Pine64 Unleashes $200 Rockchip-Powered Pinebook Pro Linux Laptop

https://hothardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-rival-pine64-unleashes-200-pinebook-pro-linux-laptop#V7YJkhDrjbkSpcum.02

by jrepinc • 7 years ago

150 78 7 years ago

jaytaylor• 7 years ago

The battery sounds small, since it's only 2 or 3x that of my phone. Other than that, what incredible specs for only $200!

baybal22• 7 years ago

10Ah * 3.7V = 37Wh

krastanov2• 7 years ago

I am pretty sure you mean "Ah" (i.e. current * time, i.e. charge, not "A/h", which is rate of change of current or second derivative of charge). Similarly it is "Wh" (i.e. energy, i.e. "power * time", not "W/h" which is the second derivative of energy).

sigstoat• 7 years ago

ignoring the issue of units, that's overly optimistic for batteries. the voltage drops as charge is depleted.

solarkraft• 7 years ago

This is not unusual for a laptop, although on the lower side.

What's the power draw?

noobermin• 7 years ago

It's a SBC so its power draw isn't that high. The question of course is mainly what the power requirements of the screen is.

JohnJamesRambo• 7 years ago

Can’t wait to read some reviews on this thing, sounds like exactly what I’m looking for.

RodgerTheGreat• 7 years ago

Pretty decent specs for the price, but unfortunately it appears that they've stuck with the same bizarre keyboard layout as the older iterations of the Pinebook- take a look at where they map out the slashes and double-quote! The layout of the physical keys would make it tricky to remap them to something more familiar.

HomeDeLaPot• 7 years ago

What the hell? I use @ and " all day! I'd love to hear the reasoning behind swapping the two

jplayer014• 7 years ago

It looks like the UK layout to me. I remember the @ being in a weird place. I'll probably just change the sw layout to US. I already do the same with German keyboards.

aidenn03• 7 years ago

That keyboard is an ISO standard. Their recent blog articles have indicated they will be offering an ANSI layout[1] once they find appropriate hardware.

1:https://www.pine64.org/2019/06/06/june-2019-news-pinephone-p...

dmix3• 7 years ago

ISO looks like a Macbook keyboard. Haven't seen a laptop like the ANSI one before in a long time.

neilv• 7 years ago

Direct links:

https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

https://store.pine64.org/?product=14-pinebook-pro-linux-lapt...

NikolaeVarius• 7 years ago

I'm almost tempted, been eyeing a chromebook for low power lightweight work.

jplayer014• 7 years ago

This seems pretty cool. All I'm missing is an estimate of the possible battery life.

aidenn03• 7 years ago

Anyone know what the status is for mainline linux support for the rockchip used in this? Last I checked things like USB3 didn't work in mainline and am wondering if things have improved.

redwards510• 7 years ago

Really want to pull the trigger on this, the Privacy Switches to disable camera, mic, wifi at the firmware level appealed to me. If you search around you'll find a video the creator made demo'ing skipless 1080p/4k video playback. However, it's probably prudent to wait for some of the initial bugs to get ironed out first.

They also claim to be making no profit off of these.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

Wish they would let you donate an additional amount if its not making a profit. I want to see them build more things. I kept wanting the former model but they never got back to me on it. I put my email several times.

24gttghh2• 7 years ago

Small numbers (1-3) of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.

I get that it's a $200 laptop, and it's open source which is commendable, but... this disclaimer does not instill much confidence.

rjsw2• 7 years ago

I have an 11" Pinebook, can't see any dead pixels on it.

Wheaties466• 7 years ago

I also have the 11" pine book and I do not have any dead pixels as well.

komali2• 7 years ago

Confidence costs money.

Definitely don't buy it if you're looking for confidence :P

wlesieutre3• 7 years ago

One wonders if they're able to get cheaper screens that have failed someone else's quality requirements?

penagwin2• 7 years ago

No that's a pretty standard well-standard, if you go to lenovo/dell/etc. they generally will say 1-3 dead pixels is within normal conditions.

These guys are selling this at a loss (or near loss), they're trying to be upfront to lower the number of returns - and more importantly chargebacks and disputes.

Springtime• 7 years ago

Just for comparison, years ago those Korean companies selling A- quality IPS panels from LG (rejected stock from Apple displays, mostly, that didn't make it in) would give a similar disclaimer. Given even panels of that grade could have them (and I had seen user photos of such dead pixels, although not on all units) this doesn't seem out of the ordinary given the price point.

everdrive3• 7 years ago

This is pretty standard language for most warranties. Apple used to make the same claim, although I'm not sure if they still do.

lostlogin• 7 years ago

That takes me back. It was so depressing if you got a couple of red ones in the middle of the screen. I didn’t have it with Apple screens, it was some other vendor and I think they all did it.

benj1113• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure they can't disclaim that kind of thing, certainly not if you're charging Apple prices. If you live in a country with actual consumer protection laws of course.

dmix3• 7 years ago

The wider quote makes a lot of sense:

The company goes on to say the Pinebook Pro (and its low price) are being provided "as a community service to PINE64, Linux and BSD communities." Pine64 adds, "If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the Pinebook Pro."

This isn't some big commercial operation...

24gttghh2• 7 years ago

Yes and I can appreciate that. But I don't think I've seen that kind of warning on something with a screen in over a decade.

It does look like they sell replacement screens directly on their site, but that looks like it's for the 'regular' 14" model. Not sure on their compatibility with the 14" 'pro'

dtornabene• 7 years ago

then don't buy it and don't cry on a webforum about it? I'm not sure why everyone needs to treat everything like its being sold at Herrods

iamnotacrook2• 7 years ago

Every laptop manufacturer says this. It's the single reason I stopped buying anything from shops. When you go back to the shop and try and explain you don't care what the description/contract/website said - you want a display with no dead/hot pixels, they just shrug. When you buy it online (in the EU) you have a couple of weeks where you can just return it for no reason for a full refund.

