Is this gaming laptop the best mobile workstation deal right now?

Dell has provided us with perhaps the best reason for anyone to ask their employer for a gaming laptop, in the form of the new Dell G5 15 SE - and it's arguably more powerful than most mobile workstations in its price range.

At only $1332.79 (roughly £1060/AU$1950), this is a stunning deal given the specifications. You can also apply for credit and pay $74.04 over 18 months with no interest and get up to $79 back in rewards. Bear in mind, you'll need to go through this link or you'll be charged an extra $30.

As for the laptop itself, it's a special edition model with an 8-core/16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics. It also has a separate AMD Radeon RX 5600M GPU with 6GB GDDR6 and AMD’s Smartshift technology, which “dynamically shifts power in your laptop to help boost performance for gaming, video editing, 3D rendering, content creation and productivity”.

The machine also boasts 16GB memory (two 8GB modules), a 1TTB PCIe NVMe M2 SSD and a 15.6-inch FHD LED display with a 144Hz refresh rate and rated at 300Nits.

Beyond that, Dell's laptop features dual speakers with Nahimic 3D Audio, a 51Whr battery, plus Intel’s Killer Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity - and you get a 12-month subscription to McAfee LiveSafe security software to boot.

In terms of connectors, there's a Mini DP, USB-C DisplayPort (Alt-Mode only), two USB 2.0 ports, one HDMI 2.0 port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 connector, an SD card slot, headphone jack and an Ethernet plug. In theory, you should be able to connect up to three 4K monitors at once.

Bear in mind

  • If the Dell G5 15 SE is not available in your region, you may need to use a specialist parcel forwarding service to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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Could this be the best business laptop deal right now?

In recent years, the boundary between business and consumer laptops has grown increasingly blurred. Sure, hardcore gaming laptops and enterprise models have their own unique traits (e.g. dedicated graphics cards for the former and sophisticated management features for the latter), but that doesn’t necessarily apply to entry level devices.

The IdeaPad 81UT00EAUS from Lenovo, for example, belongs to the popular S145 family, which is equally well-suited for home and business use. Available from BestBuy for $379.99 (roughly £300/AU$550), it's currently out best business laptop deal.

The IdeaPad 81UT00EAUS run on an AMD Ryzen 3 3200 CPU and features a 15-inch full HD display, dedicated numeric keypad, 8GB of RAM (dual channel) and 256GB SSD (NVMe, PCIe). It also has three USB ports, a HDMI one and a memory card reader.

Should they need to, businesses can also upgrade to Windows 10 Pro via Microsoft’s store. But Windows 10 Home should prove sufficient for the overwhelming majority of SMBs.

Extra features such as Bitlocker device encryption, kiosk mode setup, remote desktop and Virtual Machine capabilities, meanwhile, can all be added via third party software.

In terms of caveats, there’s no Type-C connector or Ethernet port, the display is a TN model, the webcam is a VGA type model (so you may end up looking like a Minecraft or Roblox avatar) and the battery is a little underwhelming at 35Whr.

Bear in mind

  • If the Lenovo Ideapad 81UT00EAUS is unavailable in your region, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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This is probably the best Linux laptop deal right now

The Mytrix LinuxBook 7350 is a laptop like no other; it's not the cheapest notebook that runs on Ubuntu, but is almost certainly the best Linux laptop when it comes to sheer value for money.

The fact it's available from both Newegg and Walmart is also reassuring, since we're dealing with a bit of an unknown quantity in the form of Mytrix, a newcomer to the market.

The laptop costs just under $460 (£460.50/AU$776.70) from Newegg and very slightly more from Walmart. For your money, you get a rather impressive device: Intel Core i5-8250, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD and a 13.3-inch full HD IPS display with fingerprint scanner.

The LinuxBook 7350 also features three USB ports (including a Type-C one that has DP mode), one HDMI connector, a microSD card, 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 and an audio jack.

Let's not forget, this laptop weighs only 1.2Kg and has an all-metal chassis, making it a solid candidate for any business eager to explore alternatives to Windows 10.

The device's clear unique selling, however, is the presence of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which serves as a useful introduction to the world of Linux.

A 1TB model is available for about $99 extra and you should also be able to install Windows 10 should you feel the need to. It's also worth noting that the battery capacity isn't listed, so we can't estimate the battery life.

Bear in mind

  • If the Mytrix LinuxBook 7350 is unavailable in your region, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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This is the cheapest ‘upgradable laptop’ we’ve seen to date

So, imagine you could upgrade your laptop every year or every time you get a new smartphone, that’s possible thanks to the Nexdock Touch, the followup to the Nexdock 2 which was unveiled a few years ago on Kickstarter. You can preorder it directly from Nexdock for $249 excluding P&P; the first units are expected to be shipped on August 31st.

