Many of us have long since ditched bulky desktop computers for more portable laptops. But in the era of hot-desking, working from home and remote learning, we’re likely to be plugging those laptops into external screens and keyboards rather than using the built-in ones. Which is why the current climate shows how useful tiny barebones PCs can be as an alternative.
Most units, like Intel’s NUC line or Lenovo’s ThinkCentre, are essentially cubes or pucks crammed full of laptop components, minus the screen and keyboard. They’re inexpensive and, assuming your power needs are not too high, offer a lot of flexibility for work, school and play.
The Pantera Pico shows how useful a tiny PC can be.
For a few weeks I’ve been testing out the Pantera Pico PC, from Hong Kong start-up XDO. It’s currently on Kickstarter so the usual warnings apply — backing something on crowdfunding websites comes with far fewer guarantees than getting a product retail — but in my testing it’s one of the most capable tiny computers for its price of around $200.
The first thing that impressed me about the Pantera Pico is that it’s very small and cute, but also less compromised than a lot of the competition when it comes to ease of use. There are three USB 3.0 ports as well as one slower USB 2.0, a microSD card slot for expanding storage, a USB-C for power, combined audio and microphone jack and a full 4K-capable HDMI.
The setup means you can easily get by without needing a string of dongles or adapters, and you could even power it on the go if you took a portable battery that can do 12V.
Inside it’s also markedly expansive for a little guy. There’s a quad-core Intel CPU, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, an M.2 solid state drive and between 2GB and 8GB of LPDDR4 memory depending on how much you spend. It comes with Windows 10 pre-installed and XDO says it will be compatible with Windows 11. Alternatively, you could install Linux, and it’s one of the only micro PCs designed to play nice with Ubuntu.
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I paired the unit with a wireless keyboard and touchpad combo and moved it between my office and lounge, where it had no issues multitasking through documents and browser tabs or even doing some light gaming. If you primarily want a machine for web browsing or watching videos, and working or schooling from home, a mini PC likely makes a smarter investment than a laptop.
Currently on Kickstarter the Pantera Pico goes for between $200 and $340, with XDO saying it will be a little more expensive when sold from its site in the near future. Still, with the high-end unit packing 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, that stacks up well to a laptop or NUC.