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Ainol Mini PC |
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Introduction, Package, Details
Today I'm taking a look at a little mini-PC from Ainol, courtesy of online gadget retailer GearBest. You might remember Ainol from my earlier review of an ALDI tablet which I compared with an Ainol unit. In that review I made a few jokes about their unfortunate name. My opinion of their marketing department remains unchanged.
But this gadget is quite different to the earlier Android tablet. For a start it doesn't have a screen or keyboard, being a completely headless little mini-PC. It also doesn't run Android, but instead ships with a fully-activated copy of "Windows 8.1 with Bing" on it. It's powered by a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F processor at up to 1.8GHz with 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD onboard. It's a little smaller than a paperback book, supports Wifi and Bluetooth and apparently doubles as a 7000mAH power bank for charging your phone via USB. It's also only $128 AUD including shipping. So let's check it out.
 
It arrived in a quite nice dark grey box, with thick walls and a very solid feel - from memory the earlier tablet was similarly well-packed. Inside the box you get the unit itself, a warranty card, a manual entirely in Chinese, a USB expansion cable, an HDMI cable and an external power pack.
 
The unit itself has a smooth metal casing with two rounded sides and no obvious ways to open it. On one squared-off end it has two USB 2.0 ports, the power button and power LED. On the other end there's the power port, headphone jack, HDMI port, USB expansion port and an SD card slot. On an earlier revision of this unit the ports were USB 3.0, but due to a "QC issue" they were revised down to 2.0 which is a little disappointing but probably not critical. There's no feet on any surface of the unit or any stand provided, and I can't help but worry about scratches on the anodised surface. In fact there were some scratches on the plastic end-plates already which isn't too encouraging.
 
The power pack provided with the review unit had an American plug but according to the Q&A on GearBest's product page they will provide an Australian adapter with orders shipping here. Anyway, the power pack is 110-240v so a cheap physical converter was all I needed to get it plugged in. Speaking of plugs, it's worth pointing out that this unit has no wired Ethernet connector - only Wifi.
On the next page we'll set it up and take a look at some benchmarks and general usage.
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