In a nutshell, it is a touch-capable computer screen with a keyboard, battery, a touchpad and a docking station all combined into a laptop form factor. You plug in your computer, tablet, base unit, laptop, smartphone (basically anything with a HDMI port) and presto! You have a working computer that charges your phone..

The screen is a 14-inch full HD IPS model with narrow bezels, a huge 60WHr battery, better speakers (four of them) and a bigger touchpad compared to the previous generation. The webcam is also placed bang in the middle of the hinge that connects the display to the keyboard.

All other ports and features of NexDock Touch are exactly the same with NexDock 2; there’s a HDMI in, three Type-C connectors (one for smartphones, one for charging), a microSD card slot, a Type-A connector and a headphone jack. 

The most exciting use case is with smartphones that support Android’s desktop mode; that includes all the Samsung Galaxy models from the S8 and the Note 8, all Huawei flagship smartphones since the Mate 10 and the P20 plus the Honor Note 10 and the Honor View 20.

Technically, all smartphones that come with Android 10 and support video output over USB Type-C should be able to do that trick.

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Intel’s revolutionary sandwich chip debuts in a tiny, business-focused Samsung laptop

Launched last week, the Samsung Galaxy Book S features a new chip than Intell calls a “next generation Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid Technology”. 

"Hybrid technology" here refers to Intel’s much-vaunted Foveros, found in the Core i5-L16G7 - a 10nm Lakefield CPU clocked at 3GHz with 4MB cache.

It uses one big core and four small Atom cores, which is another first for this processor, emulating what ARM has been doing for quite a few years now with big.LITTLE. Note, Intel doesn’t currently list this CPU on its ARK database.

What makes Foveros so interesting is the fact it allows different, usually separate components to be layered one on top of the other in a 3D stack. To recycle Intel’s analogy, it's like layered cake as opposed to pancake layers.

You end up with something that occupies much smaller real estate and, because they are physically closer (and more tightly integrated), should end up costing less, using less energy and reducing latency (which will improve performance).

In a not so distant future, such a chip could mix and match memory, connectivity, I/O and even storage class memory, allowing Intel to offer a plethora of options to meet the needs of its customers - almost spilling into the world of semi-custom offerings.

As for the new Galaxy Book S (the previous one used the Qualcomm 8CX), it weighs 950g, comes with a 13.3-inch 600-nits touchscreen display, 512GB eUFS (no SSD), 8GB LPDDR4x memory, four speakers, two USB Type-C ports and a 42Whr battery that should power the laptop for at least half a day.

The device will suit a consumer's needs, but many of its features (e.g. long battery life, Windows Hello sign-in with a fingerprint sensor and Windows 10 Professional) are likely to be especially popular with a business audience.

It's available to pre-order at £999 in the UK, but prices for other regions have yet to be announced.

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AMD Ryzen + Arduino: This motherboard has an exceptional feature found nowhere else

A tiny company has combined an AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B with a Microchip ATmega32U4 MCU for real-time I/Os and Arduino compatibility.

The UDOO Bolt V8 costs $418 (roughly £330/AU$600) before tax/shipping and VAT and was one of the hardware success stories of 2018 for crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, despite shipping much later than expected.

It's essentially a motherboard with a quad-core Ryzen CPU with 32GB eMMC 5.0 storage, Vega 8 graphics and two DDR4 SODIMM sockets, plus a stylish brushed metal case and a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth M2 card.

You can drive up to four 4K displays via HDMI and DP alternate mode on USB Type-C. In addition, there are two M2 slots and one SATA, with a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, audio connectors and a 65W power supply unit.

The ATmega32U4 comes with its own set of digital I/O pins, which sets it apart from the competition, especially as the board is surprisingly small (120 x 120mm) -  although still bigger than the Raspberry Pi (85 x 56mm).

The Bolt V8's unique selling point is the fact the Arduino controller can act as a virtual valet to the Ryzen chip, waking it up when necessary (e.g. to perform a resource-hungry task such as mining or encryption).

Who is this board aimed at? Makers, developers but also anyone interested in a powerful computer in a small form factor with plenty of connectivity options. Yes, it is expensive, but then it is also one-of-a-kind.

Bear in mind

  • If the UDOO Bolt V8 does not ship to your region, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service if you want to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know any we'll tip our hat to you.
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This new laptop has the world’s largest battery

Apple might claim its MacBook Pro 16 has a battery capacity of 100Whr, but the small print reveals the actual capacity is 99.8Whr.

