Small form-factor PCs aren’t new, but Ockel is
pushing the envelope with the Sirius A, a full touchscreen Windows 10 computer
compact enough to fit your hand. At the opposite extreme to vast touch-enabled
All-in-Ones like Microsoft’s Surface Studio, the Sirius A instead aims for the
ultra-compact end of the spectrum. That opens up some really interesting
possibilities.
You could easily glance at the Sirius A and assume
it’s a 6-inch tablet, or perhaps a universal remote. Looks are deceiving,
though. Inside the anodized aluminum casing is an Intel Atom x7-Z8750 quadcore
processor, running either Windows 10 Home or Pro.
It’s not Ockel’ first tiny PC. The company
previously made the Sirius B – they name their compact computers after star constellations,
and indeed the etched design on the back is not only a heat sink but a star map
too – which also ran full Windows 10. Buyers, Ockel’s marketing director
Nathalie van Wijkvliet told me, liked it, but they also asked if there was some
way to add interaction directly on the computer itself.
So, the Sirius A was born. Atop the wedge-shaped
casing is a 6-inch, Full HD touchscreen, with multitouch support. It can show a
desktop or the Windows Start menu – the unit Ockel had on hand at CES is a non-functional
prototype, so I couldn’t try it out myself – or, since there’s HDMI to plug in
a full-sized display, you can use the Sirius A’s touchscreen as a QWERTY
keyboard.
Despite the size, there’s no shortage of ports. You
get two USB 3.0 and a single USB 3.0 Type-C, full-sized HDMI and DisplayPort
capable of outputting up to 4K, and gigabit ethernet. There’s also a 3.5mm
headphone jack, and a microSDXC card slot to augment the either 64 GB or 128 GB
of internal storage.
WiFi a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2 are included, and
there’s a 5-megapixel camera, speakers, and a microphone. Ockel finds room for
an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer inside, too; they might seem like
odd inclusions in a desktop PC, but there’s also a 3,000-3,500 mAh battery in
there too. Ockel isn’t confirming battery life yet.
There are two versions. The regular Sirius A has
Windows 10 Home, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of flash storage, and is priced at US$ 699. The
Sirius A Pro, meanwhile, gets Windows 10 Pro along with twice the RAM and flash
storage, and is US$ 799. Both have Intel HD graphics, and come in silver, grey, or
gold.
Ockel raised the money for Sirius A in a
crowdfunding campaign last year, raising almost US$ 450k, more than four times its
original goal. That unfortunately means it’s not quite ready to ship, with the
company saying it’ll be May 2017 before that happens. Still, if you want the
flexibility of a small tablet, but the potential to drive a full desktop PC
when the peripherals allow, Ockel’s vision is arguably more interesting than
anything Microsoft is doing with Continuity on Windows Phones.