OJFord• 7 years ago

The Distance Selling (as it's called in the UK, may vary where you are) regulations were designed to replicate the experience and protection you have purchasing in person, not to provide something stronger.

It's just easier to 'argue' with an automated form (you don't need to!) than with a person.

synchat• 7 years ago

Lenovo stuck pixel policy is that 1-2 dead pixels is not a defect: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht004254

This is just bad reporting by "hot hard ware".

mbreese• 7 years ago

It should be noted that this is currently only available for a pre-order basis, and only for people who joined their forums before July 1, 2019. As far as I know there is no timeline for general public availability.

The first pre-order batch is only a run of 100 devices, and these were reserved within the first 2 minutes of their pre-order window. The next batch will be 1000 devices, but they haven't announced with those will be released (right now estimated to be in reservation holders hands w/in 8-10 weeks)[0]. Hopefully they'll get an ANSI keyboard figured out sometime in the next few months (but based on the forum posts, I don't think this is a high priority for them at the moment).

Take home message -- this is really a pre-production machine at the moment. It might be better to wait for later revisions.

[0]https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7752&pid=48104#p...

Havoc• 7 years ago

Looks like the perfect burner laptop for those that feel the need for that when visiting certain countries. Especially with

PCIe x4 to m.2 NVMe SSD Slot (requires optional adapter)

An encrypted NVMe could in theory be mailed...

penagwin2• 7 years ago

An encrypted NVMe could in theory be mailed...

Wouldn't this apply to any sneakernet medium? You can mail microsd cards, harddrives if you wanted, etc.

ganzuul• 7 years ago

I would be interested in seeing some glam shots of this product. Especially interesting design details, if there are any. Confidence in build quality feels important for portable devices.

thequux• 7 years ago

I handled the prototype at FOSDEM this year. This may or may not have been the final case, but it felt as solid as a macbook air; it had no discernable flex even while holding it by a corner (better than my T460!). It did feel disconcertingly light, but I suspect that many people may find that a feature.

That said, their table was always very crowded, so I didn't spend as much time as I'd have liked examining it. I still bought one though

siscia• 7 years ago

I am very interested in this kind of product.

I wonder if there are any competitor in this market, especially European competitor.

mrweasel• 7 years ago

I might be a little old fashion, but I'd rather have the motherboard in an ATX form factor, with a few PCIe slots.

mrmondo• 7 years ago

I was about to buy one as a spare, linux-only laptop, I was hoping they'd have 16GB-32GB RAM options (for a price of course), but they don't even have 8GB let alone 16/32... they seem to be stuck with 4GB!?

That's not going to be much good for browsing modern Javascript heavy websites and doing anything else at the same time let alone having a VM or a few apps running in the background.

I'm all for cheap laptops for kids to learn on, basic word processing and things but - this is going to struggle.

ryacko• 7 years ago

I’ve found using Firefox with multi-process disabled reduces memory use to about 300 MB. Mozilla announced they will move the option to disable multi-process from config to somewhere else though.

derstander• 7 years ago

I’ve been following the forums and more RAM is often requested. The Pine64 folks have stated that the SoC only supports 4GB RAM. I do wonder, though, about the utility of pairing the rather modest compute capabilities of the SoC with a large amount of RAM.

cptnapalm• 7 years ago

Disk cache. That's been the great benefit I've had from the excessive amount of RAM I have in my laptop.

beatgammit2• 7 years ago

You won't be running a VM on a doc like this, but 4GB is plenty for most everyday tasks. My laptop running Windows has 4GB RAM, and it runs common web tasks just fine, and I use it regularly for:

- Slack - video meetings - Netflix - Google docs

Honestly, I think you'll be more limited by CPU performance than memory, unless you try to run a VM or something.

I don't know about you, but this is exactly the type of backup laptop I'm looking for. It probably won't be my main laptop for work, but it's plenty for most casual uses. Basically it's replace my Chromebook as a more capable, hackable alternative.

c256• 7 years ago

Chromebooks usually have 4GB of memory, and many have less. For me, at least, it was a bit of sticker shock, but it’s been fine in practice.

It’s true that you won’t want to spin up full VMs, but this is a dual-Core ARM anyway. For comparison, I frequently use chromebook-chrome, Debian-container Linux apps (usually terminal and emacs), and Android Outlook simultaneously on my chromebook without trouble. That device has a comparatively beefy intel cpu, though.

Zenst• 7 years ago

30 day warranty! Be nice to have an optional extra to increase that.

grizzles2• 7 years ago

I bought a pinebook late last year. It's so terrible that I consider it e-waste. I hope this new version is at least usable for folks.

aquabeagle• 7 years ago

Why not sell or donate it if you have no use for it?

grizzles2• 7 years ago

$20 + S&H if you want it.

IDK if I'd feel right donating it to anyone. Its that bad.

beatgammit2• 7 years ago

I hope they fix the weight distribution. I watched a video about the original Pinebook and the laptop tilted back when the screen went past 120deg or so. I imagine it's because the internals are so small and clumped together at the back, but it seems so annoying to have to hold it down while typing.

I'll likely buy one once they get an ANSI layout. I've been meaning to pick up a RockPro64 for a NAS, but I decided the RAM wasn't quite enough to run ZFS well, but I won't be needing that much RAM for a casual laptop.

quickthrower2• 7 years ago

I haven’t heard the three dead pixels are ok excuse since 2002, it takes me back.

apple4ever• 7 years ago

Have they done any work on the software side? My experience has been that has been terrible.

Pine64 Unleashes $200 Rockchip-Powered Pinebook Pro Linux Laptop

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