The Apple Vision Pro is officially two weeks old, and the apps are starting to roll in. TikTok was conspicuously absent on launch day, but now our long national nightmare has come to an end. The Vision Pro has a native TikTok app.
This isn’t just the iPad app with a new coat of paint. There are some neat features here that take advantage of Apple’s well-regarded and prohibitively-expensive headset. The navigation bar and like button are moved entirely off-screen, giving users an uninterrupted view of video content.
TikTok
This extends to comment sections and creator profiles, as they both now appear as expansions alongside the feed, which TikTok says provides “a more immersive content viewing experience.” To that end, TikTok integrates with the headset’s immersive environments, so people can watch short-form videos on the moon or surrounded by the lush flora of Yosemite.
TikTok also works with the Vision Pro’s Shared Space feature, allowing the app to exist somewhere in your peripheral as you work on other stuff. The location of the app will remain static, so it’ll be in the same place every time you put on the headset (provided you are in the same room.)
You may notice that these features are primarily intended for content consumers, and not creators. Engadget reached out to TikTok to ask about creator-specific features and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
The app’s available for download right now, though it likely won’t be accessible for TikTok’s core userbase of 10 to 19 year olds. The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500. That’s like an entire childhood of allowances.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-now-has-a-native-tiktok-app-193214818.html?src=rss
The Apple Vision Pro is officially two weeks old, and the apps are starting to roll in. TikTok was conspicuously absent on launch day, but now our long national nightmare has come to an end. The Vision Pro has a native TikTok app.
This isn’t just the iPad app with a new coat of paint. There are some neat features here that take advantage of Apple’s well-regarded and prohibitively-expensive headset. The navigation bar and like button are moved entirely off-screen, giving users an uninterrupted view of video content.
TikTok
This extends to comment sections and creator profiles, as they both now appear as expansions alongside the feed, which TikTok says provides “a more immersive content viewing experience.” To that end, TikTok integrates with the headset’s immersive environments, so people can watch short-form videos on the moon or surrounded by the lush flora of Yosemite.
TikTok also works with the Vision Pro’s Shared Space feature, allowing the app to exist somewhere in your peripheral as you work on other stuff. The location of the app will remain static, so it’ll be in the same place every time you put on the headset (provided you are in the same room.)
You may notice that these features are primarily intended for content consumers, and not creators. Engadget reached out to TikTok to ask about creator-specific features and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
The app’s available for download right now, though it likely won’t be accessible for TikTok’s core userbase of 10 to 19 year olds. The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500. That’s like an entire childhood of allowances.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-now-has-a-native-tiktok-app-193214818.html?src=rss
I’m always a fan of beautiful holiday homes that let you soak up the sun, and take a break from your urban worries. And, a cozy holiday home that seems perfect for a nature escape is the I/O cabin by studio Erling Berg. This holiday home has access to picturesque views of the ocean in Risør, on Norway’s southern coast. It is clad in locally sourced spruce and is elevated off the ground using wooden pillars.
The I/O Cabin is subtly perched on a sloped terrain. The home consists of three volumes connected via a wooden deck, and smartly positioned to form an atrium that serves as the center of the space. This builds “inside-outside” spaces that perfectly suit the everchanging Norwegian climate. “As a summer house on the coast of Norway, the weather will change fast, often changing during the day, creating both inside and outside hours. Therefore, we wanted to create a house with easy access to its insides and outsides, with good circular and visual connection between the two elements,” said Erling Berg.
The three separate volumes are placed on the wooden deck, which floats above the property and is supported by cross-laminated timber beams. The beams also offer support to the cantilevered roof of the home. The shape and design of the roof were created to offer shade and shelter from the sun and to also allow light to stream into the central atrium. The roof provides protection from rain and extreme weather condition as well.
As you enter the I/O cabin, you are welcomed by the atrium which connects to the main living area, four bedrooms, and a shower. All the rooms are placed in a U-shape around the central space. The interiors of the home have a warm and welcoming vibe. The walls are clad in white painted horizontal wood siding, while the ceiling and the floors showcase white oiled source timber, which further enhances the natural aesthetic of the space – a design style that is commonly seen in traditional Norwegian coastal cabins.
