Dude, even though this review is 1 year old (according to RU-vid). This is the best review of the Pine Book Pro I've seen! You've just answered all my questions that I've had with this device! I have a family member who's a writer that needs a replacement for her Chromebook. She and I (after tinkering with it) both hate the Chromebook's OS and keyboard, and ever since I've been making research on the PBP just to see if it's good enough for e-mails, word processing, and web browsing. And from this video, the PBP almost clears all of these. Though with recent updates, it might be good enough for web browsing. Many thanks my dude, your video was wonderful!
Two things - 1.) Android DAW's like Audio Evolution Mobile, or ARM Linux compatible DAW's like Reaper, Ardour, and Tracktion Waveform, should run fine if all you're doing is tracking band practice or using native compatible plugins to make EDM or whatever. For a mobile studio using a USB audio interface, doing field recordings, scratch recording band practices, saving projects to a thumbdrive or external drive to be opened on a workstation, that's pretty nice, and everything you need. 2.) For basic Linux workstation type usage, like SSH, coding, compiling, watching youtube tutorials, running pentest apps, etc., this thing looks pretty great.
@@7177YT depends on if it has a build for/compatible with ARM instruction sets. Technically you can run a CPU emulated QEMU VM, but that will generally tank performance, because an ARM CPU emulating another, more powerful CPU, is generally not a good time, experience wise. Windows RT failed largely for this reason.
I think Pine64 uses an existing laptop shell from the manufacturer to reduce cost. This would explain the badly positioned speaker grill. No one likes down-firing speakers.
It's not an accident that you can't enable widevine DRM in Manjaro. That OS is based on the mainline aarch64 kernel (debian is running a 32-bit kernel and userspace). Google have not released aarch64 versions of the widevine library so far. So running the debian script on manjaro will install the widevine lib, but it's simply not recognized because it's a 32-bit library. However, it should be possible to get this up and running by running a 32-bit version of the chromium browser with the 32-bit ARM widevine library. E.g. in a chroot environment. But then the current Manjaro kernel needs to be upgraded to support running 32-bit binaries on the 64-bit kernel. But there should be no reason why that can't be done. I'm waiting on my pinebook pro. Once I have received it, I will definitely try to get this up and running in Manjaro and/or ArchlinuxARM. I'll also be trying to get (32-bit) firefox to recognize the chromium widevine ARM lib.
Great review. I am very tempted by this laptop even with the exchange rate. I remember a little while ago you were rather impressed with OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Have you tried the ARM version on the Pinebook?
Thank you for your conclusion on the Pinebook Pro. Regarding the browser annoyances, is the installation of an alternative browser like Vivaldi an option?
For an Arm device, would have expected battery life to be better even in performance mode. Is something like TLP available (or even needed) on an Arm based laptop?
Regarding the camera...it looks like you still have the clear plastic stickery protector on it...check if you can get your fingernail in there and take it off. I had the same experience. the lens is actually recessed a bit. Still nothing to write home about but will get rid of that blurred washed out smudge effect if you get the protector off.
@@BrockCochran1 It is still slow...especially in poor lighting. The only thing that changed is the quality of the image is a bit better (less diffusion and smearing).
I've never heard of this device before (found your video thru the RU-vid algorithm's recommendations), but now I kinda want one (lol). I've worked with the Raspberry Pi before, so I know what I'm getting into with an ARM-based computer, but I like that this one is a laptop. The Pi is way cheaper, but you have to hook up a keyboard, mouse and monitor, making it less portable. It's a bit expensive IMO, but when you add all those peripherals to the cost of a Pi, and fit it all in a sleek little laptop, it actually isn't that bad. I like that it's hackable, cuz like you said most laptops aren't, and I like that it comes with Linux out of the box (I wonder which distro(s) you can put on it tho). I kind of agree with Toni K about the camera and touch pad, cuz I don't need either (I would totally want speakers tho lol), but it still sounds like a great device overall. Thanks for the review. :)
Thank you so much for the feedback. The OSs I’ve tried so far are Chromium, Debian (it comes with) and Manjaro ARM. Manjaro has become my favorite. I did my own hack this week and flipped the speakers and cut some holes into top cover so they’re top firing - massive improvement!
@@dasgeek I've been working with Manjaro ARM for a Raspberry Pi 4 project. Manjaro Arm team has by far the best distro for aarch64 devices. Unfortunately their team is quite limited to they have a hard time adapting to all the different devices out there. I was really looking forward to this notebook and thanks to your good review, i'll definitely be getting one. I trust the Manjaro team and/or community to fix all software problems fast
I don't trust a man in a gaming chair doing reviews. J/K XD Very nice review, I was looking for this device but the 2 things kept me from buying it instantly : 1. The non regionalized keyboard layout. I'm used to azerty . 2. The fact that it is not (yet?) able to render (youtube) videos in 1080p60. I think I could live with the qwerty kb and as I've read, the video playback is going to improve a lot with new drivers/acceleration implementation. edit: I would love to see how much amps it is pulling while in light/heavy use. you got a new sub btw.
