Refinery Device Selection: Three Positions Inside One Site
A Refinery Is Not One Environment, and the Devices Are Not Interchangeable
The mistake in refinery computing is treating the site as a single place. It is not. A refinery has at least three positions, and the equipment question is different at each. There is the control room, where the air is conditioned and the real constraint is how many screens the operator runs. There is the unit battery outside the fence, where equipment lives in a cabinet next to a pump and the constraint is heat, dust and a DIN rail. And there is the process area itself — the distillation columns, the compressor hall, the tank farm — where a classified zone exists and a device without a hazardous-area certificate cannot legally cross the boundary at all.
This comparison sets three Hotus units against two competitors, and the honest finding needs stating plainly before anything else: none of the three Hotus devices carries an ATEX, IECEx or Ex ib certificate. The highest ingress rating among them is IP54, which is a dust and water rating and not a hazardous-area approval. Both competitors in this comparison carry Ex ib IIC T4 Gb marks and are published for petroleum, chemical, gas and pharmaceutical duty. Inside a classified zone, that difference is not a specification gap — it is the difference between a device that may be carried in and one that may not.
Outside that boundary the three Hotus units are genuinely capable, and each answers a different position. The Palm-sized miniPC is the control-room or cabinet machine. The HCAR5000 MI is the duty-office terminal. The ST11-U is the outdoor patrol unit, and its IP54 is the most robust figure the range publishes.
Bartec Agile X3: The Fully Equipped Reference Unit
The Bartec Agile X3 sits at the top of this comparison on both certification and price, published at $2,000 to $2,800 for petroleum, chemical, gas, mining, pharmaceutical and defence duty. Its parameters are correspondingly complete: a 5.5-inch FHD+ panel at 2160 by 1080 with glove and wet-hand touch, a Qualcomm QCM6490 octa-core at 2.7GHz, 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage and microSD expansion, Android 14, IP68, a two-metre drop rating, a 5500mAh hot-swappable battery, a 2D scan engine, 48-megapixel rear and 16-megapixel front cameras, 5G with Wi-Fi 6E and GPS/GLONASS.
The certification is the headline: Ex ib IIC T4 Gb. That mark is what permits the unit to be carried into a classified zone, and it is why the price sits where it does. A refinery buying a fleet for process-area work has effectively one class of answer, and this is it.
Hyatta Model 8: The Same Certificate at a Third of the Price
The Hyatta Model 8 carries a broadly comparable published specification at $700 to $1,000: the same 5.5-inch FHD+ 2160 by 1080 panel with glove and wet-hand touch, the same Qualcomm QCM6490 at 2.7GHz, 6GB of RAM with 128GB and microSD, Android 13, IP68, a 1.8-metre drop rating, a 5200mAh hot-swappable battery, 2D scanning, 16-megapixel rear and 8-megapixel front cameras, and 5G with Wi-Fi 6 plus GPS/GLONASS. It also carries the Ex ib IIC T4 Gb mark.
The difference from the Bartec is not certification but commitment: the storage is half, the battery is 300mAh smaller, the drop rating is 200mm shorter, the front camera is half, and the price is roughly a third. For a refinery running a large patrol team inside the process area, that ratio is usually the whole argument, and it is worth testing on site rather than taking the specification sheet's word for which duty cycle each unit survives.
Hotus ST11-U: The Outdoor Patrol Unit, and Its IP54 Ceiling
The Hotus ST11-U is the only one of the three with a form factor built for the yard. It runs an Intel Core i5-1235U at ten cores and twelve threads, boosting to 4.4GHz at 15W, with an optional i7-1255U, on Windows 11 Pro, carrying Iris Xe graphics. Memory is 8GB or 16GB rising to 64GB; storage runs 128GB to 512GB on M.2 drives.
Protection is IP54 with MIL-STD-810G certification and 1.2-metre drop resistance, and it runs from -20 to 55 degrees. The 10.1-inch IPS panel at 1200 by 1920 is quoted at 450 nits, the highest of the three Hotus units here, with ten-point touch supporting stylus and wet-hand operation. The 7.6V 6000mAh battery is removable and takes 65W Type-C fast charging, roughly two and a half hours to full, with about five and a half hours of use. Connectivity is Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and global 4G LTE, with BeiDou, GPS and GLONASS and an optional UM960 high-precision module. Optional expansions cover 1D/2D scanning, UHF RFID, fingerprint, 13.56MHz NFC and TPM 2.0. The body measures 268.9 by 176.8 by 18mm at 1190 grams.
Two honest limits. IP54 is a lower ingress rating than the IP68 the two certified handsets carry, which matters in a tank farm where wash-down is routine. And it is a dust rating, not a gas rating — no ingress figure of any kind substitutes for an Ex ib mark once a classified boundary is crossed.
📱 Hotus Palm-Sized miniPC: The Cabinet Outside the Fence
The HOTUS MQi12 Palm-Sized Mini PC belongs inside a cabinet or on a control-room desk, not in a hand. It takes Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors from a Core i3-1215U up to an i9-12900HK at fourteen cores and twenty threads, with Iris Xe graphics up to 96 execution units. Memory is dual SO-DIMM DDR4 at 3200MT/s up to 64GB, or onboard LPDDR5 at 5200MT/s in 12, 16 or 24GB.