“The materiality is both based on local, genuine materials and a traditional color palette that can be found in summer houses along the Norwegian coast from the 1950s and 60s,” said Berg. “[It is] a functional palette, merging the warmth of the wood textures with white painted panels, making the interior cool, yet warm and bright.”
On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro, which the company describes as delivering “dramatically enhanced performance” over the previous model. The company’s AI trajectory — viewed internally as increasingly critical for its future — follows the unveiling of Gemini 1.0 Ultra last week, alongside the rebranding of the Bard chatbot (to Gemini) to align with the new model’s more powerful and versatile capabilities.
In an announcement blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis try to balance assuring their audience about ethical AI safety while touting their models’ rapidly advancing capabilities. “Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core,” Pichai summarized.
The company needs to emphasize safety for AI skeptics (including one former Google CEO) and government regulators. But it also needs to stress its models’ accelerating performance for AI developers, potential customers and investors concerned the company was too slow to react to OpenAI’s breakout success with ChatGPT.
Pichai and Hassabis say Gemini 1.5 Pro delivers comparable results to Gemini 1.0 Ultra. However, Gemini 1.5 performs at that level more efficiently, with reduced computational requirements. The multimodal capabilities include processing text, images, videos, audio or code. As AI models advance, they’ll continue to offer a more versatile array of capabilities in one prompt box (another recent example was OpenAI integrating DALL-E 3 image generation into ChatGPT).
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
ALAIN JOCARD via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro can also handle up to one million tokens, or the units of data AI models can process in a single request. Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can process over 700,000 words, an hour of video, 11 hours of audio and codebases with over 30,000 lines of code. The company says it’s even “successfully tested” a version that supports up to 10 million tokens.
The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high accuracy in queries with larger token counts when it has more new data to learn. It says the model impressed in the Needle In a Haystack evaluation. In this test, developers insert a small piece of information inside a long text block to see if the AI model can pick it out. Google said Gemini 1.5 Pro could find the embedded text 99 percent of the time in data blocks as long as one million tokens.
Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason about various details from the 402-page Apollo 11 moon mission transcripts. In addition, it can analyze plot points and events from an uploaded 44-minute silent film starring Buster Keaton. “As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities,” Hassabis wrote.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 Pro with 128,000-token capabilities, the same number at which OpenAI’s (publicly announced) GPT-4 models max out. Hassabis says Google will eventually introduce new pricing tiers that support up to one million-token queries.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
Joy Malone via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro is also adept at learning new skills from information in long prompts — without additional fine-tuning (“in-context learning”). In a benchmark called Machine Translation from One Book, the model learned a grammar manual for Kalamang, a language with fewer than 200 speakers globally that it hadn’t previously been trained on. The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro learned to perform at a similar level as a human learning the same content when translating English to Kalamang.
In a piece of the announcement that will catch developers’ attention, Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform problem-solving tasks across longer code blocks. “When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works,” Hassabis wrote.
On the ethics and safety front, Google says it’s taking “the same approach to responsible deployment” it took with Gemini 1.0 models. That includes developing and applying red-teaming techniques, where a group of ethical developers essentially serve as devil’s advocate, testing for “a range of potential harms.” In addition, the company says it heavily scrutinizes areas like content safety and representational harms. The company says it continues to develop new ethical and safety tests for its AI tools.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 in early access for developers and enterprise customers. The company plans to make it more widely available eventually. Gemini 1.0 is currently available for consumers, alongside a Pro variant that costs $20 monthly.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-gemini-15-pro-is-a-new-more-efficient-ai-model-181909354.html?src=rss
On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro, which the company describes as delivering “dramatically enhanced performance” over the previous model. The company’s AI trajectory — viewed internally as increasingly critical for its future — follows the unveiling of Gemini 1.0 Ultra last week, alongside the rebranding of the Bard chatbot (to Gemini) to align with the new model’s more powerful and versatile capabilities.