I've run Thinkpads for almost 2 decades now, but this is actually kind of compelling. I could probably put my IGZO in that thing and get 12 hours out of it while also reducing the need to carry around 72 wh batteries. I might have to give this a chance for a month and see how it goes. . .
When you were talking about the trackpad problems did that include after the recent firmware update? Great review, still very excited to receive my Pinebook Pro.
Oh gosh.... Thanks for the reply, I just now realized that he was referring to your user name. I thought the Solamnic was some part of the firmware update or something. 😳
I'm just wondering what their margins are on a $199 / £199 (probably even though they are made over here) speaker respositioning would help, seems to be enough space on the palm rest so to speak, trackpad may be more expensive for them to impliment, webcam is probably an all in one module that could be upgraded, however it's the extra cost, and even cents makes a difference to the bottom line. I think it's a great machine for $199. Maybe they could do a pro+ with some upgraded features for $250
I think they say that they don't make any money on those laptops. I believe them. Maybe if they sell way more than they expected, they could recup rnd and make a small profit.
Pine has very thin margins (they say basically zero) on the consumer type devices (pinebook, pinephone, pinetime). They sell them as a service to the community and in an effort to improve the landscape of usable consumer level, developer hackable, ARM devices.
I honestly wouldn't even realize if my laptops didn't have speakers to begin with. I would never do myself the disservice of listening to anything through integrated speakers. My Thinkpad X220 has a camera but I've had a piece of tape on it ever since I bought it and I never intend to use it, so that's also a non-issue. I wish it had the nipple mouse, I wouldn't need a trackpad at all if it had one. I'd probably get around that using i3 or something else which plays very well with Mate. I certainly wouldn't get a cheap laptop for multimedia consumption but rather to do text editing, writing code and reading on the go. For my use cases at least it seems beautiful. If anything I _wouldn't_ like to see more expensive speakers and camera in it because those would drive up the cost for zero benefit to someone like me at least.
OK, so when does the Pro + model with the upgraded, faster chipset with 8 GB RAM for $279 comes out? Cause I want to do away with my Chromebooks and Google's Big Brother monitoring me......
Easy to switch. How big is the storage? I would set up a couple of OS partitions, and leave the rest for /home. That way you can install a second OS and point it at the same user files -- no need to copy them back and forth.
My intent with it is to use it like a thin client and VPN / remote into a computer at my home with all my tools installed there. No need to have the performance expectation or to be disappointed (less the wifi on it sucks) as all the work will be done on a computer that sits in my basement. The PB looks like the perfect solution for my needs - I just need a portable keyboard, monitor, and wifi connection. Everything else will be done on another machine regardless of my location.
Might look into this whenever my 2013 MacBook Air dies. Definitely would immediately install Manjaro Budgie, it's what I've been using on my MacBook for the past year or so
How do I get one of them Intel 109880XE-54Z65 chips? :) Great review Ryan, keep it up brother. Seriously thinking about getting a couple of these for the kids to do homework and what not. Then again for 200 bucks I can get a used Lenovo with a 5th gen i5.. I'm a bit torn.
Things that I am interested to try on that device are Android Studio, Docker, and certain tools from Kali. I think the point of using arm cpu with Linux is the power efficiency. The 4 to 6 hours battery life is, however, a bit disappointed. Most laptop with recent Intel cpu can do better.
Warning, docker on arm is...weird. It's a lot better now that it was 6 months ago. Manjaro had the best docker support that i could find. I'm also surprised by the battery life. 10.000 mhA battery should've lasted far more. I think some software tuning can greatly extend that.
Nice review. I think maybe you were lucky with your model. The wifi doesn't work at all on mine and it constantly crashes an restarts. It's buggy as hell. I'll try the Ubuntu or Manjaro images to see if it helps but I'm a bit doubtful.
@@dasgeek I'm on the forum. Many people there are having the same wifi issue, very common. Prob hardware issue tbh, but I should take the machine apart and fiddle with wifi card I guess.
Sure the camera lag isn't just the processor not being able to handle live video? I know my 1 ghz x86 netbook back in the day couldn't handle the camera even though it was there. Would even crash trying to use Google hangouts.
By hackable or upgradable what do you actually mean? Are you saying that you can change the whole board with an Intel compatible one later down the line? What’s the max amount of memory we can install on it? What components are upgradable?
Yes you can change the board and it’s designed to easily change / upgrade. You can replace the battery. You can add additional modules to it for adding in upgrades like NvME drives, you can upgrade EMMC module, built in bypass cables, serial console access through headphone jack. It’s not glued together it’s hackable.
