The Ayaneo Retro Mini PC AM01 might look familiar to Apple fans

If you weren’t around in 1990, or don’t have a brain like a computing hall of fame, you might not recognise the inspiration behind the Ayaneo Retro Mini PC AM01 (from $200) – but most people with a passing interest in tech will probably see the similarities to the Apple Macintosh Classic.

Ayaneo has changed just enough to (hopefully) avoid a strongly worded letter from the legal team in Cupertino, with a rainbow-coloured rectangle where the famous Apple logo should be, but it’s still recognisably a tribute to the Classic – it even has a fake floppy disc drive on the front.

What it lacks in working, obsolete technology it more than makes up for with genuinely useful connectivity. Despite being the size of a stack of three slices of bread, Ayaneo has managed to find space for five USB ports (one Type-C and four old-style USB-As), an HDMI slot, a DisplayPort, Gigabit ethernet and a headphone socket, plus there’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth onboard. You didn’t get any of those on the original Mac Classic and it didn’t run Windows 11 Home either, which comes pre-installed on the AM01. There is an option for a barebones system, so you could install Linux or SteamOS, but for that one you’ll need to add your own hard drive and RAM.

You get a choice between an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U or Ryzen 7 5700U CPU (neither of which will blow your socks off), paired with up to 64GB of memory and as much as 2TB of storage, but it has more than enough geek appeal for us to forgive its lack of absolute power. It looks like this is just the start for Ayaneo’s retro-inspired mini PCs too, with a screen-packing NES-style one coming soon.

Ayaneo is still raising funds for the Retro Mini PC AM01 on Indiegogo at the moment, with 22 days to go on a campaign that’s already raised over $100,000, so there are big discounts to be claimed by early backers, but when it goes on general sale after that prices will start at $200.

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Tom Wiggins Contributor

About

Stuff's second Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.

Areas of expertise

A bit of everything but definitely not cameras.