In an announcement blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis try to balance assuring their audience about ethical AI safety while touting their models’ rapidly advancing capabilities. “Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core,” Pichai summarized.
The company needs to emphasize safety for AI skeptics (including one former Google CEO) and government regulators. But it also needs to stress its models’ accelerating performance for AI developers, potential customers and investors concerned the company was too slow to react to OpenAI’s breakout success with ChatGPT.
Pichai and Hassabis say Gemini 1.5 Pro delivers comparable results to Gemini 1.0 Ultra. However, Gemini 1.5 performs at that level more efficiently, with reduced computational requirements. The multimodal capabilities include processing text, images, videos, audio or code. As AI models advance, they’ll continue to offer a more versatile array of capabilities in one prompt box (another recent example was OpenAI integrating DALL-E 3 image generation into ChatGPT).
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
ALAIN JOCARD via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro can also handle up to one million tokens, or the units of data AI models can process in a single request. Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can process over 700,000 words, an hour of video, 11 hours of audio and codebases with over 30,000 lines of code. The company says it’s even “successfully tested” a version that supports up to 10 million tokens.
The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high accuracy in queries with larger token counts when it has more new data to learn. It says the model impressed in the Needle In a Haystack evaluation. In this test, developers insert a small piece of information inside a long text block to see if the AI model can pick it out. Google said Gemini 1.5 Pro could find the embedded text 99 percent of the time in data blocks as long as one million tokens.
Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason about various details from the 402-page Apollo 11 moon mission transcripts. In addition, it can analyze plot points and events from an uploaded 44-minute silent film starring Buster Keaton. “As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities,” Hassabis wrote.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 Pro with 128,000-token capabilities, the same number at which OpenAI’s (publicly announced) GPT-4 models max out. Hassabis says Google will eventually introduce new pricing tiers that support up to one million-token queries.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
Joy Malone via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro is also adept at learning new skills from information in long prompts — without additional fine-tuning (“in-context learning”). In a benchmark called Machine Translation from One Book, the model learned a grammar manual for Kalamang, a language with fewer than 200 speakers globally that it hadn’t previously been trained on. The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro learned to perform at a similar level as a human learning the same content when translating English to Kalamang.
In a piece of the announcement that will catch developers’ attention, Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform problem-solving tasks across longer code blocks. “When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works,” Hassabis wrote.
On the ethics and safety front, Google says it’s taking “the same approach to responsible deployment” it took with Gemini 1.0 models. That includes developing and applying red-teaming techniques, where a group of ethical developers essentially serve as devil’s advocate, testing for “a range of potential harms.” In addition, the company says it heavily scrutinizes areas like content safety and representational harms. The company says it continues to develop new ethical and safety tests for its AI tools.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 in early access for developers and enterprise customers. The company plans to make it more widely available eventually. Gemini 1.0 is currently available for consumers, alongside a Pro variant that costs $20 monthly.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-gemini-15-pro-is-a-new-more-efficient-ai-model-181909354.html?src=rss
YouTube just released a new feature that lets users remix music videos and turn them into Shorts. This allows you to adjust various parameters from a full-length music video to create something wholly unique. Does this sound like TikTok? It definitely sounds like TikTok.
Here’s how it works. Just tap “remix” on a music video. You’ll be presented with four options: Sound, Green Screen, Cut and Collab. You can only pick one, so choose wisely. The Sound tool does what you think. It strips the audio and lets you use it in your own YouTube Short. This is the kind of thing that’s hugely popular on TikTok, with many users lip-syncing to various audio clips. This Sound tool is available to any music video and most songs that were automatically uploaded to the platform.
Green Screen takes things a step further. It turns the video into a background, which you can then dance in front of or whatever. The Cut tool just clips out a five second portion of the video that you can add to any Short. Finally, Collab creates a side-by-side video that places your Short next to the original content. YouTube says this is the perfect option when “you and your friends” want to show off choreography alongside the original artist.
