This keyboard PC with powerful AMD Ryzen APU is one of the niftiest ideas we've seen in a while

Here's something a bit different: a mini PC that's been tucked away inside a keyboard, and it's a seriously portable peripheral (15 x 10cm) at that.

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This keyboard PC stands out particularly due to its compact nature, and the relatively powerful components inside (Image Credit: Linglong on Bilibili / Tom's Hardware)

This is an innovative device revealed by a Chinese manufacturer, Linglong, who showed off the keyboard PC in a presentation on Bilibili (as flagged up by Tom's Hardware).

The computer-keyboard hybrid folds in half so it'll actually fit in a pocket (and that feat is actually demonstrated in the presentation for the device).

The device plays host to quite the array of PC components. The engine is an AMD 'Hawk Point' APU (Ryzen 7 8840U), offering plenty of pep and backed up with 16GB of RAM plus 512GB storage with the base model. (There's also a higher-end configuration that runs with a more capacious 32GB of RAM and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD).

That's serviceably nippy hardware given the size of this mini PC, and another nifty touch is that the keyboard also has an integrated trackpad. It's battery-powered (60Wh), of course, and so all you need is a display to plug it into, and you already have your keyboard (the device itself) and trackpad on hand - everything required to get going.

You can always use your phone as the display, or indeed a pair of VR or AR glasses, as Linglong points out, and apparently the PC is good for a 10-hour battery life of light computing usage (add your own seasoning with vendor claims, as ever, and it will also depend on whether the screen you're hooked up to needs powering).

All in all, this seems like a pretty smart idea for a portable PC - it weighs 800g, in case you were wondering - and the keyboard even has decent connectivity considering its form factor. That includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, and for wired ports, you get two USB-C (USB4, USB 3.2) and a USB-A (USB 3.0).

The downside? It's not on sale yet, and in fact, there are only 200 units available for beta testing right now. Beyond that, we don't have a release date, and don't know whether it'll even be launched anywhere other than China - that might be unlikely.

Still, it's interesting to see novel ideas gain traction in the PC space, and we could see imitations if the keyboard PC gains some popularity over in Asia. With more and more powerful APUs in the pipeline for the future, these kinds of devices certainly stand a chance of carving out a niche.