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Ayaneo, which is mostly known for making handheld gaming consoles<\/a>, just fully revealed the new Retro Mini PC AM01<\/a> after teasing it a few weeks ago. It says it plans to ship the AM01 before the end of the year \u2014\u00a0and I\u2019d be lying if I said I\u2019m not tempted to get one. The AM01 won\u2019t win any benchmarking contests, but it\u2019ll almost certainly be the best-looking computer you own. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let\u2019s just state the obvious here: Ayaneo says<\/a> it\u2019s \u201cpaying homage\u201d to the Macintosh, which is a kind way of saying, \u201cWe copied the thing pretty much exactly.\u201d This device is the spitting image of Apple\u2019s \u201980s-era computer, right down to the floppy drive and the rainbow sticker. (Ayaneo made the sticker a flag shape instead of an apple, though \u2014 there\u2019s paying homage and then there\u2019s paying lawyer fees, you know what I mean?) It\u2019s smaller than a Macintosh, but it\u2019s beige and rectangular and even has a black space where the old screen would have gone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Inside, though, the AM01 is something very different. For an early bird price of $149 ($199 for everyone else), you get an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U \u2014\u00a0a nearly five-year-old chip \u2014\u00a0along with eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage. All the way at the top of the line, for $379 early or $459 retail, you get an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor \u2014\u00a0itself almost three years old! \u2014\u00a0plus 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. All the memory is expandable, too. It\u2019s pretty cheap no matter how you slice it, but you can get a much more powerful mini PC for the price. It\u2019s just that most of those mini PCs are ugly black boxes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What the AM01 really has going for it is extensibility. This thing has five USB ports (one USB-C and four USB-A), plus HDMI, DisplayPort, a headphone jack, ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. You can get it with Windows 11 or buy the \u201cbare\u201d version and install Linux or SteamOS or whatever else your heart desires. Some people will buy the AM01 and use it as a computer; most will set it up as a retro gaming console, a Plex server, and more. Ayaneo\u2019s even offering the AM01 in a bundle with NuPhy\u2019s mechanical keyboards<\/a> and 8BitDo\u2019s wireless controllers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ayaneo is launching the AM01 on Indiegogo, which always necessitates caveats about which companies to trust with your money, but it does have a history of delivering and a quickly improving track record<\/a> of device quality. It also seems to be invested in the mini PC space \u2014 the company has also been teasing the AM02<\/a>, which borrows the original NES design for an even more gamer-y vibe. No word yet on when that\u2019s coming out, though.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n