The feature’s already available on the mobile app, though it may not have rolled out to every user yet. If you want to check, just open the app, click on a music video and look for that “remix” option. It’s worth noting that many of these features were already available to Shorts creators, but not in one handy tab.
YouTube/Lawrence Bonk
YouTube Shorts was already a TikTok-alike when it released back in 2021, but these features make it even more, uh, TikTok-ier. With that in mind, YouTube picked the perfect time to officially launch the toolset. Universal Music has pulled its roster from TikTok after a breakdown in financial negotiations. UMG artists include Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish and many more.
This has forced TikTok creators to swap out music tracks, as anything sourced from Universal is automatically muted. The record label has accused TikTok of wanting to pay a “fraction” of rates offered by other social media sites. YouTube’s Remix tool has access to Universal’s entire roster.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-shorts-now-lets-you-chop-up-and-remix-music-videos-180655627.html?src=rss
YouTube just released a new feature that lets users remix music videos and turn them into Shorts. This allows you to adjust various parameters from a full-length music video to create something wholly unique. Does this sound like TikTok? It definitely sounds like TikTok.
Here’s how it works. Just tap “remix” on a music video. You’ll be presented with four options: Sound, Green Screen, Cut and Collab. You can only pick one, so choose wisely. The Sound tool does what you think. It strips the audio and lets you use it in your own YouTube Short. This is the kind of thing that’s hugely popular on TikTok, with many users lip-syncing to various audio clips. This Sound tool is available to any music video and most songs that were automatically uploaded to the platform.
Green Screen takes things a step further. It turns the video into a background, which you can then dance in front of or whatever. The Cut tool just clips out a five second portion of the video that you can add to any Short. Finally, Collab creates a side-by-side video that places your Short next to the original content. YouTube says this is the perfect option when “you and your friends” want to show off choreography alongside the original artist.
The feature’s already available on the mobile app, though it may not have rolled out to every user yet. If you want to check, just open the app, click on a music video and look for that “remix” option. It’s worth noting that many of these features were already available to Shorts creators, but not in one handy tab.
YouTube/Lawrence Bonk
YouTube Shorts was already a TikTok-alike when it released back in 2021, but these features make it even more, uh, TikTok-ier. With that in mind, YouTube picked the perfect time to officially launch the toolset. Universal Music has pulled its roster from TikTok after a breakdown in financial negotiations. UMG artists include Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish and many more.
This has forced TikTok creators to swap out music tracks, as anything sourced from Universal is automatically muted. The record label has accused TikTok of wanting to pay a “fraction” of rates offered by other social media sites. YouTube’s Remix tool has access to Universal’s entire roster.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-shorts-now-lets-you-chop-up-and-remix-music-videos-180655627.html?src=rss
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has posted his own review of Apple's Vision Pro on Instagram, coming inexplicably for our jobs here at Engadget.
In a video shot direct from a Meta Quest 3 (oh of course), Zuckerberg didn't mince his words. He said he expected the Quest to be the better value for most people, because it's "like seven times less expensive" than the $3,500 Vision Pro. Eventually, he concluded that the Quest 3 was “the better product, period."
Zuckerberg thinks the Quest is "a lot more comfortable," noting that the headset’s field of view is wider and has a brighter display than the Vision Pro. He added that the Quest had a bigger library: Meta’s Quest, unlike the Vision Pro, has access to the YouTube and Xbox apps. And that’s definitely a fair criticism.
All in all, two out of five Zucks. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Kimi gave viewers access to pirated shows and movies.
An app called Kimi curiously outranked well-known streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video in the App Store's list of top free entertainment apps this week. Now, Apple has pulled it, probably because it gave users access to pirated movies.
Kimi was disguised as an app that tests your eyesight by making you play ‘spot the difference’ between similar photos. In reality, it was packed with bootlegged shows and movies. If anyone remembers the heyday of pirated movies on slow internet connections, you got to relive the variable video quality of yesteryear.
