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Presale: Meegopad T01 Intel Quadcore Windows/Android Mini PC US$96.18 inc Shipping @ GearBest

620
GBCLM

Hi all,

First deal so hoping you can get some value out of this. Let me know if I've made any errors.

I asked GearBest for a coupon for the MeegoPad T01 and they gave me one for my readers so I thought I'd share it here for those who love a bargain. Cheapest I can find on AliExpress is $99.60.

The MeegoPad T01 is a Intel Quadcore Mini PC which can run both Windows and Android. There is more information here: Mod: Site removed - do not link to site with affiliate links

Technical Specs:

  • Chipset: Intel Atom Z3735F “Bay Trail” quad core processor @ 1.33 GHz (Bust freq: 1.83 GHz) with Intel HD graphics Gen 7 (2W TDP)
  • RAM: 2 GB DDR3L-1333 (64-bit up to 10.6 GB/s)
  • Storage: 32 GB eMMC + micro SD slot up to 64GB
  • Video & Audio Output: HDMI 1.4
  • Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 (Realtek RTL8723BS)
  • USB: 2x micro USB ports, 1x USB 2.0 port
  • Other Features: Power button
  • OS: Windows 8/Android 4.4 (Dual Boot)

Please note this is a presale but I'm told it should be shipping very soon.

EDIT: Noted in US Dollars

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closed Comments

  • +1

    The web site keeps mentioning Windows 8, does Windows 8 come with the dongle?

    • +2

      When I looked at the product page, it certainly suggests that Windows is included as that is listed as the OS. My guess is that they will be leveraging Microsoft's new licence model for small devices to keep the costs down as it is essentially a small tablet without the screen.

      • +4

        It will be Windows 8.1 with Bing. So its a $0 licensing fee.

        • -1

          No it costs Zero Dollar

          :)

        • +1

          @SamR: I think for Microsoft to give it away for free they have to say $0 Licensing fee. If they say its zero dollars its considered anti-competitive

      • +1

        No screen means the license is $15 rather than free.

        Unless they used the name Meegopad to fool Microsoft into thinking it's a tablet :P

    • +7

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8rVsn_f1uM

      video not in english, but there it is, running 8.1

      • +2

        yeah just watched that myself too. amazing for a sub $100 little thing… i'm liking the pace of small device technology advance of late! :)

      • +1

        thanks, good video.

      • In the video how do they connect the keyboard and mouse to the device?

        • +1

          i'd guess bluetooth
          edit: it says "Features two micro USB ports, support webcams and microphones to external hard drives and USB sticks"

        • USB-OTG (I'm guessing).

      • +2

        Also noticed that the person has to manually switch on/off the device each time for use. Which could be annoying.

    • It looks from reviews and other sites that it will dual-boot Win8.1/Android.

  • +5

    Quirky ballsy slogan they used for marketing this
    "I Come"

    http://des.gearbest.com/uploads/2014/201412/heditor/20141212…

    Not implicit at all :D

  • +1

    can you install openELEC xbmc on the dongle?
    any remote power on/off solution?

    • +1

      No word on that yet but XBMC will run over the top of Windows without issue. Not sure about the remote on/off though.

    • +1

      Looking at the video could be annoying to manually switch on/off the device each time for use.

      • yeap, that's disappointed.

        If there is a decent remote on/off option, I'd like to buy this over intel nuc.

  • +1

    Perfect for running Plex, XBMC and much more!

    • IS it? I would expect this thing is not powerful enough for plex

      • Plex is relatively lightweight so with Hardware Decoding it should be fine.

      • +1

        Most lower spec Androids can run PLEX without an issue.. let alone a Baytrail (much more powerful)..

    • +1

      I think you have to be a little bit careful in assuming from the specs that it will run xbmc/Kodi without issues and 'out of the box'. Fwiw, I searched the Kodi hardware forum and couldn't see this thing mentioned by name. I wouldn't mind having a play but I've wasted so much money on various cheap solutions that almost work but not quite, I'll think I'll wait this out until it's tested and proven.

  • +4

    These sort of things could take over the HTPC market with a tiny upgrade or two.

  • Will this be able to be steam streaming box?

    • You don't need much to stream Steam, I reckon it could do it

    • +1

      I can stream steam fine on extremely old hardware. Like an Atom N270 (2008 era) on lousy 802.11g network. Steam streaming isn't that demanding.

      Just make sure the host pc has Ethernet and a fast processor.

    • I'd guess so as long as the bandwidth was high enough. My understanding of Steam streaming is that its basically a video stream, with controls being sent to the PC.

