13 ms·
Trying out the Pinebook Pro – a $200 ARM Laptop
- throw0x2away 7y agoIt looks like a perfect "burner" laptop! Can be very useful when traveling overseas, hostile countries.
- smacktoward 7y agoSeeing all that empty internal space makes me wonder if they couldn't increase the device's appeal by fitting it with a bigger battery. 8-10 hours of charge time is good, but a $200 laptop that could go for (say) 20 or 30 hours on a charge would really turn heads. I suppose it's possible that would require some kind of custom battery, and this is just the most appropriate battery for this enclosure they could get off-the-shelf, though.
- aphistic 7y agoI'm sure a bigger battery would increase the cost of the laptop. At $200 the margin has to be pretty thin already.
- xhkkffbf 7y agoSure. So charge $250 or $300 for the one that goes 30 hours.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI’d snap that up immediately. A 24 hour hacker machine would be killer! A modern Tandy 100
- Brian_K_White 7y agoBoth of those positions are valid. Bigger batt for $50 more would be great, vs meeting a price point and fewest possible skus. I would yoink one with the biggest battery possible too. But I would aslo do the same for several other upgrades that I particularly value. I would take as much ram as they want to offer. I would take as much ssd space as they want to offer. I would take as much ssd speed, cpu, pixels, as they can deliver. I would pay whatever it takes to make it weigh less and be smaller while still doing all that. And don't forget to put at least 2 full speed usbc/thunderbolt/hdmi ports so I can have external portable monitor without drivers.... Then again I don't want touch, or any form of face or fingerprint, or any more than the minimum gpu to run a traditional non-compositor desktop and display video at 30fps. But now I have completely obliterated the entire concept of meeting a target intersection of functionality and price. I've thrown price right out the window. And, that's just my personal individual set of priorities. You don't care about half the stuff I would pay anything for, and you probably do care at least a little about stuff I actively don't want. (gaming gpu, touch, face id, hell webcam at all) So, back to the beginning, they came up with a reasonable set of functionality to target, and a reasonable price to target, and really, even though I too would like a big battery, it makes no sense to talk about $250 version that has a bigger battery.
- Balanceinfinity 7y agoI loved my TRS-80 100. My first laptop.
- mbreese 7y agoThey specifically don't want to have too many SKUs to manage. Adding an option for an extended battery would double their SKUs. The management side of Pine64 is pretty barebones.
- rocky1138 7y agoThis is an opportunity for an aftermarket.
- squarefoot 7y agoTrue, but starting from $200 there's still room for improvement. I would purchase in no time a $350 model with double the battery plus high power LoRa RTX module with external antenna connector, and GPS receiver. I've used a few different small ARM SBCs which were a lot less powerful than this laptop, and the software availability is astounding: Codeblocks, Boa Constructor, Anjuta, Lazarus, Geany, Notepadqq, most languages and libraries, and many other non development related software. As an example, Libreoffice on Debian Stable is available ready to install (no build required) on i386, amd64, armel, armhf, arm64, mips, mipsel, mips64el, ppc64el, s390x. Same for example for lua (the language) while the sid (unstable) version adds another bunch of unofficial ports (alpha, hppa, m68k, powerpcspe, ppc64, ppc64el, riscv64, sh4, sparc64, x32). In many contexts one could move from x86 to ARM and never feel there is something missing because really there is almost nothing missing, save maybe for the horsepower.
- jolmg 7y agoIt's an 10,000 mAh battery, though. That's huge, isn't it? I don't know any other laptop that has a battery that big. Looking online, Macbooks seem to have around 6,000 mAh.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 7y agoYou'd want to compare watt-hours for an equal comparison of energy for batteries of different voltages. 38Wh is fairly small for a laptop battery.
- AgloeDreams 7y agoI like how we all commented at the same time. poor OP...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- johnchristopher 7y agoHappens often. What's the etiquette ? Answer to each replies ? One single reply that address everyone's point(s) ?
- jolmg 7y agoYou're right. I see now that the high mAh is due to the low voltage.
