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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Nice, but I wish there was a "Reputable Brand" or "Warranty" filter.
A lot of these boxes are made by the same OEM, and branded a thousand different ways under various names specifically for price fixing on large marketplace portals online - different colors, different cases, but same features without a warranty.
A lot of these fake brand names come out of companies who simply change names once they hit a certain number of bad reviews on marketplaces. Same shitty hardware, different brand name. Beelink and Minisforum are legit, but 'KingHive Pro' is probably made by 'MiniKing', and also sells things under "GamerKing", for example.
I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I'm quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn't pick another one, and I would have liked a "reputable brand" search function.
Next time, check out Level1Techs on YouTube. Wendell reviews a lot of these devices, and he'll give pretty good feedback on what's legit and what's not. Ho has reviewed MinisForum for years and has consistently recommended them. Just be careful, because he also reviews the more sketchy devices and sometimes recommends them (but with caveats), so don't assume that because it is covered, that it's legit.
Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that's accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.
Yeah, I might end up getting one for that. My current TV doesn't have ads, but does have enough smart features to have a Jellyfin app, so I'm good for now. But my SO wants a bigger TV, so that may end up being sooner than later.
Beelink are solid in my opinion, but I was in the same boat, I picked one at random that had the specs I wanted.
I was mainly looking for used ones like Optiplex, Thinkcenter etc when I made this. Hence those brand filters. Thought they were a much better deal than a beelink, so I guess the site is optimized for that. Oh also can you send the link for the KingHive Pro listing? Might be able to filter out brands like that.
Those were just made up brands, but you can see what I mean if you look through Amazon, eBay, Alibab...etc.
From your own tool you can see these brands stand out:
Some extra context: https://news.risky.biz/risky-biz-news-acemagic-mini-pcs-shipped-with-pre-installed-malware
'AceMagic' AKA 'AceMagician' AKA 'AcePuter' AKA 'AceMini' depending on your market.
Those amazon links are hand curated, and those are good brands and models. I'll be on the lookout for those shady brands, thanks!