      • +1

        ah brings back those memories of the, now dead, damnn what was that thing called where they found a way to stream games from powerful data centers around the world, to your TV with a special remote. PlayTV or something. i forgot the name but it had potential

        • +1

          OnLive. It still exists, but I think it's still only available in certain parts of the USA (due to proximity to the data centres).

  • very cool indeeed. What they need is to make this thing into a phone (android + full windows). This would be the ultimate iphone killer!

    • +1

      The iPhone is already dead. The iPad is keeping it on life support

  • +4

    Might want to mention that it's in US dollars.

    I changed the currency to $AUD on the Gearbest site and applied the code at the checkout.

    All up it came to AUD$113.19 but it might be cheaper for people to do their own conversions depending on your bank.

    • +1

      Thanks for the note. Title fixed.

      • Hmm it turns out I payed around $122.09. For some reason Paypal decided to convert the AUD back to US and charged me that instead. Which then meant my bank had to convert it back to AUD and it cost me an extra $10 bucks. Not happy but it's not worth the hassle to chase up.

        • That's frustrating

  • This is amazing, but how well would full Windows run with an Atom processor and 2GB RAM?

    • +1

      You mean like most Windows tablets? Runs fine.

    • +3

      It's slow but completely fine for a lightweight media centre or Ms Office computer.

    • It runs pretty good actually. Dont expect it to out do an i7 anytime soon, but its zippy and usable for everyday jobs and multitasking. Hell, you can even play most games from about 3-4 years ago on it at pretty reasonable speeds.

      • +2

        http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-Bay-Trail.103…

        Might want to change 'can play most 3-4 year old games' as the specs show you definitely can't.

        The Intel 4000/5000 and Iris GPUs (such as the Surface Pro or MacBook Air lines) are much better and probably what you were mistaking in your post for the iGPU in BayTrail.

        Maybe some indie style games or emulators will work OK, but this thing would choke and splutter even in very low resolutions at the lowest of graphics settings, with the least demanding of 3D accelerated games of the last 5+ years.

        • I can play Test Drive Unlimited, Just Cause 2 etc out of the Toshiba Encore fine (same but slightly older chipset). Have a look at these videos using the Toshiba Encore to play
          Skyrim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWBJ6cB3wCg
          COD4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDXXvwHBv0
          Crysis (running on another model, same specs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryaNlslwOD0

          These oler games actually play fine at lower resolutions as you can see. The Baytrail graphics arent bad for an integrated solution.

        • -1

          @bchliu:

          He doesn't show what resolution he is running for Skyrim, not that it matters as the link I provided and the comments on the video you linked show that people are having trouble running above 15fps on the lowest possible settings at the lowest resolutions.

          15 fps is a slideshow. It's hard to tell on videos where a camera is filming a computer screen as the shutter angle (shutter speed/fps of the camera) makes it look fluid, when in real life 15fps would be unplayable.

          CoD4 came out in 2007, so it's 7+ years old. I believe that would run fine on the lowest settings.

          Crysis… surely you are not being serious? It would be worse than Skyrim.

          I stand by my statement and the raw specs + benchmarks that I linked to.

        • -1

          @c0balt:

          Try Modern Warfare 3 @2011:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbRqFO86inY

          love your post. lose the argument and move the goal posts. Notice that I have referred in my previous post as "plays fine on lower resolutions". This chip was never made to be an i7 or your next custom gaming box but it will play the older games as I have stated and proved. Whether it plays it acceptably in comparison with the latest Alienware boxes at 4k reolutíons is entirely subjective.

          does it load? yes
          does it display the graphics and sound? yes
          does it play? yes
          does it run at what you expect it to? depends on the individual

          A Hyundai Accent may never beat a Lamborghini. But it still a car and can still take you from A to B.

        • -1

          @bchliu:

          You: "you can even play most games from about 3-4 years ago on it at pretty reasonable speeds."

          Then you say I moved the goal posts, what a joke as it was you that said 'reasonable speeds'. Also buddy, your links are from cameras recording a tablet screen. You can't tell jack from that for the reasons I specified.

          Enjoy your <15fps at 800x600 lowest settings pushed by the lowest end iGPU ever created with a 4 pixel pipelines, yes 4. It might be OK to your undiscerning eye on a low end tablet like yours, but as soon as you push that on an HDTV then even you would go "nah, not gonna even try gaming on this".

          It's significantly worse than the GPUs in phones, but then it's designed to be dirt cheap but still being able to provide a tiny bit of 3d capabilities.

