The Khadas Mind is a pocket-sized computer with an Intel Raptor Lake-P processor, LPDDR5-5200 memory, and support for up to 4TB of storage via two M.2 2230 slots (one with PCIe 4.0 speeds, and another with PCIe 3.0).
But what makes the tiny computer unusual is that it’s designed to work with docking accessories that let you transform the Khadas Mind into a laptop, a full-function desktop, or even a gaming or workstation-class system thanks to a graphics dock. After unveiling the Khadas Mind in July, the company has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the system with Super Early Bird pricing starting at $599.
The starting price reserves Khadas Mind “Standard” edition with an Intel Core i5-1340P processor and 16GB of RAM, but there’s also a $799 “Premium” model with a Core i7-1360P chip and 32GB of memory. Those prices are marked down from suggested $799 and $1,099 retail prices, respectively, and both models are expected to begin shipping in October, 2023.
But if all you were looking for was a mini PC with those specs, there are any number of other options available. What makes the Khadas Mind unusual are its combination of a slim, portable design and its extensibility.
The computer itself measures 146 x 105 x 20mm (5.7″ x 4.1″ x 0.7″) and weighs 450 grams (about 1 pound), making it easy to carry with you on the go. It’s also designed with portability in mind, thanks to a 5.55 Wh standby battery inside the case. While that’s not enough to run the computer on battery power for any serious amount of time, it does let you grab the Khadas Mind and carry it to another location without worrying about shutting the computer down first.
Khadas says the battery provides up to 5 hours of standby time and that the Mind automatically wakes from sleep when it’s plugged into a power source again. The system comes with a compact 65W USB-C GaN power adapter.
As for extensibility, that comes via a PCIe 5.0 (32GT/s) interface that lets you quickly attach the Khadas Mind to an optional laptop dock, desktop dock, or eGPU dock.
You don’t need any of those accessories for basic use though. The Khadas Mind also has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C port, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, two USB Type-A ports, and an HDMI 2.0 port built into the base unit itself. But adding a dock can bring support for things like additional displays or wired networking connections.
Wireless capabilities include support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. The Khadas Mind ships with Windows 11 Home software. And the company says the system can support up to four 4K/60Hz displays or a single 8K/30Hz display… but since there are a limited number of ports on the base computer itself, you may need an add-on dock or a USB-C hub if you want to connect more than three screens.
As for accessories, the small Mind Dock has two HDMI 2.0 ports, a 2.5 GbE Ethernet port, a 3.5mm audio jack, an SD card reader, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and a USB-C port for power. There are also built-in speakers.
The Mind Dock has a retail price of $179, but it’s going for $129 during crowdfunding. Khadas it should ship in October, at the same time as the Khadas Mind base system itself, and Kickstarter backers also have the option of buying a Khadas Mind + dock bundle.
Folks looking to add some extra graphics horsepower to the mini PC can also opt for a Khadas Mind Graphics dock. It’s a substantially larger add-on that has the same set of ports, but which also houses an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti discrete GPU and built-in speakers.
Khadas says the Mind Graphics dock will ship in June, 2024 and have a retail price of $999, but it’s available to Kickstarter backers for $699.
The company has also indicated that it’s working on additional accessories, including the Mind xPlay a portable display + keyboard that basically turns the little computer into a 2-in-1 tablet or laptop, a Mind Talk, which is said to be “a device that is designed especially for VoIP meetings” and which features a microphone away, and a Mind Studio 32 inch multi-touch display.
Neither of those are available as Kickstarter rewards though, and the company hasn’t shared many details about those add-ons yet.
There’s always some risk involved in backing a crowdfunding campaign, but Khadas is a company that’s been around for a while, and which has a track record of delivering products to customers.
While it’s probably better known for single-board computers than consumer-friendly PCs, Khadas has already delivered fully functional prototypes of the Khadas Mind and Dock to reviewers including Tech Tablets and CNX Software.
This article was first published July 22, 2023 and most recently updated August 27, 2023.
4060… M
Read that again. 4060… M
You said “ which also includes a graphics bay with support for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 discrete GPU.”
There is a massive difference between a soldered on 4060M and a bay that supports a discrete GPU. This isn’t even a real eGPU scenario since you can get desktop cards in all sorts of external enclosures now.
You really need to retract this. You’re pushing vaporware that may never see the light of day and hyping it up with incorrect information. Really disappointing.
I’ve updated the article to reflect that this is a mobile GPU, but as for whether we’re giving attention to vaporware, that remains to be seen. This would be a new product category for Khadas, but the company has been around for years and has released several interesting products in that time.
Vaporware was cute when it was just a company making fools of themselves by announcing products and not shipping. These days when they crowdfund and then disappear with the money, other words are used. At least the words “super early bird” makes me think this will be crowdfunding. I guess I have been spending too much time in /r/shittykickstarters but even so: I have a very hard time believing someone can pull of running PCIe 4.0 over a custom connector (and not even one lane, probably 16 of the suckers). Not to mention the software side — although probably they will just make you reboot to make it work.
Note how GPD which has a much bigger experience in shipping high end products have opted on using a standardized connector and OCuLink eGPUs already exist. Color me super skeptical here.
Regarding tech side, yep, they pretty much can make it work. There is a closeup photo of the “custom connector”.
https://cdn.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Khadas-Mind-Intel-Core-i7-1360p-motherboard.jpg?lossy=1&strip=none&ssl=1
Its literally a slightly wider 49 pin PCIe x8, and on the left there are 4 power lines for 65W, and some additional pins. So, same thing ASUS and Minisforum did (except of the power, and Minis one are also PCIe mechanically). Btw OCuLink also requires system to be turned off to attach/detach.
