Abstract. Mardesic and Rubin (1989) introduced approximate inverse systems of metric compacta by the conditions (A1)*-(A3)*. Mardesic and Watanabe (1988) introduced approximate inverse systems of topological spaces by the conditions (A1)-(A3). In this note we show that any approximate inverse system of metric compacta satisfies (A1)-(A3) if and only if it satisfies (A1)*-(A3)* for some matrices (see Theorem 1).S. Mardesic and L. Rubin [ 1 ] introduced the notion of approximate inverse system AA = {(Xa, da), £a,Paa>» A} of metric compacta. Hence, (A, <) is a directed preordered infinite set. (Xa, da) is a compactum endowed with a metric da , and paa< '■ Xa> -* Xa is a mapping defined whenever a < a' and is such that paa is the identity mapping. The real numbers ea > 0, a e A, are called numerical meshes. We require the following conditions:(Al)* (Va2 >aX> a)da(PaalPala1 , Paa2) < Sa ■ (A2)* (Va e A)(\jn > 0)(3a' > a)(\/a2 > a. > a')da(paaipaia2, paaf) < r¡.