Pinebook Pro Upgrade?

[StriderofRohan]

Hello! I've been on the lookout for a Linux laptop with good hardware at a reasonable price and the Pinebook Pro immediately caught my eye. I love almost everything about the current Pinebook Pro but the hardware is looking a bit under-spec for my uses. I do a lot of photo editing, a bit of video editing, and creating and editing websites and doing any of this at a demanding scale is just not great on the current Pinebook Pro. So, to get to the point, would you guys over at Pine64 consider giving the Pinebook Pro an upgrade? Maybe putting your latest SBC with the 8GB of RAM and the Rockchip RK3566 in a new version of the Pinebook Pro would make a big difference for people doing heavier workloads like me! Anyways, let me know what you think.

Cheers (:
- Strider

[jkm]

Hopefully, there will be an upgrade to long-awaited RK3588 with at least 16GB of RAM, because 4GB of RAM in a laptop that has "Pro" in his name is a sad joke in 2021...

[maxjrh]

According to https://gadgetversus.com/processor/rockc...ip-rk3566/, the PineBook Pro is still more performant than the Quartz64.

The next "Flagship" CPU from Rockchip will be the RK3588. But that one has been postponed for more than a year now.

Upgrading the PineBook Pro would come with more work: We need a Linux kernel that runs, u-boot, GPU driver, hw video acceleration...
For the current PineBook Pro almost all of these things are finally in place now.
I would say that the PBP now is an even better product than the PBP two years ago, when it came out. (This seems different from the Android/Windows world, where value/performance only decreases over time)

[jiyong]

Is the RK3588 finally here?
https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/12/01/...geekbench/

[jkm]

RK3588 datasheet is now available:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/12/16/...ming-soon/

[Phillip Bell]

+1 on the 4GB subject.

It was fine when I got my PBP Pro a few years ago, but I am more often running into memory limitations.

Realistically, I didn't expect it to become my primary dev machine (VSCode) and photo workflow (Gimp and digiKam). I'm probably pushing it a bit hard.

[jkm]

ROCK5 Model B with RK3588 on board is now ready for pre-orders.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/01/09/...-computer/

Is there any chance that we will see updated Pinebook Pro in the future (just like we've seen an updated PinePhone Pro last year)?

[tophneal]

yes, there's a possibility, but no guarantee or timeline. when the PBP was announced, it was stated that Pine did in fact foresee themselves offering new main board as an upgrade users could perform.

[Danct12]

I wonder how much it'd cost for Pine to have multiple configuration, 16GB Pinebook "Pro Pro" would be nice to have!

[Arwen]

Just adding 8GB option along with the 4/4 cores, and fixing the other misc. outstanding issues, (NVMe reliability / power; charging & power issues; WiFi chip overheating; etc...), would be enough to make many people upgrade from existing Pinebook Pros.