HP appears to be all about unusual PC form factors-- the Pavilion Wave is a mini PC built around a 360-degree speaker, while the Elite Slice features a modular compact design.
The Pavilion Wave looks less like a PC and more like a piece of audio gear. It features a triangular, fabric-coated chassis and an integrated speaker complete with a parabolic reflector the company says provides "superior" 360-degree audio for one's music and movies. Web chats are also catered for, since the PC carries dual-microphones.
Technical specifications include support for up to quad-core desktop CPUs, 2TB HDD, 128GB SSD, 16GB DDR4 RAM and an optional Radeon R9 M470 GPU. Connectivity comes through wifi, x3 USB, x1 HDMI, x1 DisplayPort (allowing it to push video to two 4K displays) and ethernet ports.
On the other hand the Elite Slice is reminiscent of the Intel take on the mini PC, the NUC. Aimed mainly at enterprise customers, it comes in a squat chassis measuring 42cm-square and 3.5cm tall housing a CPU up to Intel Core i7-6700T, 32GB RAM and 512GB storage, together with ethernet, 802.11ac wifi, x2 USB-C, x1 DisplayPort and x1 HDMI ports.
As mentioned earlier the PC is modular. The bottom features a special connector with a locking mechanism allowing one to stack additional modules on top of each other. So far HP revealed a pair of such modules-- an audio module featuring speakers and a microphone array, and an optical drive module. In addition the main unit's cover is also replaceable with either a wireless charger or a "collaboration cover" adding a set of physical controls for conferencing software such as Skype.
For customers wanting for mounting the bottom of the Elite Slice system can be replaced with a VESA plate for mounting on standard VESA mounts.
Both Pavilion Wave and Elite Slice are available from October 2016.
