The Ouvis S1 is an intriguing mini PC, one that comes with the ubiquitous Intel N95 processor and retails for just under $180 at the time of writing, ahead of Black Friday. What sets it apart from the competition is an LCD screen that can be customized to show a wide range of system data, either in portrait or in landscape mode.
The display is only a 2-inch in diagonal and has a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, lower than the iPhone 4 and definitely not enough to run any desktop application (think Adobe Photoshop). I remember the Higole Gole1 Plus from 2017 which attempted to glue a small display on a mini PC; the result, back then was a disaster.
The Ouvis S1 (also known as the Acemagics S1 in the US) is much better regardless of its position (laid flat or standing using the optional stand); it is not much bigger than rivals (41 x 124 x 128mm) but offers more expansion possibilities: there’s two Ethernet Gigabit LAN ports and you can easily swap components out (the SODIMM and two M2 SSDs) simply by removing a side cover which is kept in place using magnets rather than thumbscrews. Clever!
A bigger chassis means more space for connectors and the S1 has a lot of these. Other than the pair of LAN ports, there’s four USB ports (sadly, no Type-C although there’s two USB 2.0 ports), two HDMI connectors and an audio connector. Add in 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 and you have a fairly decent mini PC that should be able to handle any light tasks.
Just bear in mind that it doesn’t come with a VESA mount option but does have RGB LED strip. It runs on Windows 11 Home but does support Linux and would make a great server for media (Plex or FTP).
The market is crying for a micro all-in-one PC which would essentially be a tethered laptop without a keyboard, a 16-inch full HD display with mini PC attached to it. I reckon that it can be had for less than $300 which would be a mighty good bargain if all you need is a decent transportable computer.
