Read more: Acer launches seven new gaming monitors across Nitro and Predator families — tri-mode panels, QD-OLEDs, Mini LEDs, 1,000 Hz, and more
With so much of the world’s flash memory capacity being gobbled up by AI hardware, most storage makers don’t seem to be focused on consumer innovation. But Lexar hasn’t taken its eye off the portable SSD space, showing off its Muse, a drive about the size of a credit card – and a few cards thick at 3.15 x 1.89 x 0.15 inches. And bulk matters when your drive is designed primarily to attach magnetically to the back of your phone for recording video. The Muse does this with a magnetic sleeve that you slide the drive into, much like a card holder.Lexar says the svelte design was achieved through a combination of a custom thin PCB, high-density NAND stacking, and an internal design that’s more integrated than most external SSDs. There are, of course, some downsides to the ultra-thin design, like the lack of space for a USB-C port, which Lexar has replaced with pogo pins on the back and a proprietary magnetic SnapLink cable. Capacity is also limited to just 512GB and 1TB. The 10 Gbps drive is expected to arrive later this year. — Matt Safford
Read more: Lexar announces ‘world’s thinnest portable SSD’ in celebration of the brand’s 30th anniversary – Lexar Muse drive achieves 0.15-inch thickness with proprietary pogo-pin cable, magnetic sleeve for phone mounting
With AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 finally launching in systems, it wasn't surprising to see it in a handful of mini PCs and workstations. But it was surprising to find it in a NAS.
The Minisforum N5 Max takes the Gorgon Halo part (it's also available with last-gen Strix Halo) and puts it in a five-bay network-attached storage device. Beyond those five HDD bays (up to 32TB each, or 160TB total), five M.2 SSD slots allow up to another 40TB, giving this device up to 200TB of space for your files. Do you want Qwen 3.8 and 200TB of files? Because on the show floor, the company showed Qwen 3.8 navigating 200TB of files.
The idea, according to Minisforum, is that your agents are running on the same device as all of your files, making for one convenient local device. The system comes with the 16-core, 32-thread processor, AMD Radeon 8065S graphics, and up to 192GB of LPDDR5x unified memory. It's likely to come at the end of September, and while reps for Minisforum didn't have a price, they suggested it could be over $7,000, just like the company’s upcoming Gorgon Halo workstation.The system supports the company's MinisCloud OS, Linux, Proxmox, and Windows 11. So in theory, you could use this as your primary computer. But this is one of the only pieces of AI computing furniture we saw here at IFA. — Andrew E. Freedman
Read more: Minisforum launches local AI solutions at IFA 2026 — AI Agent NAS N5 and AI Mini Workstation MS-S1 use AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 processors designed to run models locally
Acer’s Project DualPlay Mini is the platonic ideal of a concept device, in that it’s equal parts interesting, impractical, and unlikely to be a product you can actually buy. It’s a handheld clamshell that transitions into a netbook-style device, giving you access to a keyboard so you can get work done on the go.
The device is unsurprisingly chunky, and the keyboard is decisively impractical, but concepts are for trying out new ideas. The device folds in half, but it doesn’t feature two displays. Rather, the display is set on a separate hinge that can rotate to the front in handheld mode, or to the back in laptop mode. Acer told us at IFA that the device comes with a Panther Lake chip, though it’s unclear if that’s Panther Lake proper or one of Intel’s cut-down G3 SoCs for handhelds.
The device features a fingerprint reader, along with two USB-C ports (likely Thunderbolt 4) and two back buttons, typical of most handhelds. It adopts the same cooling system as the Predator Atlas 8, Acer’s traditional G3 handheld. Although it’s not clear if we’ll eventually see the DualPlay Mini on store shelves, we were able to see the device in-person at IFA, showcasing that it’s much further along than a few renders — Jake Roach
Read more: Acer’s wild Project DualPlay Mini is a foldable handheld that doubles as a netbook
Andrew E. Freedman Social Links Navigation Senior Editor Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net . You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01
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- Taiwan cracks down on tech businesses with illegal Chinese ownership — 166 investigations and at least 36 convictions since 2020
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- Minisforum launches local AI solutions at IFA 2026 — AI Agent NAS N5 and AI Mini Workstation MS-S1 use AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 processors designed to run mode
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