CompuLabs this week unveiled the latest in its Fit-PC line of fanless mini-PCs: the Fitlet, a dual- or quad-core 64-bit AMD x86 system-on-a-chip that runs Linux or Windows.
The Fitlet is the hot younger sibling to CompuLab's previous mini-PC offering, the Fit-PC2, and offers many improvements over its predecessor. Besides being significantly more powerful (we'll get to that in a second), the Fitlet is 30 percent smaller, measuring only 108 x 83 x 24 mm (4.25 x 3.25 x 0.95 in). The tiny little box will come in three flavors: the entry-level Fitlet-B, the more powerful Fitlet-i, and the modular Fitlet-X.
The barebones Fitlet-B uses a dual-core 64-bit AMD e1 Micro-6200T SoC clocked at 1.4GHz, AMD Radeon R2 Graphics, and supports up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM via an SODIMM socket. For I/O ports, the -B offers two HDMI, one gigabit Ethernet, five USB (two USB 3.0, three USB 2.0), RS232 serial, mSATA and micro-SD slots, and an auxiliary I/O connector for UART, SMBus, and GPIO signals.
The Fitlet-i upgrades the machine to a quad-core 64-bit AMD A4 Micro-6400T SoC which can clock up to 1.6GHz at only 4.5W TDP. The other main difference between it and the Fitlet-B is the addition of a second built-in Ethernet port, a socket for mini-PCIe card expansion, and remote power button support.
Finally, the Fitlet-X is mostly the same as the Fitlet-i in terms of power. It's main difference is the lack of a second Ethernet port and, instead of the Fitlet-i's mini-PCIe expansion socket, it features CompuLab's FACET (Function And Connectivity Extension T-Card) modular expansion system. FACET lets users customize their real-world I/O options through via a removable panel on the side of the Fitlet-X. For example: one FACET option is the LAN module featuring three additional Ethernet ports. It's unclear how much FACET cards differ from standard mini-PCIe cards, but CompuLab says that the latter is indeed compatible with FACET sockets.
The Fitlet could be a living room streaming box dream machine, if its SoC is up to the task of HD video decoding. CompuLab will begin accepting orders in February with the entry-level Fitlet-B starting at $129.
