This is probably the best Apple Mac Studio alternative right now - Lenovo's ThinkCenter Neo Ultra has up to 16 ports and can even power an old CRT monitor

(Image credit: Lenovo)

As you’d expect, Lenovo, the world largest PC manufacturer, announced a lot of new products at CES 2024, and without question, one of the most impressive releases on show was the ThinkCenter Neo Ultra, Lenovo’s first Ultra small form factor desktop equipped with powerful AI capabilities.

This new mini PC harnesses the power of a CPU, an independent NPU, and a GPU, which work together to deliver optimal performance by efficiently allocating resources.

Lenovo says the ThinkCenter Neo Ultra is designed for SMBs that want to benefit from the capabilities AI promises without making significant investments in equipment.

Small, but mighty

Despite its compact size, the ThinkCenter Neo Ultra certainly packs a punch, with an Intel Core i9 processor on the Intel vPro Enterprise platform (Lenovo hasn’t gone into any specifics on the processor options as of yet), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, an independent NPU card that's easy to upgrade, and up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM.

To ensure the device stays cool even under heavy use, the ThinkCenter Neo Ultra features a triple thermal fan design that draws cool air from the top and expels it from the bottom back.

Despite its tiny size, the ThinkCenter Neo Ultra packs in a lot of ports. On the front, there are two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, and an audio jack. On the rear, there's one DisplayPort 1.4, three additional DisplayPort 1.4 ports (discrete GPU ports), one Flex IO port (VGA/DP/HDMI/USB Type-C/Serial), another Flex IO port (VGA/DP/HDMI/Serial/LAN), one HDMI 2.1 (TMDS), one HDMI 2.1 (discrete GPU port), two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, and two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, plus an RJ45 port.

It offers the recently certified Wi-Fi 7 and comes with Windows 11 Home or Pro pre-installed.

The ThinkCenter Neo Ultra will start at $1,499 and is expected to be available in the US sometime in Q2 2024 - although there's no word yet on European availability.

ThinkCentre neo Ultra rear — (Image credit: Lenovo)

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Wayne Williams is a freelancer writing news for TechRadar Pro. He has been writing about computers, technology, and the web for 30 years. In that time he wrote for most of the UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.