HP goes small with the Pavilion Mini

After announcing its iMac rivalling 5K monitor, the PC giant looks to be taking more inspiration from Apple with the Mac Mini-like HP Pavilion Mini. This tiny PC is just small enough to sit in the palm of your hand, that makes it smaller than the Mac Mini, and at just $320 (around £210) it’s a lot cheaper too.

To put some numbers on those claims, the HP Pavilion Mini is 145mm across the top and 50mm thick. Its curved design looks pretty cool, and it should fit in well either beside your TV as a more flexible media streamer than any dedicated device, or it could be used as a low-power desktop PC with a monitor.

There’s going to be a range of processor options, though most will opt for the basic Pentium-branded offering or maybe a Core i3 at most. All models come with a respectable 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk for storage. We haven’t yet heard of any SSD options for the little PC, or whether the internal disk will be user replaceable.

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There are four USB3 ports, 2 front and 2 back, plus a card reader. Impressively there are both DisplayPort and HDMI outputs, so you could potentially hook up a pair of monitors, which can really boost your productivity, or allow for dual TV and projector setups for home cinema buffs.

If you’re thinking of buying a budget laptop, but know you’ll rarely want to use it away from your desk then consider the Pavilion Mini instead. For just over £350 you should be able to pick up the little PC, a decent 22in monitor and a good keyboard and mouse, all of which will make you far more productive than working on a small-screened laptop with a poor keyboard.

Also on sale in the US, but apparently not coming to the UK is the Pavilion Stream, a very similar device which switches out the hard disk for 32GB of flash memory. This could have been an interesting competitor to Chromebooks, much like HP’s own HP Stream 11 and 14, so it’s a pity it’s not getting a release here.