          To give your advice to others that the BayTrail iGPU can play games of the last 3-4 years is just insidious. I don't know why you would say what you are saying.

          The numbers are there in my first link, there's no numbers in your youtube videos, just potato quality videos of a screen and your own subjective opinion.

          Subjective opinion loses out to hard numbers, which again are all in the first link I posted.

        • -1

          @c0balt:
          Put it all into perspective: We are talking about something only slightly bigger than a USB MEMORY STICK that plugs into the back of a TV that cost 100 bucks. You really expect it to match a 3-4 year old PC that is at least 20x its size? You'll be a greater fool to think otherwise.

          It plays games for what it is. Some people with lower end PC's do play 20-15 FPS on 800x600 (especially on all of the older laptops and Macbooks). "Its significantly worse than GPU's in phones" - well, that is arguable since a lot of benchmark results have them on par at a minimum. The main difference is - you cannot run Skyrim or COD on your phone because it is an ARM chip running a different platform. This device however, means you can and it does play if you go down that path.

        • @bchliu:

          Then don't say it can run 3-4 year old games at reasonable speeds, because it can't, and you finally admit it.

          I'm well aware of what this is, if you look down below there's another numpty saying it's the lowest power garbage and a waste of money. So the opposite of what you are saying.

          The truth is that it's in the middle, and that's the correct advice that people should be given. Not that it's capable of gaming, and not that it's a worthless piece of junk, but somewhere in the middle.

  • +2

    i like it.

  • +2

    definitely keeping an eye on these(even if I don't need it) Just want it slightly cheaper, like a straight 100 and from somewhere better than gearbest :)

  • Tempted to buy this but I got a toshiba encore with hdmi out so I've resisted :(

  • Could be interested in this

  • +1

    Can it run headless?

  • Any ideas if it allows booting from USB to install other OSs?

  • +2

    How interesting. What type of power supply does it use?

    • +2

      From the video it seems like its just powered by a AC-Micro USB adapter, plus the chip gets decent battery life relative to other tablets of comparable battery size so I'd imagine its nothing too extreme.

      You could potentially turn this into a ghetto 11.6" Laptop with an old Atrix Lapdock
      http://fortysomethinggeek.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/cheap-port…
      Just plug the stick in with an adapter and power the stick with the inbuilt Lapdock battery.

    • 5V 2A via a micro USB port

      • -1

        You can just power it using your TV's USB port.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vPQLiNRviE

      • Is this correct?
        Most USB charge power adaptors supply 0.5A ~ 1A don't they?
        Where can one find a USB power adaptor to supply 2A ?

        • An Apple one. Mine supplies 2.4A.

  • Is there any reason this would not be able to support Foxtel go?

    • +1

      Can't see why not

  • Looks awesomely great!

  • Could something like this be a decent low power NAS?

    I have a few 2TB 2.5" USB drives and if I could get decent read/write speeds over wifi (at least better than the ~10MB/s I get from my TP Link W8980), then this could be really good for me.

    It could be both a NAS and a HTPC for me in one tiny package for a good price if it can read and write fast enough to USB drives.

    • Yes it can do that.

  • +1

    Anyone think it'll have Dual band wireless? Haven't got high hopes.

    • Nope only b/g/n according to the specs.

  • +1

    So many possibilities for this thing and so much potential with future enhancements. Connected to an external HDD either via USB port or remotely over WIFI, the possibilities are endless. Mini media player, torrent download server, emulator gaming (Super Nintendo, perhaps even N64 at low res) with a wireless XBOX 360 controller/receiver. Limited only by the amount of inputs but would be able to use a USB hub or splitter no doubt.

  • Looks too good to be true

    • +18

      You don't floss your teeth with toilet paper do you? Then don't compare an Atom to the top of the line desktop CPUs. Horses for courses.

      You don't know what this device is, or what your are comparing it to.

      • +7

        Hehehe best comment of the week.

      • -2

        This is claimed as "Mini PC" so it may be compared to a PC.
        And any 7-year old PC will outdo it.
        But $100 is a bargain, right? And it's small. OK. Buy it.
        Then try to browse the Internet using it.
        You din't have an Atom netbook? This is your chance.
        Or maybe you'll be using this as a torrent server? With a USB 2.0 interface to a hard drive, sure!
        Then you'll share the content with Wifi n! Awesome!
        Or maybe you'll play it right from the device?
        Pray than DXVA on it's video will work good enough, because it it won't - Atom won't handle a decent video.