This small discrepancy opened the door for Taiwanese manufacturer MSI to claim the crown of laptop with the largest battery; its new Creator 15 mobile workstation bests the Macbook Pro by one-tenth of a Whr.

While MSI's record could be matched by a future device, it's unlikely to be toppled from the number one spot, because 100Whr is the maximum capacity allowed by airlines due to restrictions on Lithium Ion batteries in checked luggage (but not carry on).

The price of MSI's new machine is yet to be confirmed, but we know the Creator 15 comes with an Intel Core i7-10875H eight-core CPU and an AMD Ryzen edition will likely be released in the near future.

This 4-cell laptop can take up to 64GB DDR4-3200 memory and also features a 15.6-inch 4K IPS display (touchscreen optional), an Nvidia GeForce RTX2080 SUPER Max-Q graphics card and up to 16TB onboard storage via two M2 slots.

Weighing in at 2.1Kg, with a thickness of under 20mm, it's also surprisingly light to carry around.

MSI claims the Creator 15 has a batter life of nine hours. While we haven't tested the product, it's safe to say the battery life will be far inferior to laptops with integrated GPU - an option unavailable with the Creator 15.

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Mysterious new Russian CPU won’t threaten dominance of Intel and AMD, just yet

Rostec can be described as Russia’s equivalent of Samsung; a giant conglomerate with fingers in many pies. It operates a small arms manufacturer named Kalachnikov and also a modest airplane vendor called Mikoyan Gurevich (known to aficionados as MiG), to name just a few.

But among the firm's numerous projects sits Elbrus, an indigenous CPU family that has its roots in the 1970s.

As reported by our sister publication AnandTech, a new model has surfaced: the Elbrus 8CB. It targets the same market as AMD’s Epyc and Intel’s Xeon, although it's unlikely you’ll ever get your hands on one, because they are only produced for servers and PCs owned by the Russian government.

The 8CB is an 8-core CPU, with a clock speed of 1.5GHz and, because it uses an old 28nm manufacturing process, spreads its 2.8 billion transistors on a rather large 333mm^2 die - far bigger than similar processors that use processes as small as 7nm.

On the face of it, the 8CB isn’t that bad at all, with peak double precision GFLOPS per core reaching 36. For context, the Fujitsu A64FX we covered a few days ago hits 70.4 with a 50% speed boost, while ARM's latest Cortex-X1 super core manages 48 with a 100% increase in clock speed.

Will we ever see an Elbrus PC? Will Rostec manage to move to a finer node and achieve faster processing speeds and cram in more cores? Well, given Elbrus CPUs are compatible with x86 and x86-64 via Binary Translation without Intel’s IP, they could be a winner for Russia - especially with some countries aiming to minimise dependence on Western technology.

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These are the cheapest 1TB SSDs on the planet

Head over to Amazon to get your hands on the cheapest 1TB solid state drives in the world at the time of writing.

All four SSDs are available at only $92.99 (roughly £75/AU$135), with free delivery in the US - although international customers will incur additional shipping and import charges.

They are all standard SATA 2.5-inch SSDs with 3D NAND chips (rather than QLC) and most likely use a variant of the Silicon Motion SM2258. They also all support Windows TRIM optimization command, SMART technology and come with three-year warranties.

Unlike many rival offerings, these drives actually pack the full 1TB of storage, rather than 960GB (although the actual usable storage will be slightly lower). At 7mm high, they should be compatible with some of the larger laptops on the market, as well as certain games consoles.

Internal hard disk drives are still far cheaper than SSDs, but the gap is rapidly decreasing; 5400RPM HDDs of similar size cost about $40, while faster 7200RPM models retail for $50 or more.

Bear in mind

  • If these products aren't available in your region, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service if you want to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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This Dell laptop is the best Windows alternative to the Apple MacBook Pro 16

Let’s be clear, straight off the bat; the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro is the most powerful lightweight laptop money can buy right now. There is no laptop of this size on the market that boasts 8TB of storage and 64GB of RAM. At just over 16mm in thickness and with a weight of 2kg, it truly is a technological feat.

The Macbook Pro's nearest rival, however, has to be the Dell XPS 15 9500. It doesn’t quite carry the same cachet as Apple’s newest machine, but still has a few cards up its sleeve if you're looking for a Windows 10 PC that's at least in the same ballpark.

Note, this particular XPS 15 model is not currently on offer and is only available in the US. For some reason, Dell thinks the rest of the world doesn't deserve a thin-and-light laptop with 64GB of memory.

