Zotac’s $199 Zbox Pico mini PC fits in your pocket

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Chips By Lee Mathews Aug. 27, 2014 12:00 pm
Zotac has made some pretty small PCs before, but they’ve gone positively Lilliputian with their latest Zbox model. The Zbox Pico is so small that you can actually unplug it and shove it into your pocket.
Volume-wise, this thing’s actually smaller than an Apple TV. It measures just 11.5 x 6.6cm and stands just under 2cm high. There are plenty of external battery packs and portable hard drives with dimensions like those… the difference being, obviously, that the Zbox Pico has a complete x86-compatible PC crammed inside.

The specs are similar to what you’d find in a small Windows 8.1 tablet, as above is the actual system board. Everything that makes the Pico go is soldered on: a quad-core Bay Trail Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of NAND. Zotac has included a micro SD slot for storage expansion, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, Bluetooth 4.0, and both Ethernet and 802.11 b.g.n Wi-Fi. Windows 8.1 with Bing is pre-loaded, so all you have to do is hook up your peripherals and power the Zbox Pico on.
Interested? You won’t have to wait long to purchase one. Zotac is expecting them to go on sale next month, and at $199 (just like this other Zotac PC), it’s not going to hit your wallet too hard.
That’s an aggressive price, but it’s what Windows with Bing is all about: cutting licensing costs for OEMs so they can turn out hardware like this with rock-bottom prices. That and drawing a line in the sand against Chromeboxes before they become the preferred choice of thrifty computer shoppers.



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