Ben Makes Everything's Latest Build Is a Desktop-Class LattePanda Mu Handheld Cyberdeck
Slick chassis and some bonus features make up for a very impressive throwback to the days before smartphones.
Mononymous YouTuber Ben, of the channel Ben Makes Everything, has designed a handheld cyberdeck with desktop-class performance — cramming a LattePanda Mu system-on-module into a compact form factor.
"This is a totally custom handheld computer I designed and built," Ben says in the introduction to his latest project video. "IT can do all the things that a full desktop PC can, but in a tiny form factor. When I was a kid, before smartphones took over the world, I always dreamed of having a full computer in the palm of my hand. Handheld PCs never really got off the ground because smartphones kind of stole their thunder. They were glacially slow, had similar ergonomics to a paving stone, and cost more than my first car. But despite all of that, I still want one. So let's just build it. I mean, how hard could it be?"
The heart of the project is the LattePanda Mu, a compact system-on-module built around the buyer's choice of an Intel Processor N100 or Intel Core i3-N305 and supporting up to 16GB of LPDDR54 memory plus 64GB of on-board eMMC storage. To this, Ben has connected a thumb-centric QWERTY keyboard inset within a slick chassis, below a 7" Full HD (1920×1080) 16:9 full-color display. There's also a full-size HDMI port for use with external displays.
Ben wasn't happy stopping the feature list there, though. For gaming, there are left and right trigger buttons, while a repurposed Nintendo JoyCon acts as a mouse-joystick. Four USB ports provide expansion potential, and there's a dedicated scroll wheel based on a rotary encoder. Power is provided from an internal 4.5Ah battery pack with USB Type-C charging, with a dedicated three-digit seven-segment display showing the current charge level — and a barrel-jack power output for driving external devices.
"Performance-wise, it's very impressive for an SBC [Single-Board Computer]," Ben notes of the finished gadget, "although somewhat below that of a normal laptop. It obviously doesn't have a discrete graphics card, so gaming is going to be limited to older titles or newer ones that have much simpler graphics, but this wasn't designed to compete with a [Valve] Steam Deck or anything like that."
The full video is available embedded above and on Ben's YouTube channel; design files had not been publicly released at the time of writing.