When I was a kid, miniaturization in electronics felt like the cutting edge. Everyone wanted a Walkman and a GameBoy. Even Casio’s calculator watches seemed advanced. I had one with a built-in soccer game that I played until the rubbery buttons wore away. But there was one miniature gadget I always craved: a tiny TV.

In the 80s, tiny portable televisions were expensive, and I wasn’t allowed one. I remember being terribly jealous of a pal who had one, because he could bask in the warm glow of TV under his covers every night, with an extendable aerial poking out of a gap in the sheets. When I saw the TinyTV 2, an impossibly smol retro television, I simply had to have one.

Too Cute

The TinyTV 2 costs $60 and comes in two models: a translucent version shows the inner workings, or you can opt for the brown retro look that’s reminiscent of the wooden casing old TVs had. Both have spindly legs, two working rotary knobs on the front for volume and channels and a power button on top. The 1.14-inch IPS screen has a resolution of 216 x 135 pixels and can display 65,000 colors. There’s also a front-facing speaker and a tiny working infrared remote control.

It may have a retro aesthetic, but the TinyTV 2 packs a Raspberry Pi RP2040 processor and 8 GB of storage. The 150-mAh battery is good for a couple of hours, but you can also plug a USB-C cable (not supplied) into the port around the back. My favorite feature of the TinyTV 2 is that you can convert and add your own videos to make new channels (you can also delete the preloaded options). Maker Tiny Circuits offers a free video converter app for Windows or MacOS that’s very easy to use.

While a 1-inch screen is definitely not how directors would want you to watch their latest movies, it is doable. You can load whatever you want onto these sets, and they can hold around ten hours of video. I loaded one up with home movies and a couple of my daughter’s favorite films, and she loves it. Tiny Circuits even added a tiny static effect and slight delay when you change channels, and the static fuzz reduces to a dot when you turn it off, just like old TV sets.

I also have a TinyTV 2 on my desk. It makes a great ornament, but sometimes, I’ll just turn it on for background noise. I grew up in a house where the TV was always on, and I find it comforting. It also helps me ignore my tinnitus. Cartoons and old black-and-white classics seem especially fitting, but I also have The Shining on mine. Just bear in mind that the sound quality from a speaker this small is limited. Some content sounds a little distorted, and it can’t get that loud.

The remote control is also tiny, but not in proportion (or it would be unusable). It has four buttons for volume up and down and channel up and down. One slight disappointment is that videos always play from the start when you change channels; they don’t remember your place.

Mini Machines

Tiny Circuits started these projects on Kickstarter a few years ago, and it offers an even smaller TV, the TinyTV Mini ($60), with an even tinier 0.6-inch OLED screen with a 64 x 64-pixel resolution, but I think it’s too small. The TinyTV 2 has a far nicer design and is as small as anyone needs to go.

I also tried Thumby ($28), a kind of keychain-sized GameBoy look-alike with five playable retro games like Pong and Snake. It is impressive that something this small works at all, but it is very tough to actually game on. However, I love that Tiny Circuits offers an in-browser code editor (it runs Python), so you can create your own games for it.

No one needs a 1-inch TV, but they are ridiculously perfect for crafters, diorama makers, and even doll houses. The TinyTV 2 may be gimmicky, but the combination of wonder at how tiny it is and the lovely nostalgic glow it provides makes this my favorite desk ornament. And now I can watch TV under the covers at night without bothering my wife.