Higole F7G Plus Review – An affordable rugged tablet tested with Ubuntu 20.04 & Windows 11

Higole F7G Plus rugged tablet review

Ruggedized industrial-use PCs are typically expensive so it is refreshing to see Higole F7G Plus, an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh tablet, being offered at an affordable price. Higole kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at functionality and performance running on Ubuntu and also its Windows performance. Hardware Overview The Higole F7G Plus is a 10.1 inch IPS touch screen rugged industrial fanless tablet that uses Intel’s 14 nm Gemini Lake Refresh N4120 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.10 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. Designwise, meeting the MIL-STD-810G standard which is the de facto ‘ruggedized’ standard for consumer products and covers whether the device can work in a broad range of environmental conditions including surviving dropping, is evidenced by the thick protective shell around the tablet. To ensure its IP67 Certification for waterproofing each of the ports are covered by detachable rubber […]

ASRock introduces fanless iBOX 1200 Series Alder Lake-U mini PCs

ASRock iBOX 1200 Alder Lake mini PC

ASRock Industrial has unveiled the iBox 1200 series family of fanless mini PCs powered by the latest 12th generation 15W Intel Alder Lake U-series processors, equipped with up to 64GB RAM, and supporting up to four independent displays. The fanless embedded BOX PCs also provide plenty of interfaces with 2.5GbE Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 3.2 ports, two USB 2.0 interfaces, SATA and NVMe storage, M.2 wireless expansion, and more. ASRock iBOX 1200 mini PC specifications: SoC iBOX-1215UE – Intel Core i3-1215UE hexa-core Alder Lake processor with two P-cores @ 1.2 / 4.4 GHz , four E-cores @ 0.9 / 3.3 GHz, 64 EU Intel HD graphics iBOX-1245UE – Intel Core i5-1245UE deca-core Alder Lake processor with two P-cores @ 1.5 / 4.4 GHz , eight E-cores @ 1.1 / 3.3 GHz, 80EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics iBOX-1265UE – Intel Core i7-1265UE hexa-core Alder Lake processor with two P-cores @ 1.7 […]

BIVROST Lite5 mini-STX motherboard takes up to 96GB RAM for machine vision applications

BIVROST Lite5

BIVROST, a manufacturer of solutions in the field of image analysis and live video streaming, has just introduced the Lite5 mini-STX motherboard powered by an Intel Core Coffee Lake processor, and targeting machine vision, digital signage, security, video streaming, and other edge computing applications. The board is fitted with Advantech SOM-5899 COM Express Basic Type 6 module that supports up to 96GB DDR4 ECC memory, while the carrier board offers two Gigabit Ethernet ports, twelve USB interfaces, dual HDMI 2.0 video output, plus five M.2 expansion sockets. BIVROST Lite5 specifications: SoC Intel i7-8850H 6-core/12-thread processor @ up to 2.6 GHz / 4.3 GHz (Turbo) with 9MB cache, 24 EU Intel UHD 630 graphics; 45W TDP Intel i5-8400H 4-core/8-thread processor @ 2.5 GHz / 4.2 GHz (Turbo) with 8MB cache, 24 EU Intel UHD 630 graphics; 45W TDP Some Xeon processors are also available upon request System Memory – Up to […]

Aerofara Aero 2 Pro Review – A Celeron N5105 mini PC tested with Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04

aerofara aero 2 pro mini pc

Aerofara’s Aero 2 Pro is an Intel Jasper Lake mini PC and one of the very few new mini PCs to include a VGA port. Aerofara kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu. Aero 2 Pro Hardware Overview The Aero 2 Pro physically consists of a 120 x 120 x 23mm (4.72 x 4.72 x 0.91 inches) rectangular metal case with inset front and back plastic panels. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses Intel’s 10 nm Jasper Lake N5105 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.90 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. The front panel is bereft of anything save a pinhole which is illuminated blue when the device is powered on. The rear panel includes the power jack, a USB 3.1 port, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a […]

Beelink GTR5 Review – An AMD Ryzen 9 mini PC tested with Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink GT5 Review AMD Ryzen 9 mini PC

Beelink’s GTR5 is their most powerful mini PC to date and has been released as part of their ‘GT’ series of slightly larger mini PCs that are notable for expandable storage configurations together with multiple ports and characterized by the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner. Featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 mobile processor with Radeon Graphics, Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu. Hardware Overview The Beelink GTR5 physically consists of a 168 x 120 x 39mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) rectangular metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s ‘Zen 3’ Ryzen 9 5900HX processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 3.3 GHz mobile processor boosting up to 4.6 GHz together with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, a ‘CLR CMOS’ button, a USB 3.1 port, a Type-C USB 3.1 port, and a […]

Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 11, Linux distributions

Android 13 virtualization Pixel 6 Linux

The first Android 13 developer preview may have felt a bit underwhelming, but there’s a hidden gem with full virtualization possible on hardware such as the Google Pixel 6 smartphone. What that means is that it is now possible to run virtually any operating system including Windows 11, Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Arch Linux Arm on the Google Tensor-powered phone, and do so at near-native speed. Android & web developer “kdrag0n” tested several Linux distributions compiled for Aarch64 on the Pixel 6 with Ubuntu 21.10, Arch Linux Arm, Void Linux, and Alpine Linux using “the KVM hypervisor on Pixel 6 + Android 13 DP1”. He/she further explains: As far as I can tell, we can pretty much get full EL2 on production devices now. Protected KVM is optional and can be enabled on a per-VM basis, but for non-protected VMs, it looks like full KVM functionality is available. […]

Fitlet3 is a compact, fanless Elkhart Lake mini PC for IoT and industrial applications

Fitlet3 mini PC

Fitlet3 fanless mini PC based on a choice of three Atom or Celeron Elkhart Lake processors is an upgrade to the Compulab Fitlet2 mini PC introduced in 2017 with Apollo Lake processors. Designed to be used as a fanless industrial mini PC or an IoT gateway, Fitlet3 comes with up to 32GB RAM, supports SATA and NVMe storage, offers two 4K video outputs, up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports, optional WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and/or 4G/5G cellular connectivity, as well as a wide range 7V to 42V power input. Fitlet3 specifications: Elkhart Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Atom x6425E quad-core processor @ 2.0 GHz / 3.0 GHz (Boost frequency); TDP: 12 W Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core processor @ 2.0 GHz/ 2.6 GHz;  TDP: 10 W Intel Atom x6211E dual-core processor @ 1.3 GHz / 3.0 GHz ; TDP: 6 W System Memory – Up to 32 GB DDR4 […]

CHUWI LarkBox X mini PC is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor

Chuwi Larkbox X

CHUWI LarkBox X is an affordable mini PC based on a 15W AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor coupled with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 4K video output, and more. Contrary to the earlier Celeron-based LarkBox and LarkBox Pro palm-sized mini PCs, the LarkBox X comes with a larger form factor providing additional ports and possibly better cooling for the more performant AMD processor. LarkBox X specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 7 3700U quad-core/eight-thread processor @ 2.30GHz / 4.0GHz (Turbo) with Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics; 15W TDP System Memory – 8GB DDR4, dual channels via 2x 260-pin DDR4 SO-DIMMs (upgradeable up to 32GB RAM) Storage – 256GB NVMe M.2 2280 SSD (PCIe 3.0) upgradable up to 2TB Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 1x DisplayPort up to 4Kp60 1x USB Type -C up to 4Kp30 with DisplayPort Alt. mode Three independent displays […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC