The Tango PC. Looks pretty neat

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Hallis

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Got the link to their Indiegogo campaign today in my email. Took a look. Seems like a neat little device. I don't see it much used as a gaming machine but maybe as a small form factor Media machine or possibly a laptop alternative for somebody that only needs to take the pc from home to office and doesn't really need to use it on the go. I know I get annoyed lugging my laptop back and fourth to work when not working from home. Seems like this would suit my purposes really well. And the price point isn't too horrible.

Their website with a CES 2014 display as well as some other media

I see that it is "capable" of gaming but I really think that they're barking up the wrong tree pimping that aspect as it doesn't seem like a very smooth experience.

Discuss
 
Yeah, looking past the marketing it might be ok for light work. (HORRIBLE ad)
Really, they are advertising it with BF3? That thing won't go past ~15fps.
Is this much more powerful than my Nexus 5 though?
 
Processing power wise probably not. But they went the route they did for x86 architecture to be able to natively run normal desktop OS and apps rather than Android. This is what really interested me.
 
It's a laptop without the screen and keyboard. So they simply could make it half the size of a laptop.
The problem imho is that with the dock it's to big. Almost the size of a mac mini.

Though I really love the portability idea. That's just neat if it would be standard. Like bringing a tablet with extra much power on vacation.
 
This system is useless without at least 2 docks. You need a dock at every location you want to use it. If you don't have extra docks, you need to take the dock with you to use it. Which would make the system arguably less portable than a laptop/small htpc/mac mini/etc. with less performance per dollar. (AMD A6-5200 Quad Core 2GHz, up to 25 watts, with integrated GCN GPU HD8400)

Looking on the indiegogo I see hundreds (300+) of orders for the system with 1 dock included. And only 21 people actually ordered an extra dock.

This is pretty awkward!
 
The A6-5200 is essentially the latest/greatest low end AMD chip that competes with the Intel Atom.

The module looks to be similar in size to a 2.5" external HDD.

The docking station looks to be similar in size to a NUC/Brix.

As mentioned, unless you buy a dock for every location, you will end up transporting the dock. May as well buy a NUC/Brix for the same portability with better hardware.

Examples:

Right now you can get an mSATA Crucial M500 120GB for $80 at Amazon and B&H. 4GB SODIMM is $38 regular priced. The Tango is $300 for complete system with 4GB RAM and a paltry 32GB mSATA. Keep this in mind for price comparisons.

Want cheap? GIGABYTE GB-XM14-1037 $170 with Celeron 1037U CPU which will run circles around the A6-5200 in most things. For graphics it has a 6EU HD Graphics.

Want better APU? GIGABYTE GB-BXA8-5545 $260 with an AMD A8-5545M. Yes more costly, but compare the A8-5545M to the A6-5200.

A8-5545M is a Richland notebook APU. It is 19W TDP quad core at 2.7GHz (turbo) with 384 VLIW4 cores for graphics.

A6-5200 is a Kabini SOC competitor to the Intel Atom. It is 25W TDP quad core at 2GHz with 128 GCN cores for graphics.

Except for higher price, the Richland will use less power (in theory), have a faster CPU and faster iGPU.

If you want performance with money as no object, you can get a Brix with a Core i5-4570R for around $500. It is a quad core Haswell with Iris Pro 5200 graphics which is competitive (sometimes faster, sometimes slower) with the best AMD APUs for gaming. Unfortunately Gigabyte made it thicker to accommodate 2.5" HDDs.
 
this thing isn't a gaming machine, that's a rabbit hole for them.

They need to market this to businesses.
My working environment is portable? CHECK.
 
why need a dock? with bluetooth and wireless HDMI/WiDi no cords needed.
also, an i3 NUC is comparable price and faster for general tasks.
 
bloodypulp said:
why need a dock? with bluetooth and wireless HDMI/WiDi no cords needed.
also, an i3 NUC is comparable price and faster for general tasks.
Click to expand...

a dock keeps costs down and leaves most infrastructure (monitors, mouse, kb, speaks etc) in place.
 
Its a nice idea, a nice product, but its not good enough for my type of gaming. I don't like he was trying to convince me how good it was for that aspect. Aside from that it looks like a really cool product. I have no plans of investing $ into it though.
 
I guess this has more capabilities than a raspberry pi, but at some point you'd rather have just a netbook if you need those features
 
They should either have made the device itself half again as big and put a proper graphics card in it, or not advertised it as a gaming device, because it most definitely isn't one.
 
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