ARM Laptop: Pinebook Pro: A72, 14" IPS 1080p, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, m.2 NVMe, USB-C

Guess that depends on if you want the laptop form factor or not.

I would get both if I could. But that’s if I COULD.

Yes exactly. I expect the Nvidia devkit to be quite a bit faster, particularly on the GPU side, but that doesn’t mean much if you need a laptop.

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Hi, Welcome!

I stand happily corrected! I’m fairly impressed with that performance. It seems I was fed misinformation, and I’m happy to see that I was wrong.

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Yes, I assume the Pinebook Pro has a Mali-T864 GPU, which while not even remotely comparable to the Maxwell in that Nvidia devkit for 3D graphics and CUDA, is perfectly capable of playing video and desktop stuff. As a relatively modern mobile GPU it has dedicated hardware devoted to rendering and encoding video.

Hmm, I think that Amazon, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Marvell/Cavium, Ampere, GIGABYTE, ARM themselves, and a slew of others would disagree…

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They’re all trying to make it happen, but it ain’t happening. Don’t listen to me, listen to Linus.

https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpostid=183486

Many thanks :slight_smile: I’ll gladly answer any questions you or other forum members may have. I am currently swamped with work, so may be slow to respond, but rest assured I’ll be checking in regularly.
Also, thanks to the OP for posting about the PB Pro !

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Thanks! Here’s a couple Qs for when you’ve got a minute:

I didn’t notice any info on expected battery capacity for the PB Pro. Do you have any numbers on this or is it still too early days?

Additionally, what sort of keyboard/trackpad is planned for this device? One of the main shortcomings I’ve heard about the original Pinebook was the lackluster keyboard and trackpad. I’m concerned that cutting corners on the input devices will make an otherwise excellent product fall short.

@wendell we have company!

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Linus makes a good point that getting more ARM machines in the hands of developers (partly what the Pinebook Pro is all about) will accelerate ARM adoption in the datacenter. But the fact that a 145,000 core ARM supercomputer sits installed at Sandia National Laboratories, and that you can provision a1 ARM servers from Amazon today, indicate that it is happening.

The battery will be 10,000 mha. With brightness set to ~60% and under [edit] low-to-moderate [/edit] load we expect it to provide some solid 6-7hrs of battery life.

The trackpad is getting a major upgrade from the regular Pinebook - for one its no longer an emulated mouse, its an actual trackpad. If all goes well, I’ll have the new trackpad in a week or two and I’ll offer my honest opinions.

As for the keyboard. Yes, we know, the discontinued 14" keyboard was bad. We’re also aware that the layout of the 11.6" model isn’t ideal - that said, I personally feel that the keyboard (especially for the price) is solid. For the Pro we’re making a significant improvement to the keyboard - and probably will go with a standard, high quality, ISO keyboard (so all you Europeans will be quite happy).

[edit 2] posted pictures of the guts here (bottom of the post), it will most likely be the same battery

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Supercomputers are a different market and largely irrelevant to what we’re talking about here.

Amazon tries lots of products, some work, some don’t. We’ll have to see if they still offer ARM VMs in, say, 2 years.

This is good news! I’m looking forward to hearing your review.

Good news!

You’re getting me hyped!

Ah, that’s what I get for not reading the whole page. It’s odd looking at such a small form factor for a laptop and not seeing it filled to the brim. :stuck_out_tongue:

So will the NVMe adapter support SATA SSD as well as NVMe?

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So will the NVMe adapter support SATA SSD as well as NVMe?

The adapter will fit a m.2 NVMe SSD. So no, no SATA SSDs in the PB Pro. But I think that 128GB of eMMC + option for expanding via SD and NVMe, that’s probably enough for most users.

That said… if you’re really willing to tinker … the adapter port is just regular PCIe x4 - so you could potentially hack in a SATA controller board in there, and glue a bare SSD PCB down. The one problem I see with this is powering the a SATA PCB in such a hacky setup :slight_smile:

Probably would be. I’m a glutton for punishment though, so I might have to try doing some hacky fun with this thing.

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Anyways, now you know how to reach me if you want an early review unit :wink:

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I’m definitely interested, but you probably don’t want to send a review unit to their lowly forum moderator. :stuck_out_tongue: (although, if you are interested in sending me one, please let me know)

You can contact Wendell at [email protected], if you’re interested in working out a more official review.

You also may be able to DM his account, @wendell. I’m not sure which he prefers when arranging these sort of things.

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I would love to borrow one and do terrible things to it?:smiley:

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Well, on the bright side, the price difference between SATA and NVMe SSDs have diminished considerably as of late. I don’t know if 128 GB will carry me all the way.

If I manage my storage properly it’s possible.

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Small world around here…

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