Today marks the one month of use milestone for me and after posting in the initial feedback thread I thought that the designers and architects of the Pinebook Pro might like to see a little more in depth review of their creation.
Spoiler - I really like this laptop.
My use:
I think it would be useful to understand my use patters for anyone evaluating my feedback. I have three main uses for this laptop:
Updates:
I've made only the following updates (other than to Manjaro) are:
Openness:
The concept of a computer that is intended to be handled by the end user is great. Who else publishes all the schematics and a disassembly guide to their laptop? Dell/HP/Lenovo will tell you that your warranty is void if you open the cover to upgrade your drive, here we have the exact opposite.
Linux:
While I have been a Debian devotee for years, I have found I may end up liking Arch better. While I can find no one who has an Arch package repo that is day to day tracking development branches of software I use see that the main Arch repos are very close to latest releases. So if I don't mind being a few weeks behind bleeding edge I don't need all the PPAs and custom repos that are common for Debian / Ubuntu. I know I could try Debian but I usually try to devote as little time as possible working on my Linux laptops and prefer to work on my embedded systems so I like to use mainstream and it looks like Manjaro will be fine. One problem I am having is locating printer drivers; there is less support for Arch and even less for arm64 but there are few starting places so that is my next priority.
General Hardware:
I love the light weight and so far sturdy construction of the laptop. When I first got the laptop the bottom was not properly attached and after removing and reseating it the fit is much better but I believe bottom is a little warped as it still pulls up a little from the lip of the case at the point where it used to stick out. The lack of fans is great and except for dropping it on top of an upholstered seat the cover does an excellent job of getting the heat out. (Dell used to make a clip on bottom for their high end laptops to ensure there was always an air gap, that has allowed me to develop the bad habit of poor placement; this is not a request for a new feature, just an explanation why someone would ever try putting a laptop on top of upholstery.)
Display:
Yes, during boot I can see a few stuck bits on the very edge of the display, this has never been an issue for me. The display is excellent in use, great resolution and brightness range.
Keyboard:
I am fine with the feel and size of the keyboard, though I would prefer a backlit one and would sign up for an upgrade should anyone create one.
Trackpad:
This is the worst part of the laptop. I have tried most suggestion on getting the trackpad to improve to no avail. Fine motion and two finger taps are painful at best and require me to use an external trackball for any CAD work. If there is an upgrade in the future I'd buy that too.
WiFi:
With the old firmware the 5Hgz might be slightly better, but it is still pretty poor. I am of the mind that I will try a few replacement antennas shortly in the hopes of improving things. This is no where near as painful as the track pad.
Power:
I cannot get my PBPro to sleep consistently, frequently when I pull it from my backpack it is quite warm and I can see that the backlight is on. As stated, I added a swap partition in a quest to get sleep to disk but that has not happened yet. Also, it seems like the laptop barely charges at all while in use, it's only when I start it after charging powered down that the battery is back up. All this aside, I've yet to run out of battery, it seems to barely draw that in my use cases.
I hope this more in depth review is helpful to someone at Pine and if it is it might be helpful to have other more thoughtful reviews that extend past the initial unpack and power one.
In conclusion, this is the best laptop I've bought in quite a while, even with the trackpad. If there is a future revision that addressed my issues I'll but it; I may buy one for some of my kids to use as a second commuter PC like it is for me.
Spoiler - I really like this laptop.
My use:
I think it would be useful to understand my use patters for anyone evaluating my feedback. I have three main uses for this laptop:
- Commute - I travel an hour each way every day by train, commuter rail. During that time I like to have a lightweight laptop laptop that is small enough to open while seated in the rows of seats. A 15 inch laptop is too large to open without tilting it one or another that is inconvenient. The 14 inch display is small enough that I can use the laptop on my lap. While on the train I use it as a browser, reader and a video now and again. It has sufficient power to run a 1080p video encoded with H264; I've not tried anything more taxing.