Walmart might buy budget TV maker Vizio. The rumored $2 billion deal would make Vizio a house brand for the retailer and would allow the company to compete directly in the affordable smart TV space currently dominated by Amazon and Roku. Vizio has been eyeing up buyers for years. It was nearly purchased by Chinese media conglomerate LeEco back in 2016, which was another $2 billion deal, but that fell through. If the purchase happens, Walmart would also have access to all of that sweet, sweet customer data collected by Vizio’s smart TV platform.
Since 1979, Arctic ice has shrunk by 1.35 million square miles and Antarctic ice is now at the lowest level since records began. Frozen Arctic, a report produced by the universities of the Arctic and Lapland alongside UN-backed thinktank GRID-Arendal, collates sixty geoengineering projects that could slow down or reverse polar melting. A team of researchers examined every idea, from those already in place to the ones at the fringes of science. Daniel Cooper breaks down some of the possible solutions.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-the-quest-3-is-much-better-than-the-vision-pro-121503056.html?src=rss
The mini PC is misunderstood. Easily dismissed as underpowered, over-priced or just plain ugly; we intuit that a computer with a tiny footprint has to mean a compromise. Ayaneo, best known for its Windows gaming handhelds, has branched out into tiny desktops with retro-inspired designs. Thankfully Ayaneo’s AM01 and AM02 mini PCs have more to offer, but their initial draw over rivals, I won’t lie, is nostalgic appeal.
Sadly, I’m old enough to remember using the original Macintosh that inspired the AM01 and if Nintendo ever reimagined a real NES, I hope it looks like the AM02. Both PCs come in various specifications, but to save typing out the numerous configurations the AM01 starts at $200 and comes in low-to-modest specifications, good for retro gaming and general office tasks. The AM02 is priced between $440 and $630, and all variants come with an AMD 7840HS APU, better suited for PC gaming and heavier tasks like video editing or even music production.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
As someone that plays a lot of retro games and doesn’t mind playing PC games on low or medium settings, the AM02 is fast becoming my primary gaming system. Partly because the AM02 strikes a good balance between retro and contemporary design so it fits well in my adult living room. It’s also really well built. I’m not so sure about the four-inch touch screen (more on this later) but the overall design blends in nicely with a contemporary decor without calling too much attention to itself.
The AM02 I’ve been testing is fully loaded with 32GB or RAM and 1TB of storage, but there are enough ports here that even with a lower-spec model you can add more storage or even an eGPU (thanks to a USB 4.0 port) later down the line. There are also two RJ45 ports, one of which is 2.5Gbps, future-proofing the AM02 somewhat and making it well-suited to pulling media from networked storage. This model is also powered by USB-C which makes it more “portable” than its Mac-inspired sibling that uses a laptop-style power brick. Theoretically you could power a display from the AM02’s USB 4 port and have a PC that can easily be moved around. Yes, they invented laptops for exactly this but a perk of mini PCs is that they aren’t a pain to relocate.
I’ve suggested that the AM02 works great in a living room, and it does, but the placement of the built-in display suggests this was designed to live on a desk. When Ayaneo announced these mini PCs, marketing shots showed them in horizontal and vertical configurations. Sadly, neither model makes sense in a vertical orientation. Not least because both have ports on the side that would be facing the desk. Worse, the AM02 has a delightful NES-inspired front flap covering the USB and 3.5mm ports. Press the red button and it satisfyingly clicks open, but that would be the side facing down in a vertical set-up. Not to mention all the cables would then be coming out of the top.
It’s kind of a bummer as I was hoping the built-in display could be visible from across the room, but you can only see it if you’re near enough to peer over from above. What’s more, at least right now, the display is more of a novelty. By default it shows performance statistics such as FPS, CPU usage / temperature and fan speed which is useful for some folk. You can even change the TDP/power draw right from the display, but honestly, given that this thing is plugged in I’ve just been leaving it on the max 45W setting.