        So I agree with you, you can buy it and play with it for about one week.
        Then you'll realize that the right place for this is somewhere near your toilet paper.

        • Best comeback of the week!

        • +1

          Go ahead then, hook up that 7 year old PC to the back of your 32" TCL bargain bin TV. Oh, it's twice the size of the TV and the fan noise means you have to put the volume to near distorted levels to hear it over the fans? Damn! Guess that 7 year old PC doesn't really belong on the TV stand.

          Oh yeah, that 7 year old PC uses ~300w compared to the <5w this would use. That's if it has a dedicated GPU to handle modern codecs with HW playback. So enjoy your potentially hundreds of dollars wasted on electricity bills per year in addition to the cumbersome nature of HTPC setups. This HTPC stick uses about the same power as a modern phone charger, not more than 2a at 5v.

          BayTrail iGPU plays high bitrate .264 fine (about the most resource intensive codec out there at the moment), and flash video well also. So all that DXVA content will play fine as there is HW playback support with the BayTrail iGPU. Find me one source that says it doesn't before you make such a BS unsubstantiated claim.

          But yeah, keep dissing the Atom for a mini HTPC setup and tell us more about how we need an i7 with quad Titan Blacks and 2000w PSU for our HTPC setups - because no one else will.

          Like a leaky cup, you hold no water.

          http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1m723t/intels_bay_…

        • +2

          Anyone find a deal on popcorn?

  • -6

    Not a deal. These are at dx.com for $99 and aliexpress for $99. (free shipping)

    • +2

      since when is 99 less than 96?

      • +1

        By all means save just 3 USD with no indication of when the product will even ship :)

        Edit: this seems more like a post to get people onto the poster's blog. He doesn't even have a device to test himself. Just advertisitng it.

        • Looks like presale and $109.99 at DX?

        • @shaunpud: yeah I checked earlier, would like to find this "$99" price at dx…..

  • +1

    omg this is awesome

    hoping to run utorrent on it, and have a 64gb microsd for media files

  • Worth waiting for a price drop and/or the next version? Or is this about as good as it gets in terms of small form factor PC's?

    • +5

      There will be a massive influx of these, and considering you can get a windows tablet for <$90, the prices should drop

      • Yeah but every Windows tablet under $90 is horrifically underpowered for a Windows device …

  • The links before liked so cool! So this thing plugs into a screen, most likely a TV and becomes an instant pc? And it can also run android? So basically it turns a TV into a pc/android tablet?

  • Not sure about the 2gb RAM for Windows 8. I have a tablet with that and the 2gb RAM is definitely the bottleneck on the performance.

    Any 4gb option? Or even a DIY upgrade?

    • I have a windows 8.1 tablet with 2gb ram and it works fine, smooth as.

      • Depends on what you are used to, I suppose. My other computer is a Republic of Gamers laptop, with 32GB of RAM (I play games on radmisk… Incredible).

        I am sure that going from two to four gigabytes entails a rather large performance increase, especially for multitasking.

        • Woow 32 gb of ram! Respect.

        • Then again, this isn't intended for high end performance, more basic tasks like playing movies and music, a small low profile torrent server to download files to an external HDD, web browsing and streaming online content, youtube and maybe some old school gaming such as Nintendo and Sega emulation, Scummvm, that sort of thing on a high end large scale display.

        • @tommy-darko:

          I am thinking this could easily replace the 'school laptops' boondoggle that we see every few years.

        • True, I like where this technology is headed, though. Hopefully in the not too distant future we will get one with a Quad Core i7 CPU and 4K video capability. Well, can only hope I suppose.

        • I have to agree that a jump from 2GB to 4GB would be a significant boost. 2GB leaves little after the OS takes its share. Whereas with 4GB you can do much much more. I have used a Win8 PC with 2GB and 4GB RAM, and the performance difference is day and night. But I have to say, I like where this stuff is heading. An x64/x32 Windows PC in a small stick for $100 .. who would have ever thought a few years ago.

    • Those particular atom processors don't support more than 2GB RAM. Also I thought I read somewhere about the Windows 8 licence costing more if RAM is greater than 2GB, but I'm not able to verify.

  • Can this device be made to boot from USB, to run or install Linux?
    Does the display, audio etc. need any special hardware device drivers?

    • The output is HDMI so doesn't need any special drivers. Windows 8 seems to have moved on from the ridiculous behaviour of earlier versions where it would sit and slowly hunt out a separate named driver for each new bog-standard USB memory stick or HDMI monitor:-/

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