Gunning for the MacBook Pro

The top-of-the-range XPS 15 model actually shares a lot of similarities with the MacBook; it has a similar CPU (8-core, 16MB cache and a 45W TDP), 64GB of memory and 2TB PCIe SSD.

It features a smaller 15.6-inch touchscreen display, but it's an OLED model with a 4K resolution, making it sharper than Apple’s. It's powered by an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 GPU with 4GB of video memory, which is more than a match for the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M in the MacBook Pro.

As you might expect, Dell has the upper hand when it comes to pricing. At $3,049.99 (around £2,500/AU$4,500) with Windows 10 Home instead of Pro, the XPS 15 undercuts Apple’s equivalent by a staggering 27%, with the equivalent MacBook Pro 16 coming in at $4,199 (roughly £3,370/AU$6,200).

The comparison becomes even less favorable for Apple when you factor in warranty and services. AppleCare+ for the new MacBook Pro costs $379 and includes a three-year warranty, two incidents of accidental damage and 24/7 priority access to Apple experts. Dell, on the other hand, provides 4-year ProSupport Plus (with next business day onsite service and accidental damage service) for $360, which is both better value and cheaper.

The XPS 15 might not garner the same attention and acclaim as Apple's machine, but its many qualities and cheaper price tag make it a serious contender.

Bear in mind

  • If this XPS 15 model is not available in your territory, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service if you want to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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This is the cheapest 17-inch touchscreen laptop around – and it’s surprisingly well kitted out

Touchscreens are probably better suited to large laptops than small when it comes to collaborative working, so we went in search of the best available option.

The HP Laptop-17Z is the most affordable 17-inch touchscreen laptop on the market, available at the time of writing for only $569.99 (roughly £465/AU$855).

Aimed primarily at SMBs, the laptop comes with an AMD A9-9425 dual-core processor with Radeon R5 graphics, 8GB of RAM and a 17.3-inch SVA touchscreen display with a resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels.

It also features a 1TB SATA hard disk drive, 41Whr battery, dedicated numeric keypad, DVD writer (remember these), an HP TrueVision HD camera with digital microphone and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

However, an even better HP Laptop-17Z deal can be had for $598.99 (roughly £485/AU$900). It features an AMD Athlon Silver 3050U with Radeon graphics, a processor that’s more than twice as fast as the A9-9425, 8GB of RAM, a 2TB hard disk drive - plus a more business-oriented Jet Black color scheme.

An Athlon-based laptop opens a few additional doors beyond simple web surfing and content streaming. Despite its business focus, the laptop can also be used for gaming at HD+ resolutions for much longer periods; HP claims the device can last for up to eight hours.

Other features include a Gigabit Ethernet LAN, card reader, three USB ports and an HDMI connector. For an additional $96, you can also upgrade to a 3-year warranty that includes accidental damage, which will also net you a full rebate if it can't be repaired.

Bear in mind

  • If this product isn't available in your region, you may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service if you want to take advantage of the deal.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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Samsung aims to kill server CPUs with this special new SSD

At this week's OCP Global Summit, Samsung disclosed more information about a new type of solid state drive (SSD) it's working on - one that only makes sense in a data center context, for now.

When it comes to flash memory, the most common configuration in data centers worldwide is JBOF (or just a bunch of flash), which uses NVMe SSD storage attached to PCIe switches, processors and NICs (network interface cards). There are two rather significant issues with this system, to do with the lack of scalability of the storage controller and limited bandwidth; a classic case of too many middlemen. 

EBOF - or Ethernet SSD Bunch of Flash, as Samsung puts it - aims to solve this issue by putting the Ethernet ports (two of them for redundancy) on the SSDs themselves.

These are not your usual Ethernet ports, however, as each supports a staggering 25Gbps - about 25x what most Gigabit interfaces can achieve. Unsurprisingly, that's only available in a standard SSD (i.e. 2.5-inch), rather than the smaller M2 form factors.

Samsung claims the E-SSD drive will achieve PCIe Gen4x4 performance, or about 1500K IOPS at 4K random read. What’s even more spectacular, though, is that the performance of the drive scales in an almost linear fashion.

Based on the chart provided by the company, 24 NVMe drives will be about 7.5x faster than a single NVMe drive, whereas the same number of NVMe-oF SSDs will be about 23x faster than a single drive. 

Removing the CPU, networking and other bottlenecks means lower latency, higher bandwidth, lower cost, better performance and potentially big TCO savings. Great news for data center operators, but not so great for everyone else in hardware procurement.

