The Arm-based desktop market has recently been dominated by Apple, largely because major PC makers still have to ship Arm-based parts with Microsoft’s Windows. But his smaller PC maker seems to be getting a little more aggressive.recently StarUK-based computer manufacturer PlanetPC XR1 Mini and PlanetPC XR2 Mini A desktop system that also has a touchscreen for additional controls.
Planet’s XR1 Mini and XR2 Mini desktops are based on Rockchip’s RK3568 and RK3588 system-on-chips respectively. RK3568 is a cheap SoC with Mali G52 graphics with 4 Cortex-A55 cores and 2 clusters, more suitable for low-end smartphones and specialized devices.
In contrast, the RK3588 packs 4 high-performance Cortex-A76 cores and 4 energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores in a DynamIQ configuration, quad cluster Arm Mali ‘Odin’ GPUs, 6 TOPS NPU accelerators, and 8Kp30 video encoding and 8Kp60 Advanced media engine capable of handling video decoding.
Both systems come with 4GB of LPDDR5 memory and 32GB of solid-state storage by default, but Planet can be upgraded to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
Both the XR1 Mini and the XR2 Mini share a 29 × 26 × 6 cm (11.4 × 10.2 × 2.36 inch) chassis, with individual color touchscreens on the front panel, allowing you to customize your computer for common tasks. Control softkeys, system monitor, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, VPN, network disks, audio, and other system functions. Both PCs have all the I/Os you would expect from a desktop PC including Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB Type-A, HDMI, VGA/D-Sub, USB-C (RK3588 only), MicroSD, Audio, etc. I’m here. connector.
These systems run Ubuntu 20.04 and are mainly suitable for office work and also have multimedia playback capabilities. But Planet’s XR Mini PC looks pretty expensive for its performance and features. The XR1 Mini costs $667 ($800 including VAT), while the XR2 Mini costs $840 ($1,008 including VAT).