Swipe left on the screen, and the view changes to a date and time widget. Swipe one more time and there’s a virtual volume control along with the option to turn the display off. Fun fact, right now there’s no option to turn it back on again. I restarted the PC via Windows and it still didn’t come back to life. I tried once more via the physical power button and that worked, there’s a neater solution coming in the final software. Relatedly, Ayaneo is hoping users will create their own widgets for this display, so there’s definitely potential here. I’m sure it won’t be long before Doom is running entirely on the linux that runs that display.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
If you do want to use this just for gaming, then you’ll have to decide whether you want to use the company’s own launcher or not. On Ayaneo’s handhelds it’s useful for changing power settings on the fly and other tasks that would otherwise be a pain for a handheld. On a PC like this, the launcher is adequate, but you might want to find your own or just ditch it for the most part. I set the AM02 up to load right into Launchbox/Big Box which handles all my retro/Steam/Epic games just fine and gives a much more console-like experience. But that’s the joy of Windows for gaming I guess, you can do what you want with it.
Despite their diminutive size, mini PCs aren’t always cheap. Like their full-size counterparts, prices range wildly depending on their performance, storage and components. Ayaneo’s handhelds almost universally fell into the “premium” pricing category with nearly all its Windows models costing more than the Steam Deck they try to rival. The two mini PCs break that trend with both models offering, at worst, fair market prices and, at best, beating the competition.
Most direct rivals to the AM02 don’t have a built-in screen (though some do) or have quite as good a selection of inputs and outputs. That’s to say, overall the AM01 and AM02 are reasonably priced for their spec and even more so if you can scoop them up during the early-bird window, which at time of publication is still active for the AM02.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
There’s a small elephant in the room though. That is, if you’re looking for a true gaming PC, there are likely better ways to spend your money. The lowest spec AM02 costs more than a PS5. Or about the same as an LCD Steam Deck with a dock. Then there’s the Mac Mini which starts at $600 (with less memory and RAM but that M2 processor is no joke). So if gaming is your sole goal, then there’s a slim niche that the AM02 serves best — those looking for a mix of retro and PC titles that also want the flexibility of other media tasks (an easier way to watch Netflix with a VPN, for example) in a package that only draws the right kind of attention. Or maybe you just love it for its design and the capabilities work for you.
Mostly, it’s a promising new direction for a company that made a name for itself trying to take the Steam Deck head on. It might not have been truly successful in that specific mission, but it earned itself plenty of fans along the way for its high-spec handhelds that help re-establish portable gaming as an exciting category. As Ayaneo enters the more general PC market, it might well have found a space where it can excel against a very different type of competition.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ayaneo-nes-inspired-am02-mini-pc-review-170029368.html?src=rss
The mini PC is misunderstood. Easily dismissed as underpowered, over-priced or just plain ugly; we intuit that a computer with a tiny footprint has to mean a compromise. Ayaneo, best known for its Windows gaming handhelds, has branched out into tiny desktops with retro-inspired designs. Thankfully Ayaneo’s AM01 and AM02 mini PCs have more to offer, but their initial draw over rivals, I won’t lie, is nostalgic appeal.
Sadly, I’m old enough to remember using the original Macintosh that inspired the AM01 and if Nintendo ever reimagined a real NES, I hope it looks like the AM02. Both PCs come in various specifications, but to save typing out the numerous configurations the AM01 starts at $200 and comes in low-to-modest specifications, good for retro gaming and general office tasks. The AM02 is priced between $440 and $630, and all variants come with an AMD 7840HS APU, better suited for PC gaming and heavier tasks like video editing or even music production.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
As someone that plays a lot of retro games and doesn’t mind playing PC games on low or medium settings, the AM02 is fast becoming my primary gaming system. Partly because the AM02 strikes a good balance between retro and contemporary design so it fits well in my adult living room. It’s also really well built. I’m not so sure about the four-inch touch screen (more on this later) but the overall design blends in nicely with a contemporary decor without calling too much attention to itself.