Regarding “crowdfrauding” hype building, amount of promotion they push through all channels seems suspicious indeed, but at least they do show actually working devices. I’d not buy it on preorder, but if the shipping will pick up, they will be not worse than any other generic small form factor pc manufacturer out there with a few nice features on top.
As for graphics doc, now I’m positive it does not yet exist beyond a prototype from the stock components, and they will only manufacture it if there will be demand, since shipment date for the dock is 2024, while PCs are October 2023.
I wonder where 4060M comes from? Their website says “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060Ti desktop-class” in every place. Its 165W GPU, and the case volume seems to be adequate to fit single fan board and small PSU. There is no any reviews or even real photos of Mind Graphics though, escpecially from the back side, so I suggest all they have right now is actually stock single fan 4060 TI, custom riser card and 300W PSU in one box, and they deliver power to the Mind module on these 4 wide pins.
It appears that they updated the information on their website between the time I first wrote this article in July and the time when the crowdfunding campaign went live on August 25.
I’ve updated the article to reflect what’s listed on the Khadas website and the Kickstarter page, which is that the graphics dock should have an RTX 4060 Ti desktop-class GPU.
“Khadas Mind is “. No. “Khadas promises the Khadas Mind will eventually be”. But whether they will deliver is a big unknown. Khadas currently sells a few SBCs which is a very far cry from delivering a custom PC and an eGPU at the same time.
Retract this article. You are supporting a potential scam.
Touch grass.
I really liked the original Intel Compute Card idea, but any good performance was not feasible in that form factor back then. Now, when mobile phones pack quite a lot of power, I hope that, say, Samsung will release a lineup of products similar to NexDock, but with a slide-in slot instead, and additional battery, accelerators and cooling inside. Tablet option can now be fulfilled by foldables, but I’d prefer bigger screen. And then a powerful desktop dock with more storage, second CPU with separate memory, and additional accelerators. Proper modern OS design like Harmony should allow to support that hybrid relatively easy.
On the other hand, we also have Framework, who finally solved main problem of upgradable laptops: replaced components can be reused and thus sold for reasonable price via use of mainboard cases. With some main board layout changes, they can provide very powerful modular solution, if you omit phone form from the equation.
I was a fan of the original Compute Card form factor too. It seems like these days you could go quite far with something that is of a similar size or smaller than a Raspberry Pi and has a full-function USB Type-C port that did video out, power in, and data in and out. Ideally it would have low enough power requirements that it would run off 5V3A, so that you could run it straight from a NexDock or USB-C monitor. This would be a pretty flexible form factor…
I love the fact that Khadas is trying something different here, so don’t get my criticism wrong, but I’ll point out the problems I have with this… even though it is something that caught my attention and I find the ideas here very interesting.
But again, those are problems with my personal usage and stance… this entire idea is still likely fine for other people.
Proprietary port. While I love the modular idea of using a core computing unit in different scenarios, any product that uses proprietary or unique ports to make connections between accessories and modules ends up intrinsically tied to stuff that only one company does… which means this is a product that will only work with Khadas, and that could be limited to this setup only if the company decides to abandon the line further along. I think this can be a great product if you are buying a whole bunch of them for enterprise or business for instance… when you have a bunch of people using the same system for interchangeable scenarios.
Modularity vs expandability. This depends on use case scenario, but these days I’m more in favor of having a product that can be used by itself, and then it can be extended to use in different scenarios, rather than having a computing module that can be attached to different accessories. For instance, if I was going to get something that could also work as a tablet, desktop, portable gaming, or mini PC, I’d rather get the smaller form factor – portable gaming device – and then extend it’s functionality via docking stations, portable monitors, and gulp dongles, rather than getting a useless-by-itself computing module to attach to proprietary accessories. It’s like, the thing by itself needs a reason to be taken around, it can’t be a useless box that needs accessories to work.
Ideally, a smartphone would work like that. It’s something you need to carry around anyways, so it’d be great if it could also work for portable gaming, as a mini PC, and a tablet with adequate accessories. Unfortunately, we’re still not quite there yet… cannibalization fears, walled garden situations, bad UX, plus a bunch of other side factors stops us from getting there.
Kinda talking from experience… I had a bunch of devboards, had the Kangaroo PC, and also had a Gole1 mini PC.
The fact that you have to connect a bunch of stuff on some of those before making use of it kinda detracts from the portability factor. So it ends up that I’ll always end up reaching for a smartphone or tablet instead, when Android is enough that is.
I do like the whole idea as a concept though, the problem is always in some of the details for products like this one. We’ll see about pricing and specs.
Or you could just plug a regular laptop into an EGPU!
Yeah, I don’t think this is a very good idea. One of the big appeals of mini-pcs is that you can attach them to monitors and have much of the cable mess hidden out of the way while still being able to use that good old 1980×1080 screen that you got over a decade ago but still works, or swap out screens and computers as needed. I don’t think you can really attach this to a screen very well.
And I like the idea of combining as many functions into a single device as possible, but if I wanted to stick a mini-pc onto a lapdock, I’d get a combination that supports more options. Like a nexdock XL, a regular EGPU enclosure, and a mini-pc or handheld that can handle running all I/O from a USB-C port. As a bonus, the nexdock is actually usable on your lap.
But in the end using a device like this or a mini-pc and a lapdock is still a clumsy experience. Clumsier than a laptop and EGPU, or laptop and desktop.
It’s okay, I guess, if you’re starting from no computers because the last thing you had was the school chromebook that you had to give back, but you could do better on versatility. Really depends a lot on price though.