New shipping date !
Now that all the factories and vendors we are working with have resumed work for a couple of weeks already, we have finally enough visibility to be able to provide a new shipping date. The original schedule before Covid-19 was to ship early April, the new revised shipping date is End of June 2020.
Compensation freebies
To apologize for this delay we will add to each pre-ordered unit the following freebies :
- USB-C to HDMI cable ( supports 4K @ 60Hz ).
- USB-C to USB3.0 cable ( supports 5 Gbps ).
This way you will be able to enjoy Helios64 Display Mode, and Direct-Attached-Storage (DAS) Mode.
Note: These freebies will only apply to all the past pre-orders and any new pre-order made before March 15th 2020.
End of pre-order discount
The pre-order discount of USD $10 will stop end of this week, so after March 15th the Helios64 Full Bundle will be back to normal price of USD $295.
Design update
Since everything get delayed and factory were closed for six weeks between CNY and Covid-19 outbreak we decided to take the opportunity to improve a bit the design on the power circuitry and built-in UPS. We also added USB2.0 interface to the M.2 interface in order to make the M.2 interface support more use cases (e.g adding NPU extension card).
Another change to be noted on this new revision (rev 1.1), while originally we were planning to use the Rockchip SoC RK3399 “K” variant, we unfortunately didn’t manage to secure the RK3399K part at the price that was agreed with vendor end last year. Again because of Covid-19 some parts price have increased a lot because inventories are getting low. So we will use the RK3399 version. The only difference is that the SoC frequency is clocked at 1.8GHz instead of 2.0GHz. Actually there isn’t notable performance change in term of I/O performances and anyhow we will offer a safe way to overclock to 2.0GHz since our large heatsink allows it safely.
About shipping
We have received some questions about shipping origin and import taxes. So to clarify, we will be shipping from China, and the total value we will declare is 200 USD per unit. So if you live in a country (e.g EU zone) which requires to pay taxes on imported goods, you will need to calculate based on the declared value how much taxes you are expected to pay on delivery.
We are still working at trying to introduce a Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) option for EU Zone which will help to save some money by collecting upfront the import taxes and avoiding admin fees from courier services. If we manage to find the right DDP service we will make the option also available to existing pre-orders. We will keep you updated on this topic in the coming weeks.
New payment mode (Crypto)
We are now accepting crypto currencies payment through the Crypto.com Pay platform.
Crypto.com Pay Checkout currently accepts the following cryptocurrencies:
- Crypto.com Coin (CRO)
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ripple (XRP)
- Litecoin (LTC)
Note: When the customers choose any cryptocurrencies other than CRO, Crypto.com Pay will exchange the chosen cryptocurrency into CRO on behalf of the customers.