Chinese device makers have been cranking out low-cost Windows tablets and TV boxes for months, but the new X8 mini PC from Pipo is something a little different. It’s a Windows desktop or TV box that also has a built-in touchscreen.

In other words the Pipo x8 is kind of like a desktop and a tablet combined.

Notebook Italia spotted the Pipo x8 at the HKTDC fair in Hong Kong recently. It should be available in May for around $100.

Update: Geekbuying is taking pre-orders for $150.

pipo x8

The Pipo x8 is a sort of wedge-shaped box with four USB ports, HDMI and Ethernet jacks, a built-in speaker, and a microSD card reader. It supports 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. It has 2GB of RAM and 32GB to 64GB of storage.

On top of the box is a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display with support for 5-point multitouch input. This lets you interact with the computer whether or not it’s connected to a keyboard, mouse, or external display. But the system’s kind of chunky for a tablet and has no battery — it’s pretty clearly designed to be plugged into external hardware.

The system will be available with an Intel Atom Z3735F or Atom Z3736F Bay Trail processor and it supports Windows 8.1 with Bing software. Pipo may also offer a dual-boot model that also runs Android.

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29 replies on “Pipo X8 is a Windows mini PC with its own touchscreen display”

  1. Perfect as a upnp music renderer with cplay or fb2k players.

  2. I would use this as a skype/voip hub. Always on, always powered, no need for usb hub.

  6. WiDi will make this awesome. Slap this on the coffee table for easy control, outputting wirelessly to the big screen. Sure you could do it with HDMI, but that’s a cable to trip over. As to why I wouldn’t just use a real tablet…….

  7. I can only think of one use for such a device. To put into a homemade bartop mame/arcade cabinet.

  8. Karaoke machine. TV connected for the lyrics, panel for song selection.

  10. Would be good PC enclosure for several spinning hard drives inside – server with a screen!

        1. ViewTouch was the first graphical touchscreen point of sale software, in 1986. The ‘look’ you describe can be ascribed to the fact that its graphics are based on textures which are ageless and classical: marble, parchment, leather, sand, etc.. and are compiled into the executable binary to maximize the response speed of both local and remote displays. ViewTouch is workgroup software; after 30 years of improvement and enhancements it is rock solid and its interface is heraled by its users as the most intuitive they’ve ever used. That’s great praise from a very demanding user base – restaurant management and employees. It performs perfectly well on today’s smallest form factors and lowest cost computers, including the Raspberry Pi and various thumbstick computers. The source code compiles without warnings or errors on the latest version of GNU’s C++ compiler (4.9.2), and occupies less than 10 Mb RAM on the computer it’s running on, and since most users are using the X Server, it has virtually no footprint at all on those devices. It stores 100 years of revenue and productivity data in 100 Mb of storage, does not require a relational database management system and can throw its user display/input sessions across the local network and the Internet to users anywhere. It runs simultaneously on displays with resolution as low as 640×400 and as high as 2560×1600. ViewTouch contains extensive amounts of code based on the work of Richard W. Stevens. It can be used on Android devices of any size or resolution without installing the program or any of its data files on the Android devices thanks to a custom SDL X Server developed by Sergii Pylypenko. There are restaurants using ViewTouch in many countries for many years and anyone is free not only to use it, but to improve it, which is something not available in any other comparable world class point of sale software.

          1. Good to see you are still out there Gene………….. Nick at TekVisions fka TAP…..

          2. Thanks, Nick. I’ve got nowhere to go!

            Yes, I remember now that I used to buy touchscreens from you! Good to hear from you and from all appearances you’re doing well. Yes, the solutions business is where it’s at! I wonder how long it will take the restaurant industry to figure out that POS is basically free these days, and that it can run on computers that cost less than $100, or even less than $50!

      1. How I imagine this:
        – Boss, we’re out of displays!
        – No problem, just repackage the rest as HDMI sticks.
        – Boss, now we are out of batteries too, but we found some old displays in a box in the corner!
        – I can work with that.

  13. For the utter chore of owning the most frustrating tablet in the world, they should pay me $100, not the other way around.

    1. integrated display = free windows license. The display is probably cheaper than that license :-p

      1. I am pretty sure free Windows is for tablet. Not a PC with a display built-in.

    2. You could say that for all mini-desktop-PCs, but evidently people have a use for them. Advantages include having built in support for ethernet, multiple USB ports etc. A very useful feature of desktop PCs is Wake-on-LAN, I regularly use this to turn on my desktop PC remotely so I can then stream videos stored there. Not sure if that would be possible over Wifi, or on a tablet even if you could get it connected via ethernet.

      This would be great for a mini-PC hooked up to a TV, or perhaps a fileserver that doesn’t need its own monitor – you can control via the touchscreen as an extra easy means of control.

      1. Yeah, I was thinking this’d be a great replacement for my ancient home theater box that sits under the TV at home.

    3. As others are pointing out, this appears to be designed for use as a durable touchscreen front-end for whatever specialized hardware set-up you may want to configure: POS machine, home theater control, kiosk control panel, control panel for industrial or multimedia equipment (for educational, or business environments), etc.. It’s supposed to cost just $100 and has no-frills graphics specifications, so it sounds exactly like one component to buy to control a larger technological ecosystem.

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