The newly unveiled $85 Asus Chromebit has us seriously re-evaluating our everyday computing tools.
Got a display with an unoccupied HDMI port? If you do, then this 2.6-ounce dongle the size of a flash drive has a complete Chrome OS that turns it into a functioning PC equipped to keep pace with every need short of high-end gaming. It’s search leviathan Google’s latest shot at taking on the Windows-powered frontrunner in the PC-on-a-stick race, and to be perfectly honest, it looks to be a haymaker.
Desktop PCs have recently been exposed as rocking on their heels, as workarounds from the Chromebit to the more modification-friendly Raspberry Pi transform even massive living room televisions into displays for devices that do almost everything a dedicated desktop or laptop can do using less space at a fraction the price. he Chromebit doesn’t lack for firepower of its own. Somehow, Asus packed 2GB of RAM backed by a quad-core Rockchip ARM processor and 16GM of expandable onboard storage into a device no longer than a pinky finger.
Yes, you read that correctly the first time: you can beef up your memory or plug in additional accessories using the included USB port.
Consider it somewhat fitting that the Chromebit resembles Google’s first-generation Chromecast.The ChromeOS version bundled to the stick provides access to Netflix, Spotify, Google Docs – pretty much the entire Chrome Web inventory. It offers a worthy adversary to the Windows 10-equipped Quanta Compute Plug introduced earlier this year by Microsoft and Intel’s own Compute Stick-driven portable drive.
The Chromebit has already hit retailers including Amazon, Fry’s and Newegg, as well as the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Finland, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