The display output is what makes it a control-room machine: triple output through dual HDMI 2.1 at 4096 by 2304 and a full-function Type-C at 8K, 60Hz. Storage is two M.2 NVMe slots supporting up to 4TB, and networking is a 2.5G RJ45 port with M.2 Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. Ports total five USB 3.2 Type-A, two HDMI, one Type-C with 10Gbps and power delivery, audio and a DC jack. BIOS features include integrated CPU TPM 2.0, auto power-on and UEFI diskless boot. The chassis is 113 by 113mm at 800 grams in PC and ABS, running Windows 11 or Linux on DC 19V.
Certification is CE, FCC and RoHS — compliance marking, not hazardous-area approval. That makes this unit correct for a control room, a pump-house cabinet outside the classified boundary, or a data-collection node on an asset that sits in a non-hazardous area, and wrong anywhere else.
Hotus HCAR5000 MI: The Duty Office Machine
The HCAR5000 MI takes AMD Ryzen 5000H silicon in three variants — the 5900HX, 5800H and 5600H — with Radeon Graphics or Radeon Vega 10, on DDR4 3200MHz memory expandable to 64GB. Storage combines M.2 2280 SSDs from 128GB to 1TB with optional 2.5-inch 7200rpm hard drives of 500GB or 1TB.
Output runs through DisplayPort 2.0b and a full-function Type-C with 4K support. The port list is one RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, three USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, DisplayPort 2.0b, the Type-C, a 3.5mm jack and dual mic/audio combo jacks. The chassis measures 202 by 212 by 65mm at 2455 grams, on Windows 10 or 11 with Linux soft-route support, certified CE, FCC and RoHS.
The Ryzen 5000H silicon and the dual SSD-plus-hard-disk architecture are what separate it from the Palm-sized unit: this is the machine for a duty office running a historian client or a Linux gateway, where disk capacity and sustained CPU matter more than three 8K displays. Like the Palm-sized miniPC it carries compliance certification only, and it belongs outside the classified boundary.
Specification Comparison: Three Hotus Units Against Two Certified Handsets
| Hotus ST11-U | IP54, MIL-STD-810G, 1.2m drop. No hazardous-area certificate | Intel Core i5-1235U, 10 cores, to 4.4GHz; up to 64GB | 10.1-inch IPS, 1200x1920, 450 nits | 7.6V 6000mAh removable, 65W Type-C, about 5.5 hours | 268.9 x 176.8 x 18mm, 1190g | Not published on the product page |
| Hotus Palm-sized miniPC | CE, FCC, RoHS. No ingress rating and no hazardous-area certificate | Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake, i3 to i9, up to 14 cores; up to 64GB DDR4 | Triple output: dual HDMI 2.1 4K plus Type-C 8K | DC 19V / 3.42A, mains adapter | 113 x 113mm, 800g | Not published on the product page |
| Hotus HCAR5000 MI | CE, FCC, RoHS. No ingress rating and no hazardous-area certificate | AMD Ryzen 5000H (5900HX/5800H/5600H); up to 64GB DDR4 | DisplayPort 2.0b plus Type-C, 4K supported | Mains powered, dual audio and combo jacks | 202 x 212 x 65mm, 2455g | Not published on the product page |
| Bartec Agile X3 | IP68, 2m drop, Ex ib IIC T4 Gb | Qualcomm QCM6490 octa-core 2.7GHz; 8GB + 256GB | 5.5-inch FHD+, 2160x1080, glove and wet-hand touch | 5500mAh hot-swappable | Not published in the source database | $2,000-2,800 (about CNY 14,400-20,000) |
| Hyatta Model 8 | IP68, 1.8m drop, Ex ib IIC T4 Gb | Qualcomm QCM6490 octa-core 2.7GHz; 6GB + 128GB | 5.5-inch FHD+, 2160x1080, glove and wet-hand touch | 5200mAh hot-swappable | Not published in the source database | $700-1,000 (about CNY 5,000-7,200) |
Choosing by Position, Not by Specification
| Inside a classified process zone | Hyatta Model 8 or Bartec Agile X3 | Both carry Ex ib IIC T4 Gb. The Hyatta is a third of the price with the same certificate; the Bartec buys storage, battery and a 2-metre drop rating |
| Outdoor patrol between units, outside the classified boundary | ST11-U | IP54 with MIL-STD-810G, -20 to 55 degrees, 450 nits and a removable battery with 65W fast charging |
| Control room desk running multiple displays | Palm-sized miniPC | Triple output through dual HDMI 2.1 and Type-C 8K, 800 grams and 113mm square, TPM 2.0 and auto power-on |
| Duty office running a historian client or a Linux gateway | HCAR5000 MI | Ryzen 5000H with dual SSD plus hard-disk storage and up to 64GB, on a 202 x 212 x 65mm chassis |
What a Refinery Specification Does Not Settle
Two questions decide a refinery device purchase that no datasheet answers. The first is where the boundary actually runs, because it moves. A unit that sits outside the fence today can be reclassified when a tank is added, and a fleet specification written around today's zoning can become invalid after the next capital project. The zoning map, not the device list, is the document a buyer should start from.
The second is how much work happens inside the zone. A refinery with two operators doing rounds inside a classified area and forty people doing work in the yard has a very different purchasing profile from one with a large process-area patrol team, and the second case is the one where the certified handset is not a premium purchase but the only purchase. Writing that ratio down before choosing hardware is the whole job.
Sites pairing refinery deployment with vehicle-mounted or rugged tablet work can review the full rugged tablet lineup for other chassis sizes, while the mini PC range covers the control-room and cabinet positions. Further device comparisons sit in the device comparison archive.