@@shaneorourke110 Arch Linux (/ɑːrtʃ/)[3] is a Linux distribution for computers based on x86-64 architectures.[4] The Arch Linux repositories contain both libre, and nonfree software, and the default Arch Linux kernel contains nonfree proprietary blobs, hence the distribution is not endorsed by the GNU project.[5] Arch Linux adheres to five principles: simplicity, modernity, pragmatism, user centrality and versatility. In general, the principles maintain minimal distribution-specific changes, minimal breakage with updates, pragmatic over ideological design choices, user-friendliness, and minimal bloat.[6] A package manager written specifically for Arch Linux, Pacman, is used to install, remove and update software packages.[7] Arch Linux uses a rolling release model, meaning there are no "major releases" of completely new versions of the system; a regular system update is all that is needed to obtain the latest Arch software; the installation images released by the Arch team are simply up-to-date snapshots of the main system components.[8] Arch Linux has comprehensive documentation, which consists of a community wiki known as the ArchWiki.[9][10][11]
Aren't most of the components on this soldered? Sans replacing the NVME drive it doesn't sound very modular or repairable sans replacing the whole board.
free2game yes but replacing the entire board since it’s a SoC is very simple and cheap. Additionally the current board has expansion options to add things like NvME drive or other components. It’s very hackable.
I will be looking to use mine as a terminal, hooking into Windows based servers. Ca n you suggest an RDP client that works with the debian distro installed?
This isn't a $199.99 laptop, especially for non-US users who have to pay $39 shipping and have the risk of import duty on top of that. You say it's upgradeable several times in the video, yet the RAM is soldered and stuck at 4GB, which is pretty low in this day and age. Adding an NVMe drive requires an optional adapter and apparently you can't even boot from NVMe anyway! Add in the poor webcam, poor speakers, the "adequate" trackpad (though I hate all trackpads compared to a mouse...) and some browser issues then I think I'll wait for the Pro 2 version. A shame really because it's pretty impossible to find a good new laptop at this price with Linux pre-installed and this comes the closest to date. I'd do wish they got the shipping cost down for European users though - $39 is at least twice what I'd expect to pay (esp. with the import duty risk on top of that).
Thinking about, in EU the price could be 239$+ some statistic custom % fee. Around 250/270eur converted. This because as a laptop, customs tend to assign a statistic valued higher than 200$!
the ram is not up-gradable, you can buy an nvme adapter board on pine64 store to add SSD (only nvme disk is supported, not msata), it's not directly bootable from it.
@@scachemaille If you do a fresh install you might be able to locate the Home drive on the NVME so files like word docs or videos would me stored there avoiding the emmc storage where the system and would be installed root, boot etc
@@kylenorris9585 Yes I know.. and I think (at least on manjaro, with some hacking) and can just keep /boot on emmc and put the rest of the system on the SSD because they added nvme support inside of initramfs image. I can't try because I did not ordered the adapter, maybe later if I decide to order it
It's a good review, I've een 5 reviews on this product, but for the size (formfactor) This device is out for me. I see it's usefulness but lacks what I expect for a device this size.
I think they addressed or will address the touchpad precision issue with a firmware update. Lukasz mentions it in the interview here, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eo-pajs7KDY.html
this is an ARM laptop so there is a limited set of OS’s and tools that run on ARM and also run well on this chipset with its wifi and other peripherals. Pine64 and the devs maintain a list of all of the repos that work with the pinebook and pinebook pro on their wiki. there are significantly more distros that run on the regular pinebook than the pinebook pro at this time, since the pro is still very new. I don’t think peppermint specifically is a supported one but the major components of peppermint are (lxde) so you can configure existing os’s to the look and feel of peppermint
Do you think it can really be used for coding? I recently bought a course on udemy, and I just want an answer to this question. Please tell me it can run codes with no hiccups.
This would be really good for genetic field research in companionship with www.bento.bio/ I think a lot of field researchers who need a basic computer to go out into the world could use this laptop to upload to a database what genetic research they've done.
Brightness of the screen has a significant impact on battery life.. at minimum on idle I have about 2.35W of consumption when at maximum it increase to 6W. On a 40Wh battery and with low power cpu the difference in not negligible Right now this movie running an typing this comment with brightness at almost minimum (and it's ok in my current room light) it tell me 9:58 with battery at 93% (manjaro plasma running on emmc )
The PinebookPro 64GB eMMC will cost me here in Austria Europe Union €315,- And the Resaon is there is a Postal Service from about USD 40,- and little things like the long Load cable, The M.2 Adapter and the Ethernet Adapter that cost not so much but after the + 20% TAX for the Customs so I paid €315,- Total plus a Intel 660p M.2 SSD 512GB that cost me €72,90 at Amazon that mean all in all cost €387,90 Total. I have never a so good Notebook then this! This is my personal Notebook for all Activities inside and outside the screen is a IPS and very good for this Size. Well the Powersave function is important to save the Energy. I love my PBP if one said this is a bad Technologie for this less money so I must say buy a USD2000,- expensiv book and go ahead. I love my PBP! It is one of the coolest books ever! funny point on it is that first I don't want to buy Intel and then the M.2 SSD is a Intel!
It's an arm device, nice idea 💡 but forget it. Take the money and buy a used tough thinkpad that is 10 times more powerful then that 💪! Tip if you like an arm processor just buy an raspberryPi it will save you some bugs!