The AM02 I’ve been testing is fully loaded with 32GB or RAM and 1TB of storage, but there are enough ports here that even with a lower-spec model you can add more storage or even an eGPU (thanks to a USB 4.0 port) later down the line. There are also two RJ45 ports, one of which is 2.5Gbps, future-proofing the AM02 somewhat and making it well-suited to pulling media from networked storage. This model is also powered by USB-C which makes it more “portable” than its Mac-inspired sibling that uses a laptop-style power brick. Theoretically you could power a display from the AM02’s USB 4 port and have a PC that can easily be moved around. Yes, they invented laptops for exactly this but a perk of mini PCs is that they aren’t a pain to relocate.
I’ve suggested that the AM02 works great in a living room, and it does, but the placement of the built-in display suggests this was designed to live on a desk. When Ayaneo announced these mini PCs, marketing shots showed them in horizontal and vertical configurations. Sadly, neither model makes sense in a vertical orientation. Not least because both have ports on the side that would be facing the desk. Worse, the AM02 has a delightful NES-inspired front flap covering the USB and 3.5mm ports. Press the red button and it satisfyingly clicks open, but that would be the side facing down in a vertical set-up. Not to mention all the cables would then be coming out of the top.
It’s kind of a bummer as I was hoping the built-in display could be visible from across the room, but you can only see it if you’re near enough to peer over from above. What’s more, at least right now, the display is more of a novelty. By default it shows performance statistics such as FPS, CPU usage / temperature and fan speed which is useful for some folk. You can even change the TDP/power draw right from the display, but honestly, given that this thing is plugged in I’ve just been leaving it on the max 45W setting.
Swipe left on the screen, and the view changes to a date and time widget. Swipe one more time and there’s a virtual volume control along with the option to turn the display off. Fun fact, right now there’s no option to turn it back on again. I restarted the PC via Windows and it still didn’t come back to life. I tried once more via the physical power button and that worked, there’s a neater solution coming in the final software. Relatedly, Ayaneo is hoping users will create their own widgets for this display, so there’s definitely potential here. I’m sure it won’t be long before Doom is running entirely on the linux that runs that display.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
If you do want to use this just for gaming, then you’ll have to decide whether you want to use the company’s own launcher or not. On Ayaneo’s handhelds it’s useful for changing power settings on the fly and other tasks that would otherwise be a pain for a handheld. On a PC like this, the launcher is adequate, but you might want to find your own or just ditch it for the most part. I set the AM02 up to load right into Launchbox/Big Box which handles all my retro/Steam/Epic games just fine and gives a much more console-like experience. But that’s the joy of Windows for gaming I guess, you can do what you want with it.
Despite their diminutive size, mini PCs aren’t always cheap. Like their full-size counterparts, prices range wildly depending on their performance, storage and components. Ayaneo’s handhelds almost universally fell into the “premium” pricing category with nearly all its Windows models costing more than the Steam Deck they try to rival. The two mini PCs break that trend with both models offering, at worst, fair market prices and, at best, beating the competition.
Most direct rivals to the AM02 don’t have a built-in screen (though some do) or have quite as good a selection of inputs and outputs. That’s to say, overall the AM01 and AM02 are reasonably priced for their spec and even more so if you can scoop them up during the early-bird window, which at time of publication is still active for the AM02.
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
There’s a small elephant in the room though. That is, if you’re looking for a true gaming PC, there are likely better ways to spend your money. The lowest spec AM02 costs more than a PS5. Or about the same as an LCD Steam Deck with a dock. Then there’s the Mac Mini which starts at $600 (with less memory and RAM but that M2 processor is no joke). So if gaming is your sole goal, then there’s a slim niche that the AM02 serves best — those looking for a mix of retro and PC titles that also want the flexibility of other media tasks (an easier way to watch Netflix with a VPN, for example) in a package that only draws the right kind of attention. Or maybe you just love it for its design and the capabilities work for you.
Mostly, it’s a promising new direction for a company that made a name for itself trying to take the Steam Deck head on. It might not have been truly successful in that specific mission, but it earned itself plenty of fans along the way for its high-spec handhelds that help re-establish portable gaming as an exciting category. As Ayaneo enters the more general PC market, it might well have found a space where it can excel against a very different type of competition.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ayaneo-nes-inspired-am02-mini-pc-review-170029368.html?src=rss