- Work - During the day I use this as an additional screen that is mainly used for browsing, reading documentation and writing a few documents. I've also used it to draw up a PCB using Kicad and lately tried it to look over some code using Eclipse. Other than opening up a bunch of tabs in Firefox, which most always causes a crash, I have not had any troubles; this is not a problem in Chromium.
- Home - I use this for most home computing needs including using FreeCad to design a project case and Kicad to update a board. I use Syncthing to keep it up to date with my other PCs. Works fine while I stay with Chromium, again Firefox tends to lock up the PBPro.
Updates:
I've made only the following updates (other than to Manjaro) are:
- I added a 256Gb SDCard. I purchased the adapter to add an internal SSD, but based on the problems other's have had with compatibility as well as thinking about the potentially significant increase in power draw as well as the fact that the majority of what I need more storage for is documentation and media files that I really don't update that frequently; I decided a nice low power SDCard was a better option - cheaper too.
- I downgraded the WiFi firmware as described in this post https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10262
- I resized the drive to add a 4GB swap partition in the hopes of getting sleep to work. Sleep is not working but the partition remains.
Openness:
The concept of a computer that is intended to be handled by the end user is great. Who else publishes all the schematics and a disassembly guide to their laptop? Dell/HP/Lenovo will tell you that your warranty is void if you open the cover to upgrade your drive, here we have the exact opposite.
Linux:
While I have been a Debian devotee for years, I have found I may end up liking Arch better. While I can find no one who has an Arch package repo that is day to day tracking development branches of software I use see that the main Arch repos are very close to latest releases. So if I don't mind being a few weeks behind bleeding edge I don't need all the PPAs and custom repos that are common for Debian / Ubuntu. I know I could try Debian but I usually try to devote as little time as possible working on my Linux laptops and prefer to work on my embedded systems so I like to use mainstream and it looks like Manjaro will be fine. One problem I am having is locating printer drivers; there is less support for Arch and even less for arm64 but there are few starting places so that is my next priority.
General Hardware:
I love the light weight and so far sturdy construction of the laptop. When I first got the laptop the bottom was not properly attached and after removing and reseating it the fit is much better but I believe bottom is a little warped as it still pulls up a little from the lip of the case at the point where it used to stick out. The lack of fans is great and except for dropping it on top of an upholstered seat the cover does an excellent job of getting the heat out. (Dell used to make a clip on bottom for their high end laptops to ensure there was always an air gap, that has allowed me to develop the bad habit of poor placement; this is not a request for a new feature, just an explanation why someone would ever try putting a laptop on top of upholstery.)
Display:
Yes, during boot I can see a few stuck bits on the very edge of the display, this has never been an issue for me. The display is excellent in use, great resolution and brightness range.
Keyboard:
I am fine with the feel and size of the keyboard, though I would prefer a backlit one and would sign up for an upgrade should anyone create one.
Trackpad:
This is the worst part of the laptop. I have tried most suggestion on getting the trackpad to improve to no avail. Fine motion and two finger taps are painful at best and require me to use an external trackball for any CAD work. If there is an upgrade in the future I'd buy that too.
WiFi:
With the old firmware the 5Hgz might be slightly better, but it is still pretty poor. I am of the mind that I will try a few replacement antennas shortly in the hopes of improving things. This is no where near as painful as the track pad.
Power:
I cannot get my PBPro to sleep consistently, frequently when I pull it from my backpack it is quite warm and I can see that the backlight is on. As stated, I added a swap partition in a quest to get sleep to disk but that has not happened yet. Also, it seems like the laptop barely charges at all while in use, it's only when I start it after charging powered down that the battery is back up. All this aside, I've yet to run out of battery, it seems to barely draw that in my use cases.
I hope this more in depth review is helpful to someone at Pine and if it is it might be helpful to have other more thoughtful reviews that extend past the initial unpack and power one.
In conclusion, this is the best laptop I've bought in quite a while, even with the trackpad. If there is a future revision that addressed my issues I'll but it; I may buy one for some of my kids to use as a second commuter PC like it is for me.
