Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[ndp]

I have had my Pinebook Pro for about 4 weeks now and have been using it extensively.

My PBP was one of the last Batch 1, 128GB ISO Keyboard versions shipped at the end of October.

Hardware:

I am very impressed with the overall build quality and love the magnesium alloy shell ( It may be a fingerprint magnet, but a quick wipe with a microfibre cloth takes care of that)

The screen is excellent - no dead pixels and very high quality for the money

The ISO Keyboard works perfectly for me here in the UK and as my hands do not touch the trackpad when typing, I have not encountered any problems and the keys feel good to the touch.

The trackpad is okay for the price and I'm sure it'll get even better with firmware tweaks.

The webcam is just about okay if you limit the resolution to 1280x720 - any higher and it stutters badly.

The speakers could be better but I have not encountered any of the problems experienced by others.

The headphone jack works fine for sound output, but I'm not sure whether the input is being picked up by the headset mic or the onboard mics.

I have been unable to test the NVMe adaptor as the PCIe socket on my mainboard is faulty - the cable latch fell apart as soon as I touched it.

The onboard 128GB Emmc is fine and is fast enough for my needs.

WiFi works well for me at home on 5GHz but I have noticed that in my girlfriend's house which has 5Ghz & 2.4Ghz and thick walls, my connection flip-flops between the two frequencies as I move around the house and this gives the appearance of being an unstable connection.

Bluetooth audio works well with my Orbitsound soundbar.

Green power light on dashboard flickers with disk activity under Debian/Mate but remains static with Ubuntu Mate (running on emmc or sdcard).

Charging from barrel jack power supply and USB-C both work okay.


Operating Systems:

I like Mrfixit's default Debian Mate image, but It does not seem to be quite as stable as ayufan's Ubuntu Mate imgage which I have now flashed to emmc and am using as my daily driver.

Thunderbird Email works with Ubnutu Mate but crashes on startup with the Debian Mate image (see forum post).

VSCode works with both distros, but only if the version is pinned at 1.29 

My Python3/Kivy development environment is so far working as expected under Ubuntu Mate.

Chromium Browser seems to have issues on both distros - settings page crashes with "Aw, snap" error message and BBC Iplayer video buffers quite a bit at first and then sometimes settles down.

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video work fine with Wideveine insrtalled , as does Youtube.

Firefox is okay, and BBC Iplayer Video streams without buffering , but I cannot seem to get it to use widevine for Netflix, etc.

After flashing Ubuntu Mate to emmc, I could no longer boot from sdcard until I implemented the manual procedure recommended by argiebargie in the forums.

Ubuntu Mate automatically recognised and configured my Epson WF-3520 all-in-one printer and SimpleScan worked immediatley after I installed it's package.

Overall, I am extremely impressed with the PBP - it is a brilliant first effort by Pine64 and I'm sure it will go from strength to strength in future.


I shall continue to use my PBP as a complement to my main development workstation. I'm happy that the PBP will fulfil all my requirements when travelling and away from my main working environment,

Well done to all at Pine64 and everyone in the community for getting the PBP off to a flying start !!