- rchaud 7y agoLaptop batteries are powering Intel/AMD x86 processors which are much more power hungry than an ARM proc I imagine. Also, Macbooks and other premium laptops have 2k or 4k screens, while this one should be more energy efficient at 1080p.
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
- eclectocrat 7y agoYes, yes, and yes. I would pay a lot of money for a _small_ laptop with 30 hours of battery life. Something like a MacBook Air 11 inch would be ideal. Hopefully someone tries and cram a huge battery in this unit someday.
- davidhyde 7y agoFrom the technical specs it looks like it is powered via a 5V port: "Barrel Power (5V 3A) Port" That would mean that you could plug in a battery powered portable USB charger (power bank) to increase its capacity perhaps. If 10000mAh at 5V gets you 8 hours then you you could easily extend the capacity with a couple power banks.
- therein 7y agoRight but you can do that for many other notebooks as well.
- rchaud 7y agoI didn't know that. What kind of power bank would you need for a Macbook or PC laptop?
- progman32 7y agoUSB c power banks can do it. I use one for my gpd micropc. Just make sure to get a quality one that can do USB c pd.
- numpad0 7y agoOnes that do USB-PD which allows other voltages than 5V
- cerberusss 7y agoActually 5V also works on my 2016 MacBook Pro. I used an older iPad charger with a USB-A-to-C cable to prolong battery life, or to charge overnight.
- qubex 7y agoIf I’m not mistaken, 10,000 mWh is the maximum that can be brought on an airliner. EDIT: As the commenter below pointed out, the limit is 100,000 mWh and not 10,000 mWh. I stand corrected.
- fheld 7y agoAccording to [0] the limit in the US is 100Wh, so you could fit a battery that is three times bigger (assuming 3.3V). I don't know what the relevant numbers are elsewhere. [0] https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/lithium-batteries-more-100-watt-hours https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
- qubex 7y agoThanks, I stand corrected. Apologies for the mistake.
- StillBored 7y agoActually it doesn't ban them, it just says that you don't need any special approval if you have less than two 100Wh batteries. Which is odd, because most people have more than two batteries if your counting batteries contained in devices like laptops/cellphones/etc. This regulation seems to apply only to standalone batteries. For context 100Wh is only about 2x most normal laptops. A few systems with secondary batteries (Thinkpads for example) come within 10-15Wh of the limit when configured into their max battery configurations (although in my case that is two batteries). I'm betting that is something you could actually walk through security with. I can't imagine the guys running the scanner are making estimates of battery capacity. For sure I've carried more than 200Wh worth of batteries before, considering for a while I was regularly traveling with two fairly high capacity laptops, a tablet, charging battery and cellphone. I'm also not the only odd ball with more than one laptop. Now that i've slimmed it back down to one, I regularly notice other people dragging out more than one.
- nicoburns 7y agoThe 16 inch MacBook Pro has 99.8Wh battery...
- charwalker 7y agoI wonder how much cost saving they are finding in using like a standard, mass produced common laptop battery vs a larger or custom battery.
- p1itopre 7y agoThe other way to go about it is to shrink the screen from 14" to 12". I would prefer this configuration.
- tachyonbeam 7y agoOr 13" and a slightly bigger battery. Oh yeah :)
- fest 7y agoIncreasing a single cell battery system over 10Ah is not trivial. First, the RK3399 and it's companion PMIC is designed with single cell applications primarily. Second, I don't know the exact reason why, but commonly available lithium cells top out at 10Ah. Even many fuel gauge ICs don't support cells larger than that. Adding another cell requires substantial development (design/source the pack, balancing and charging circuit) and extra BOM cost, whereas single cell involves copying reference design (which I know because I'm designing hardware product around RK3399 and ~70Wh battery pack) TL;DR; Can be done, but developers probably wanted to reduce the risk and stay on commonly walked path.
- matt_heimer 7y agoI don't think there is as much empty space as you think. If you look at https://youtu.be/TsNR2lECd2s?t=121 https://youtu.be/TsNR2lECd2s?t=121 it has a Macbook air design where its wedge shaped with no vertical space in the front.
