You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Nothing fancy, just want something cheap to run Zwift (so will need some sort of graphics) in the garage and stay there. My daughter has ‘adopted’ my MacBook for homeschool and having to book my own laptop is a pain.
I’ve got a monitor / keyboard and all that
preferably a refurb, is there anything £100-£200 or is this a pipe dream.
Win 10, Mini or micro desktop sort of thing
Zwift seems to run OK with low quality settings on even basic hardware. My old Zwift PC was a Core 2 Duo with the cheapest Radeon 5450 graphics card I could find and it did OK. Didn't look that pretty but it worked.
This gives you a good idea of what you can expect:
https://zwiftalizer.com/benchmarks
If you're in Yorkshire you can have it if you want, it's just taking up room.
To be honest though if you're spending that sort of money you might be better off with an Apple TV.
any way of hooking your phone up to the monitor? youd not be able to use the companion app but it would work.
Using ANT+ so Apple TV & phone is out
Not in Yorkshire but ta 👍
The ace pc mini pc’s on amazon look pretty good and are well reviewed - the £89 one with 2gb/32gb is the same level of spec as a 4th gen Apple TV.
Should do zwift fine, it’s not hungry. My ATV runs it better than my MacBook Air does.
I don`t know what Zwift needs as graphics , but a cheap low profile graphic card can be added to one of these HP SFF 8300 , or USFF if not needed , on ebay from £65 onwards - cheap powerful - up to i5 quad core , but most importantly hundreds of thousands around for spares , and well built , designed to be fixed easily - no tools and quiet.
I have 4 refurbed ones running under my care for last 2 years - 0 issues.
Couple of weeks ago I bought a ex-office Dell Optiplex 3040 Micro off eBay for £185...i5 with 8Gb Ram & 128gb SSD, wifi inbuilt (not all have that). Just wanted it for Office and general web surfing. Hooked it up to the keyboard, monitor etc I had at home for work (with a switching device so i just press a button to swap from work pc to home pc) and it has so far been a fantastic little machine: very fast including fast boot, small footprint and quiet.
Considering getting my daughter one now for general school work, web browsing and watching youtube/netflix etc although a quick check suggests the ones on eBay now ain't quite the bargain price i got.
Something like the Northpole Engineering Cast, which bridges between Ant+ sensors and bluetooth, would give you the option of using your iPhone, or getting a cheap iPad and using that for Zwift, with your phone still running ZC.
For Zwift check if a PC on a stick could handle it. That way you'd save a load of space, would be much easier to manage without a proper desk.
AppleTV is your best bet for a cheap, decent experience. The 4iiii Viiiiva HRM works as an ANT+ bridge, you connect all your ANT+ sensors to it and it rebroadcasts them via bluetooth to your AppleTV, which also gets around the AppleTV restriction on 3 BT devices max (including the AppleTV remote).
See here.. https://zwiftinsider.com/viiiiva-review/
I had previously tried to set Zwift up for FiL on an old laptop only to discover that it won't run on essentially any integrated GPU which rules out almost all 'cheap' PC solutions.
Doesn't hurt that the AppleTV is an excellent streaming device for Netflix/Plex/Amazon/Disney+/Apple Music/+++
Quad 6th gen i5 / 8GB / 128GB SSD Optiplex at Dell Refurb for £215 (desktop35 discount code) at https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/dell-optiplex-5040-57487.html
4GB RAM cheaper but I wouldn't. No Wifi.
These are refurbed enterprise/corporate systems so well built and high quality and based on my experiences with equivalent refurb Dell laptops will use the Win7 license to seamlessly rebuild as Win10 using the standard download installer from MS website.
Itzoo does cheap reconditioned PC's also eBay has 20% off certain sellers at the moment.
If you do decide on the Apple TV route BT are selling grade B 4K ones for £130. I’ve got one on the way 🙂
Zwift works fine on my Surface Pro 4 which has integrated Intel HD graphics.
It zoo
Or
Scan
Use both
If you've got an Android mobile, see if it runs Zwift, it's very useable... Been many a time where Mrs is using the Surface Pro 4, so I've used my Xiaomi Mi A2 instead with bar holder https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07MDZQLDG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s02
Have a look for refurbished HP Elite Desk 800 G2 - I run Zwift in HD, plus netflix/music. i5 4 series, 8gb ram, 250gb SSD. Cost under £200 if you look about.