Considered Gear
Plain-English reviews and buying guides for running your own technology at home — local AI you own, the maker workshop, and home automation that answers to you, not the cloud.
Run real AI on a box in your own house — no monthly bill, no company reading your chats. What it costs, what it can do, and what to buy.
Explore Local AI 023D printers, small electronics, single-board computers, the tools on the bench. The stuff that turns an idea into a thing you can hold.
Explore Maker 03Lights, sensors, locks and voice that keep working when the internet does not — because the brains live in your house.
Explore Home AutomationThe current pick
Four ways to run your own AI, from a $520 mini PC to a proper 128 GB machine. What each one can actually do, what it costs to buy and to run, and which one is right for you.
Read the guide →A mini PC the size of a hardback book that runs a capable AI model entirely on its own. It won't out-think the big services, but after a month I stopped paying for one. Here's the honest picture.
128 GB of shared memory in a small box, running large AI models that a normal graphics card can't fit. It costs $1,999, and unlike most mini PCs you can take it apart.
Apple's small desktop turns out to be one of the best-value machines for running AI at home — if you buy the memory right at checkout and accept that you can never change it later.
A graphics card from 2020 that costs around $690 used and remains the cheapest way to the fastest local-AI experience — if you have a full-size PC to put it in and don't mind the power bill.
Four ways to run your own AI, from a $520 mini PC to a proper 128 GB machine. What each one can actually do, what it costs to buy and to run, and which one is right for you.
A plain-English explainer on running AI models on your own hardware — what it means, what it costs, what you give up, and why it's the front door to everything else we cover here.