- rahuldottech 7y agoHonestly, I'm so impressed with this device. I really want to get this just so I can hack the hell out of it. With all that empty space in the case, there are so many possibilities...
- dmix 7y agoI love the little yellow note they included inside to mention powering without the lithium battery plugged in. Something built with hackers in mind.
- Brian_K_White 7y agoThank you for bringing this to my attention and causing me to go back and look closer at the pic. I was JUST thinking: * This makes all the stuff I did to set up octoprint for my 3d printer obsolete in one shot. I have spent more money than $200 and many hours trying to find unusual usb and hdmi ribbon cables and right-angle plugs, and designing and 3d printing a frame and stand for a touch screen and pi4, bt keyboard... for an end result that is frankly not very elegant. And here is all the same stuff in a much tidier package all in one effortless shot. (this is all true of pretty much any laptop of course, not just this one) * BUT... Oh right, I keep forgetting. Laptops have batteries, which go bad in just a couple years, and many laptops do not run without the battery connected. The pi4 setup has no lithium battery to go bad in a couple years, and it's passively cooled. It can sit there plugged in and powered-on 24/7 for years, and most laptops can not. So you just removed that issue. Thanks!
- johnchristopher 7y agoAny pictures of your pi4 :) ?
- lanewinfield 7y agoAn "annoying touchpad" is likely a dealbreaker for me. It's the holy grail for Linux to me and I feel like it's never been solved by anybody but Apple (w/o Linux). That being said, I could exist in the command line most of the time...
- jammygit 7y agoA good keyboard with a keyboard driven distribution does the trick too though
- AgloeDreams 7y agoGoogle's modern Pixelbooks have it pretty close, coming from someone who uses a Magic Trackpad all day at work. Not perfect, but really close. As I understand, Apple's magic trick was basically feeding the trackpad inputs through the iPhone's touch logic.
- turtlebits 7y agoThe Pixelbook touchpad is pretty bad. It's way too small, and it's not easy to right click without moving the pointer. Thank god it has a touchscreen.
- l3db3tt3r 7y agoI was kind of wondering what the "annoyances" were exactly. Left open-ended it is hard to say if it is a deal breaker or not.
- ColanR 7y agoI wonder if we should return to the trackball. I have an old KVM keyboard that has one built-in, and it's not so bad. Seems like it wouldn't get in the way like a touchpad does. Why is it that we stopped using those?
- war1025 7y agoWouldn't fit in a super-thin form factor for one.
- purplezooey 7y agoIs the screen IPS?
- boutad 7y agoYes, that is listed on the product page. https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
- jessaustin 7y agoI haven't bothered checking TFA's complaints about Debian packaging, but npm certainly is available for arm. $ uname -m -p -i aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 $ npm --version 6.13.6
- JeremyMorgan 7y agoI didn't try very hard to install it, but I'll do that and update the article.
- s17n 7y agoIf anybody wants one of these in like-new condition with an ISO keyboard, I'll sell you mine (I'm American, ordered the ISO keyboard by mistake :/ )
- fnigi 7y agoExcept your mail is not in your profile :(
- s17n 7y agowhoops, should be fixed
- mongol 7y agoI wonder if the keyboard is of some off-the-shelf type that can be purchased as a replacement?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoI mean, there's first party parts for the pinebook at https://store.pine64.org/?product_cat=pinebook-spare-parts https://store.pine64.org/?product_cat=pinebook-spare-parts - although I'm pretty sure the pro is different. I'm surprised that they don't seem to have pro parts up (yet?)
- Scarbutt 7y agoAre there any $200 laptops like this one but x86 powered?
- bochoh 7y agoNot sure if this would fit your requirements but this seems to be a great little machine perf / $. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vega-HDMI-Front-RAM-FHD-Black-4GB-display-AMD-128GB-Tuned-Camera-Radeon-14-Ryzen-720P-THX-Graphics-IR-SSD-Laptop-3-MOTILE-Spatial-Performance-Audio-HD/575094633?selected=true https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vega-HDMI-Front-RAM-FHD-Black-4GB...
