rate of improvement (niggly driver issues aside) can continue? Isn’t ARM technology catching up with X86? And on top of this the Chinese chip companies are driving the prices down quickly*? So the progress in performance/price will have to slow pretty soon? *I think this is why this seller has been able to offer an RK3188 stick for almost 20% less than the others. I think the others have been happy to price these products in line with Samsung etc quad core devices, and make… Read more »
i bought the old model , and i don’t think i am going to buy the same brand again , No Update for the old UG007.
Bad support.
The MTK wireless and bluetooth chipsets have me worried about running Linux on them, other than that I am glad to see this out there. Bring on the QuadCore ARM MiniPCs!!!
@BaderMQ
You mean Android firmware update? I don’t think many Chinese manufacturers are good at providing these…
I pointed the Aliexpress seller at this article, and he says “if other supplier can do US$69.9/pc , then i can do this price too”
🙂
This one is really interesting and will be more so when the price comes down and the kernel sources leak.
I’m amazed how fast things move along.
Just one thing I’d be really curious about, running a phoronix test suite or something an this quad A9 versus the Allwinner quad A7.
I do like Allwinner stuff as it tends to be easily hackable because of their use of a config file but … this one have Mali video which is also nice and I do expect the A9 to be better than the A7.
Looks very interesting, I am planning on getting a mini Android PC but I am wondering whether I should go for a RK3066 version or wait for a RK3166 PC. My primary use for the product would be streaming football coverage from http://plus1hd.com which is has flash encoded live video feeds. The streams are not full HD and I am not concerned about getting the highest quality picture, just smooth streaming and audio synced. If anyone has a view on whether a RK3066 does want I need or whether the RK3166 is worth waiting for. Thank you in advance! Tom
@Marius
We just had 5.5 percentage points of the ~12% monthly improvement in the price/performance ratio, what more could you want? :p
@Tom
I get the (non-expert) impression most of the streaming performance of these devices depends on the GPU and wifi reception. Even the single core devices tend to have quite powerful GPUs that should be up to the task, but wifi reception is an issue for many of them, and we won’t really know which quad core devices have better wifi until more people have bought them…
“Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n (MediaTek 5931 in CDT-K25931 module)
Bluetooth 3.0 (MediaTek 6622 in CDT-K25931 module)”
does anybody know if there is linux driver for CDT-K25931?
@onebir For video playback it’s the VPU (Video Processing Unit) that’s important, as it does the video codec decoding. @Tom Having said that onebir is right that usually a fast processor for video streaming may not be very important. As long as your flash videos can be handled by the VPU, any processor will do, but if for some reasons it has to be handled by the CPU, a faster processor will be needed. For SD video, RK3066 should be able to handle it easily. However, you can’t take flash support for granted in ARM devices. Sometimes it just won’t… Read more »
@Tom
Onebir I want this for under 50$ with free shipping and I’m sure I’m going to get it in a couple of months. I’m not in a hurry to get it … waiting for sources to come out too.
Sure the hardware is more powerful ! but if it cannot run generic Linux based destros i dont think I personally would appreciate it beyond a level !!
Except, GK802 none of them have GPU acceleration !
I’m dreaming to use such one and to be able to mount my storage from https://owndrive.com into it and access my files. It’s possible as long as i can run Android or preferably Linux on it!
I would appreciate a review of this device first.
Does this or any of the other models come with HDMI-CEC?
I bought this device for $49 from aliexpress.com last year in July. It was shipped with Android 4.2, but I installed Picuntu 4.4 on it and since then using it as FTP server. Its CPU is strong enough to survive the encrypted file transfers for last 6 months.
The only problem was locating the reset button to enter into bootloader.
The reset button is located somewhere inside and is accessible only by using a pin through the hole on side face.