Minisforum Teases AMD Ryzen-Based Tablet
by Anton Shilov on August 29, 2023 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablet
- AMD
- Ryzen
- Zen 4
- MinisForum
Having received worldwide recognition for its compact desktop computers, Minisforum is looking beyond PCs to grow its business. Earlier this year the company introduced its first tablet and is prepping a tablet with AMD's Zen 4-based accelerated processing unit (APU) inside.
The tablet that Minisforum plans to introduce will be a 2-in-1 device with a detachable keyboard and a stylus, according to the company's presentation in China, which was caught by Liliputing. For now, Minisforum plans to use AMD's eight-core Ryzen 7 7840U APU with Radeon RX 780M GPU as the foundation for the device, though by the time the product shows up the form might decide to go with something else.
Specifications of the device have not been touched upon, which is not particularly surprising given that it is at its early stages of development. Meanwhile, the company stressed that it will take advantage of AMD's AI-co-processor built into Ryzen 7 7840U processor and will therefore use Windows AI capabilities.
For now, it is hardly a good business to speculate what to expect from Minisforum's tablet, though the company is known for offering products with decent specifications at moderate price points.
While we do not know much about Minisforum tablets, the very fact that the company is going this route is remarkable. Keeping in mind that Minisforum is known primarily for PCs, notebooks were arguably the most logical way to expand its business. Yet, the market of notebooks seems to be too crowded, so the company opted for Windows tablets, an untapped market largely because Microsoft's platform is not particularly popular among tablet users.
The choice of AMD's Ryzen platform for a tablet is also noteworthy since we have not seen tablets based on AMD for quite a while. Perhaps, because the company makes so many systems based on AMD's APUs, it knows the platforms so well that it decided to use AMD's Ryzen 7840U for tablet, a form-factor that has not been tapped by this processor just yet.
Source: Liliputing
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meacupla - Tuesday, August 29, 2023 - link
I hope they at least use a 4:3 or 3:2 screen on it with minimum 400nits brightness.16:9 and 16:10 screens on 2-in-1 laptops feel cramped when in portrait mode.
It would be fantastic, if it could be easily disassembled for maintenance and upgrading RAM+SSD.
Having seen GPD Win Mini, I know it's possible to cram a full laptop into a 7" form factor, at the cost of thickness. I hope they don't go for some ridiculously large screen size for a tablet.
nandnandnand - Tuesday, August 29, 2023 - link
I measured the promo image, got 168x109 units. Maybe 16:10?DanNeely - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
Edges on the screen part of the image are very blurry, but I get about 570x370 for it which is 15.5:10 16:10 would be 592x370 (or 570x356); so either they're using a screen with a weird aspect ratio, the image isn't to scale, or it's sufficiently early in the design that they're using something mocked up in photochop by someone who didn't know/care what the exact aspect ratio is intended to be.yannigr2 - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
Just use the image in the video.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
What video? If AT has started including non-garbage videos at some point by using the same html/css as the trash I've long since crap blocked they've guaranteed that I'll never see them as a result.meacupla - Friday, September 1, 2023 - link
the bilibili hyperlink "presentation in china" is a video.There are a lot of interesting products in it.
Zeratul56 - Tuesday, August 29, 2023 - link
I’m a big fan of the windows tablet niche. My last purchase was the Dell 9315 2 in 1. Would be interesting to see how an AMD based system would stack up in terms of form factor and performance.nandnandnand - Tuesday, August 29, 2023 - link
I have never owned a tablet, preferring to use small laptops instead. I'm ready to finally jump on x86 2-in-1, and this seems like it could do the job. With a 7840U the price is going to be pretty high at launch though.AdditionalPylons - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
I've personally never found a need for a tablet, but I'm currently contemplating getting an Asus Rog Ally for a little bit of gaming but also for light video editing (Davinci Resolve) while hooked up to a larger screen, keyboard and mouse. The Rog Ally's performance for the money is incredible and even beats most mini-PCs, while also including screen and battery.The Lenovo Legion Go is similar, but has detachable controllers like the Nintendo Switch, which makes it more useful as a computer/tablet.
With Minisforum also entering this space it gets quite interesting actually! Performance-wise I suspect a tablet will have worse cooling than a handheld gaming console, but the 7840U APU has the AI compute units which may be useful for some non-gaming use cases.
meacupla - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
Yeah, I just saw the Legion Go specs. Z1 Extreme, 8" 2560x1600 144Hz screen and detachable controllers is very close to perfect for myself.