- boutad 7y agoDepends what you mean when you say like this. You can find some x86 Chromebooks for that price but they wouldn't be as open.
- jolmg 7y agoNew chromebooks or used laptops. I recommend used; you get better quality models. Who needs a brand new laptop, anyway?
- intrepidhero 7y agoDell 3189 is my current portable computer. Came with Win10, (dog slow) but I fixed that with Debian stretch (awesome). Has run everything I've thrown at it including Android Studio. It's got a pretty nice keyboard for a laptop.
- Joeri 7y agoThere are many used thinkpads in that price category. They tend to be easy to repair and upgrade. Almost nothing new in that price category will be repairable or upgradable. https://www.bobble.tech/free-stuff/used-thinkpad-buyers-guide https://www.bobble.tech/free-stuff/used-thinkpad-buyers-guid...
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago> You can’t fault the Pine64; everything has to be built for ARM and that’s still a work in progress. I eagerly await the day Visual Studio Code is available for ARM. Thankfully this is changing rapidly, thanks in part to raspberry pi desktops. Most, if not all, popular server apps are already available in ARM. Desktop apps will take time.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seabrookmx 7y agoThere's community builds: https://code.headmelted.com/ https://code.headmelted.com/
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoI've gotten my PineBook Pro and I'm seriously impressed with the build quality and feel for a $200 machine. My touchpad has a minor defect in how it was installed, but it's probably an easy fix.
- nwrk 7y agoEnjoyed the article. Thanks for write up. 4GB RAM sounds terrible even for browsing and basic tasks. I'm looking to switching to one of those devices in future, so far on trusted Thinkpad x230 (no FHD, $150 USD) for travel purposes. Can anyone comment on "no NPM yet that I know of though" ? Does node development work normally ?
- snogglethorpe 7y agoUsing a reasonable OS (Linux etc), 4GB is absolutely fine for browsing and basic tasks, and indeed is often fine for development and other more-than-basic tasks as well, depending on how exactly you work (Emacs/Vim instead of an IDE, for instance). Is 4GB considered too little under Windows these days?
- nicoburns 7y agoMore or less. The main culprit is web browsers. Chrome will happily use 4gb by itself these days...
- qubex 7y agoIt amazes me no end that when I turned 18 I was contracted to work on a Cray J90 with a staggering 128 Mwords of RAM at a financial institution, and that today 4GB is considered tight for running a consumer OS with a browser with more than a few tabs open. I really cannot fathom what could possibly require so much memory. It’s just taking some hypertext markup, some scripts, and rendering a web-page. I genuinely do not understand. I’m totally baffled.
- Youden 7y agoThis is a tad tangential but has anyone done extensive software development using an ARM device? I was able to get pretty far with a rooted Samsung tablet running Debian in a container (C++ development works great, you can install stuff like VSCode and Clang without too much trouble) but when it came to anything mobile, ironically it all fell apart because the Android toolchain isn't built for ARM64 (save the one in the Debian repositories, which is too old). I even tried to update the package myself but apparently Debian copies all the code into its own repositories and doesn't make clear how to update it. The Pinebook Pro, having the same CPU architecture, should have the same problems, at least for now. I'm very interested in seeing them solved though.
- hajile 7y agoI've done some web development work on my raspberry pi 4. It's almost there, but even using vim, some things are still too slow (I do primarily front-end development). 4gb of RAM means I can't have a ton of things going on, but it's easily enough for back-end, webpack, editor, and a handful of tabs without much issue. Now, there are some CPU differences here. 3399 has 2 A72 cores at 2GHz and 4 A53 cores at 1.5GHz. The pi 4 can be overclocked to 1.8-2GHz pretty easily which makes it about as fast. I believe the Pi 4 GPU is slower, but it's mostly not relevant for dev work. When Ubuntu finishes working out the bugs with their 64-bit OS, it should offer another big speedup. That is probably enough to boost JS performance (and general system performance) high enough to not feel especially painful.