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Little-known Japanese CPU threatens to make Nvidia, Intel and AMD obsolete in HPC market

Sandia National Laboratories has announced it will be the first Department of Energy labs in the US to deploy the Fujitsu A64FX, the only ARM-based processor designed from ground up for HPC projects and supercomputers.

Fujitsu is known primarily for its business laptops, tablets and desktops, but is a behemoth in its own right when it comes to processors, having been in the business for well over half a century.

Launched in 2019, the CPU has 48 cores, a theoretical peak performance of 3.38 TFLOPS, runs at 2.2GHz and has 32GB HBM2 memory on the die itself.

What makes it ideal for the HPC market is that it provides far higher bandwidth performance between memory and the CPU - up to 1TBps. Moving data to and from the CPU is the biggest obstacle by far to what researchers refer to as exascale computing.

What makes the A64FX even more exciting is that Fujitsu wants the technology to trickle down to hyperscalers and major cloud computing giants so that the masses can benefit too.

Given it is based on ARM architecture, it can (and has) run Linux distributions out of the box and even Microsoft Windows.

It is considered a general purpose CPU, but surpasses even GPUs from Nvidia and AMD on the all-important metric of performance per watt. Indeed, a 768-CPU prototype sits on top of the Green500 list - the leaderboard for supercomputers that deliver the most power per watt.

The A64FX was designed expressly to power the successor of Japan’s main supercomputer, the K, which was decommissioned back in August 2019. 

Its replacement - the Fugaku - is expected to be 100 times faster when it launches later this year, will run on a Linux distribution called McKernel and will reach a staggering 400 petaflops. The aim is for it to be the first supercomputer to hit one exaflop when fully deployed with half a million processors buzzing.

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This rugged smartphone has a massive 10,000mAh battery and it’s on sale right now

The presence of a large battery in a modern smartphone often means you'll have to compromise on other features; but not so with the Oukitel WP6. You've probably never heard of the brand, but we reviewed one of its rugged smartphones back in 2018 (the WP2) if you want to get a feel for the devices.

The WP6 is available in both orange and black for $213.59 (£243.99/AU$443.78) at AliExpress. Despite its entry-level status, it sports some rather high-end features, such as 6GB of RAM and 128GB onboard storage.

It also boasts a 6.3-inch display with a 1080 x 2340 pixel resolution, which is higher than most laptops.

Another notable feature is its massive 10,000mAh battery - one of the largest we’ve seen in a rugged smartphone. With an 18W charger, you should be able to fill it up fairly quickly, and you can also use the WP6 as an emergency portable battery charger if you get caught short.

It also features an eight-core Mediatek Helio P70 CPU, 48-megapixel Sony camera sensor, IP68 rating, 16-megapixel front facing camera and Android 9.0.

It's worth noting, the device doesn't support wireless charging nor NFC, and we wouldn’t count on Oukitel to provide more than one Android update. 

If you're after an alternative, the Blackview BV9100 has an even bigger battery (13000mAh) and NFC, but costs more and has a significantly inferior set of components (slower CPU, a third less memory, half the storage, and a lesser camera sensor).

Bear in mind

  • If this product comes from mainland China, it will take at least a month to reach either the US or UK (and potentially more). You may be levied a tax either directly or through the courier.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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This is the world’s cheapest Core i5 PC, but we’re not sure it’s a good deal

Necessity, they say, is the mother of all invention. Perhaps the need to get rid of excess stock was the reason Chuwi, one of the most innovative Chinese PC vendors out there, has decided to merge the designs of two of its existing mini PCs (the GT Box and the HiGame) into a brand new workstation, the Corebox.

At the heart of this new product is an Intel Core i5-5257U from 2016, which has been used as a base for a number of products, along with the Core i3-5005U (also a Broadwell-based processor).

It's just like Intel’s current 14nm processors, but doesn’t feature the sort of refinements found in 10th generation Core CPUs.

At $349 (roughly £285/AU$530), the Corebox will be the most affordable Core i5 CPU on the market when it launches on Amazon later this month. The device will come with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, two HDMI ports, four USB 3.0 connectors, a Gigabit Ethernet port and two audio connectors.

All this is crammed into an all-metal chassis that’s just under 2000cc, providing just enough space for an extra hard disk drive and cooling. Add in handles on either side and you've got a rather attractive and versatile workstation.

However, while the Chuwi Corebox looks an exciting machine, there could well be better alternatives on the market at a similar price point.

Dell’s Inspiron 3471, for example, is an equally small PC priced at $330. It might only have 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk drive, but its Core i3-9100 CPU is twice as fast as the Core i5-5257U. It also comes with a mouse, DVD writer, keyboard, card reader and even a VGA port.

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