It’s all about tablets, hybrids and AIOs now, but even older form factors still have a market and they are by no means boring or obsolete. Earlier this year Asus showcased its new VivoPC series and the first units are apparently in a shipping container somewhere off Antwerp.

However, several retailers are already listing the new mini-PCs and the prices are not bad at all, at least when it comes to the entry level ViviPC VM40B. It’s based on a dual-core Celeron 1007U (Ivy Bridge) clocked at 1.5GHz and the cheapest SKU ships with a rather paltry 2GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive. USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0 are on board and we must admit we love the understated design – it should look good in any living room. Prices start at just €219, which is pretty competitive all things considered it doesn't exactly look like a cheap €200 PC, does it?

However, if a Celeron isn’t enough, the VivoPC VC60 series offers a choice of Ivy-based Core i3 and Core i5. The entry level SKU has a Core i3-3110M dual-core processor clocked at 2.4GHz and it’s priced at €349. It ships with 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. The beefier Core i5-3210M version is priced at €429, with the same storage-RAM combo.

The biggest downside to such systems is relatively slow storage, courtesy of 2.5-inch drives. Most vendors still use 5400rpm units, although it is possible Asus went for marginally faster 7200rpm drives, but we wouldn’t bet on it. None of the SKUs offer a hybrid hard drive or an SSD. There’s no barebones version, either, at least not yet.