User experience

[moonwalkers]

AFAIK there were quality control issues throughout 2020 thanks to the friendly SARS-CoV-2 in everyone's neighbourhood, but I have to agree there are also design flaws:

• I can confirm that bottom cover is an extremely tight fit for the plastic top, plus it has very sharp edges - much sharper than, e.g., MacBook Pro or Razer Blade that have a similar bottom cover construction. The first time I had to open mine to upgrade eMMC module I cut my hand, and the cut was surprisingly deep too. That said, my cover is still in place, no sheared or loose screws.
  
• I can confirm the software is still to this day is not perfect, though it is mostly the matter of kernel and Mesa drivers, and since around summer 2020 it got to a pretty damn usable state, but support is distro-specific and AFAIK one can expect out-of-the-box support only in Manjaro and Armbian.
  
• I can confirm sound issues - tons of them. Again, a combination of design flaws (from my understanding - the way audio routing is done, headphone detection, etc.) and immature drivers (no proper sleep support). Most of these issues can be worked around though (e.g. headphone detection script in Manjaro, my script here in the forums for restoring sound after sleep), but for good out-of-the-box experience those workarounds would need to be packaged for each distro and pre-installed on the PBP images.
  
• Most of the units have problems with misaligned lid magnet, causing PBP to not go to sleep when lid is closed - that's pretty big one.
  
• Rubber feet getting loose, especially those that are under the areas that get hot from the SoC, on the left back corner - that one goes first. More of a minor annoyance, since they can be reasonably easily glued back with cyanoacrylate (superglue), but would be nice to have them reliably attached straight out of the factory.
  
  

All of that said, I've been using mine as my main driver since pretty much almost immediately after I received it in Jan/Feb 2020. However, I'm not an average user, not even an average Linux user as I develop on and for Linux as my daily job. And though before PBP I had no experience with Linux on ARM I've had many years of experience with Linux on x86 platforms before coming to PBP, so once I figured out the ARM vs x86 quirks I was back in my native waters. Physical hardware - I rebuild vintage laptops as a hobby, so I know my way around glues and screws and fragile plastics.
Bottom line - I have to agree with OP that while as a hacker device PBP is fine, especially for it's price, as a consumer device it still has a very long way to go. But then AFAIK it has never been marketed as a consumer device in the first place, so caveat emptor.