- tsukurimashou 7y agostock vim or do you use plugins?
- hajile 7y agoI use a few plugins to make web development a better experience. Nothing particularly exceptional. Syntax highlighting, nerdtree, ctr-p, linter, prettier, bracket highlighter, etc.
- hajile 7y agoPerformance is a pretty known quantity as these chips have been in chromebooks for almost 4 years now. The big question for me is drivers. Last I checked, rk3399 SBCs had terrible issues with non-android linux GPU drivers. Has that been fixed yet? EDIT: looks like the biggest 64-bit issues have now been fixed. I'll have to try again. Now to get it booting from an external SSD... https://ubuntu.com/blog/updated-images-of-ubuntu-for-the-raspberry-pi-2-3-and-4 https://ubuntu.com/blog/updated-images-of-ubuntu-for-the-ras...
- thom 7y agoI've been tempted by these as semi-destructible machines for my young kids to cut their teeth on. The oldest has a Chromebook but reinstalled with GalliumOS which has been perfectly adequate so far. I'd be intrigued to see a direct comparison between these as two ultra-cheap Linux options.
- qubex 7y agoWhy are children these days ‘allowed’ to ’destructive’? I was using my mother’s NeXT Cube back in the early nineties when I was about eleven or twelve and it’s still in mint condition. It was made very clear to me that allowing me to use it was an enormous privilege and that if I had in any way damaged it there would have been hell to pay and I have absolutely no doubt that my arse would’ve been kicked into tomorrow if I had broken my side of the deal. Teaching kids to take care of stuff is a key point in the escape from disposable consumerism.
- opwieurposiu 7y agoI also got to play around on a NeXT cube as a kid. I had no idea they were so expensive! Wikipedia says a NeXT cube cost around US$10,000 (equivalent to about $19,600 in 2019.) For that price I am amazed we had one in our house at all. I think my dad was trailing it or something, we did not have it very long.
- noodle_face_ 7y agoMy dad would have loved to have you instead of me. He walked in on me with the family PC taken completely apart and flipped out, lol. I agree with you though.
- thom 7y agoI dunno, I think it might make them more fun in internet discussion forums.
- int_19h 7y agoA second-hand Thinkpad 11e might be a better option. They are designed from the get go for the education market (looks like some schools buy them in bulk), and are very sturdy. But can be had for pretty cheap on eBay in used condition, and it's just a regular Intel laptop with hardware that's all Linux-compatible.
- twotwotwo 7y agoI have an old RK3399-based Chromebook. I now end up using its Intel "Core m"-based counterpart (originally bought for my partner) more, but the ARM machine was/is 100% fine as a fancy terminal for my backend Web dev work. I had no trouble messing with Go on an even earlier ARM (Tegra K1) Chromebook. The Surface Pro X did not take off, but I suspect that's a combination of ARM not being competitive at the high end and needing a friendlier ecosystem. ARM might do a bit better once larger core designs and denser process nodes (RK3399 is 28nm!) filter down to lower-priced devices and there's great software to run, like a refined Windows/ARM or Chrome OS w/Android or something else. (I've been hoping for ARM to make inroads into Serious Computers for some time, so who knows, but it does seem successful in lower-end Chromebooks, and Amazon and MS are publicly experimenting with it, so...)
- phs 7y agoMy pbp arrived a few days ago. The stock image it ships with seemed a little laggy, probably due to aggressive cpu throttling for power. Since I'm interested in encrypted disks I knew I would be installing a new OS from the get-go. Desiring LUKS basically rules out image-based distribution, so to find a compatible installer this [0] page was useful. I opted for straight Debian (bullseye). This amounts to a script wrapping debootstrap that adds in the local firmware and kernel patches. I was required to use a sufficiently fast and large microSD card (16 GB+). As reported on [1] and in the dedicated thread [2] there are a few small issues: * firefox does indeed crash in the way described, though I expect this will resolve itself after an upstream update * The brightness up/down keys do not work, though they do in the base image * I've encountered issues with the wifi getting wedged after resuming from sleep. Still, on the whole it seems snappier than the base image, and the track pad latencies issues I noticed there don't seem to manifest here. [0]: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Software_Release#Linux_Installer_Releases https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Software_Rele... [1]: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Debian_Installer https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Debian_Instal... [2]: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8487 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8487 edit: formatting.
