The late Sir Clive Sinclair is famous for giving us the ZX Spectrum, but he was a prolific inventor who also created calculators, watches and even modes of transport.
It seems that this creative streak runs in the family, as his nephew, Grant Sinclair, has produced a line of his own products – the most recent of which is a gift card-sized handheld called GamerCard.
"I conceived the idea for creating a gift card size gaming computer while browsing magazines in a WHSmith store, as I have since the 1980s," says Sinclair. "I was interested that Gift Cards are distributed in all categories of stores almost everywhere, usually positioned in prime location and selling in the billions of units - I thought this could be a really great way to make a computer available to the masses. WHSmith played an important role in the history of Sinclair as were the first UK high street retailer to sell personal computers, starting with the ZX81 in 1981, the first computer to ship 1 million units globally."
Boasting a 4" IPS screen and powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, GamerCard is being promoted as a super-portable, super-thin gaming platform capable of running emulators and Pico-8 software, as well as other things (ports of Switch titles Bloo Kid 2 and Astroblaze DX are available).
It's certainly an impressive achievement, but with a price of £125, it's perhaps a little underpowered when compared to other handhelds on the market. It only has 128GB of internal storage, too, but the built-in Qwiic connector is a nice touch; using it, you can connect all kinds of devices to the GamerCard.
Factor in the USB-C and HDMI ports, and you've got a tiny platform which can potentially become something more substantial.