This Macintosh-inspired mini PC is short on power but long on good looks

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By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

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Ayaneo, which is mostly known for making handheld gaming consoles, just fully revealed the new Retro Mini PC AM01 after teasing it a few weeks ago. It says it plans to ship the AM01 before the end of the year — and I’d be lying if I said I’m not tempted to get one. The AM01 won’t win any benchmarking contests, but it’ll almost certainly be the best-looking computer you own.

Let’s just state the obvious here: Ayaneo says it’s “paying homage” to the Macintosh, which is a kind way of saying, “We copied the thing pretty much exactly.” This device is the spitting image of Apple’s ’80s-era computer, right down to the floppy drive and the rainbow sticker. (Ayaneo made the sticker a flag shape instead of an apple, though — there’s paying homage and then there’s paying lawyer fees, you know what I mean?) It’s smaller than a Macintosh, but it’s beige and rectangular and even has a black space where the old screen would have gone.

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 — a nearly five-year-old chip — along 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 — itself almost three years old! — plus 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. All the memory is expandable, too. It’s pretty cheap no matter how you slice it, but you can get a much more powerful mini PC