- herogreen 7y agoRegarding the trackpad latency, have you seen that there is an update for it ? https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23 https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23 while it is more about the mouse moving while you are typing, it may help in your case.
- zerealshadowban 7y agoThis bodes well in terms of lower prices, better battery longevity, and incredible performance for the soon-coming ARM MacBooks.
- nwah1 7y agoMacbooks aren't primarily priced according to the cost of production. They command a huge producer surplus from brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, etc.
- zerealshadowban 7y agoYes, supply and demand are both relevant. On the supply side, the very high cost of Intel CPUs has been adversely constraining the pricing flexibility of Mac computers. Apple sells orders of magnitude more iOS devices, all ARM-based; if they could sharply increase the sale of Mac computers, it would also be profitable for them -- and it might unify+simplify their software development efforts.
- Evidlo 7y agoWould've been great if they had used a Thinkpad keyboard like on the Novena: https://www.crowdsupply.com/img/b4cb/novena-954-edit_jpg_project-body.jpg https://www.crowdsupply.com/img/b4cb/novena-954-edit_jpg_pro...
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoYeah, except that that's A) the designer, artisan variant, and B) a whole different class of device. IIRC, it uses a semi-integrated standalone wireless keyboard, which would add a whack ton of thickness to something that's marketed as being fairly small.
- smnscu 7y agoHow could one start building their own laptop as a fun side project?
- StillBored 7y agoThe really nice thing is that the RK3399, while an old and not particularly fast ARM, has almost entirely open documentation. A bit of googling should land both parts of the TRM, which covers every bit of the SOC's registers and devices minus the Mali. The follow-on RK3588 announced last year with 4x A76's (and 4x A55s) in 8nm should completely crush the RK3399 performance wise. If it comes with open documentation too, it could be a killer hacker chip this year. (just to add to that) The RK3399 has 2x A72's with a peak frequency of 2Ghz and 4 A53's. The RPi's 4x A72s easily run at 2Ghz as well, given a heatsink. For most workloads the much faster A72s are a big advantage over the A53s.
- sneak 7y agoDoes it use any proprietary blobs to boot? I have yet to see a GPU without them, and you said "almost", so I assume the answer is yes?
- StillBored 7y agoI don't think there are any binary blobs in the normal atf+uboot+kernel boot path. The display will run without the mali, so. AFAIK it can be run entirely open source. There could be some additional hidden burned in place firmware to handle the early SPI/etc boot flow, but they actually document the cortex M0 mgmt processor as well. So that puts them ahead of basically everyone. Not all the documentation is "good" the DDR controller registers are in the docs AFAIK, but lack a theory of operation section. OTOH, there is example code in TFA for that, https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git/tree/plat/rockchip/rk3399/drivers/dram/dfs.c https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git/... So, really as far as I know this is literally the most open A72 platform out there when it comes to docs you can get via google. The MALI being the problem, which means that one could consider one of the reverse engineered QC chips or the rpi better understood (because of the Adreno or vp9 efforts) but even then the documentation quality is worse.
- zozbot234 7y agoIf there are no blobs in the "normal" path, why isn't this device supported by mainline Debian without special patches? Is this code making its way into kernel/bootloader upstream so that distros can pick it up?
- tbyehl 7y ago> I eagerly await the day Visual Studio Code is available for ARM. There are community builds for ARM. https://code.headmelted.com/ https://code.headmelted.com/ https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium
- harry8 7y agoIs it possible to buy in bulk for education purposes?
- rogerclark 7y agoself-promotion: i also reviewed this laptop in a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIfSnFCs84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIfSnFCs84