Mini laptops have been a thing for the last 2 or 3 years thanks to companies such as GPD and OneNote. However, most of the models rely on fairly powerful and expensive low-power processors from Comet Lake and Amber Lake families, and that may be fine if you want a versatile, ultra-portable machine as your main driver, but not everybody wants to spend $700-$1,000 on this type of device.
In the recent past, we’ve seen a couple of cheaper Intel Cherry Trail mini laptops such as Pretech F700mi and Peakago. But the former does not appear to be for sale, and the latter was offered for $269 and the company decided to upgrade it to an Intel Celeron N4100 processor. Peakago is still not available, as Indiegogo backers are still waiting for their perks. So if you’re looking for an entry-level mini laptop NANOTE appears to be a better option as the 7″ mini laptop will sell for 19,800 yen, or about $185, once it launches on May 1st.
- SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad-core Cherry Trail processor @ up to 1.92GHz with Intel HD graphics
- System Memory – 4GB RAM
- Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot up to 256GB
- Display – 7″ touchscreen display with 1920×1200 resolution, 360-degree hinge
- Video Output – micro HDMI port
- Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, digital audio via HDMI port
- Camera – 0.3MP webcam
- Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.0
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB Type-C port for power, and data
- User Input – QWERTY (Japanese) keyboard and optical touch sensor
- Battery – 5,000 mAh battery.
- Dimensions – 181 x 113.6 x 19.6mm
- Weight – 520 grams
NANOTE will ship with Windows 10 Home pre-installed.
The (PDF) press release indicates the company behind the device is called PPIH (Pan Pacific International Holdings) which will sell it from its Don Quijote-affiliated stores, so it’s unclear if it will ever be sold out of Japan.
But wait a minute… The specs look eerily similar to the ones for Pretech 700mi laptop we mentioned in the introduction, and even the dimensions are the same to the tenth of millimeters. So it looks like Pretech found a customer in PPIH. So while it’s quite likely NANOTE won’t be sold outside of Japan, different brands may sell the mini laptop under a different model name in other countries.
Via Liliputing and PCWatch
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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At this price I’d possibly buy one, and I’d get over the problematic keyboard with its adjacent keys, and the painfully glossy screen.
FWIW: Donki is one of those stack junk high, sell it cheap type of places. Where you see off brand TVs etc stacked up right next to stacks of toilet rolls and crates of cheap beer. Maybe a bit like Aldi in the EU. Anyhow.. seeing Chinese products with a Japanese brand slapped on it isn’t rare there. Sort of an interesting item for them to decide to import though as their customers aren’t generally people that are into technology past their smart phone. Maybe this is the next stage of those cheap Chinese Android tablets that were everywhere and… Read more »
About 2012 there was Mini laptops with a WM8650 chipset, slow and naff version Android on them. Shame the S905X3/4 has no low power battery version. Yes there is the $200 RK3399 Pine laptop.
> there is the $200 RK3399 Pine laptop Everybody knows this so why babbling about and mentioning apples and oranges at all? The Pinebook Pro is a laptop for open source enthusiasts or especially developers wanting to run *BSD or Linux on something mobile that is not x86 and being fully aware of the various hardware limitations. The thing mentioned above is some pile of e-waste running Windows with a keyboard you can’t really use, a glossy screen you can’t look at and a hinge that will most probably break shortly after the thing is out of warranty. It’s made… Read more »
Yes but at the size of the Pine laptop I’d rather get a real one with a decent keyboard and touchpad, like a second-hand x250 or x260. The touchpad on Pine has no button and forces you to use an external mouse, and the keyboard misses page up/down making it a real pain to use browsers and read code. My first eeepc was in such a situation, it was a real pain, you couldn’t simply drink your coffee and read messages in parallel, nor use it to consult IC datasheets with your soldering iron in the other hand, because you… Read more »
Willy, I remember the times of eeepc, I had a kind of clone with the same specs from Acer (eMachines eM350) as a mobile computing solution. It was a real pain to use and such an horrible experience.
And it was such a relief when I bought a couple of years later a Thinkpad X230 (that I still use nowadays) .
Do this WITHOUT the shiny screen and I’d buy a bunch of them. Better yet do an 11.6″ anti-glare screen in lower resolution and an M.2 SSD slot and they would sell a million overnight (if they can produce them). There is no reason for an HD screen with a shiny glare inducing surface and no need for touch.
I’d still view this as a niche product. The Atom X5 processor is really slow so it’s mostly suitable for single, simple tasks. Even browsing the web will feel fairly slow on that thing.
Remove the keyboard and CPU parts, and give me this as a touch display driven by HDMI and USB for under $100.
I purchased yesterday playing with it. Windows 10 1809 works good but doesn’t work 190x or upper though windows says ‘it is really older need to update’. and I cannot update windows 10 pro says 0x80041014 activation failed that OS has been broken.. My friend has tried Ubuntu 20.04 there are screen issues like GPD but almost works fine without touch panel.
If you try one I will help ( I was there at Donki but almost all were sold out yesterday…)
I bought one. The build quality is a bit funky. Like the heat pad they used to couple the chassis to the heat spreader causing the case not to close properly and the case being a bit bent.
I put debian on it. Seems like it’ll be a useful little serial terminal etc.