What's an eMMC Laptop? 

What is an eMMC laptop? Manufacturers Penny pinching.

The other flaw with eMMC is that the moment that storage gets unreliable (guaranteed to happen eventually due to wear, unless it is read-only), you basically lose all data on it unless you back it up. That basically renders the laptop into guaranteed e-waste because the chip can't (easily) be replaced. I would consider any laptop which relies on it to be a net negative for the environment. Edit: If you're about to reply to contradict me, I'd urge you to first read my reply to @Shayan's reply to this comment, below. Thanks! 😊👍

Quick summary from experience: Stay away from devices with Celeron/Entry Level Pentium + eMMC. Nowadays there are simply better options even on a budget. If you only have around 200-300 bucks to spend, get a used device or a tablet instead

Spinning HDDs could be replaced with SATA SSDs by the user for a cheap and effective upgrade. eMMC can't be user upgraded, and very few of those super cheap laptops include a sata or m.2 connector. The eMMC itself isn't really the problem, since it's still flash storage just like any other SSD. The slow down is the single data lane. There's no controller, so data can't be sent in parallel.

extra Mediocre Media Card

Installing linux on those is pretty much mandatory. Windows 10 and up just love to keep constantly accessing the drive for all it's services like update processing, anti viruses, search indexing..so you end up with extra wear and just having to wait the system decide to load the stuff you asked it to.

As EMMC storage wears it becomes slower and slower. Not a big deal for phones and tablets that aren't constantly writing to disk like windows does with it's background updates. I had a user come into the IT office a while back saying their computer was slow so I reformatted it and on fresh install it was still dog slow so I ran crystal disk mark and it came back with 35MB/s seq read speed which is basically dead. The computer was from 2018.

Ok hear me out instead of including storage they should just include an SD card slot for it instead since the lifespan of eMMC isn't great and it's not replaceable whereas a cheap SD card could be replaced and upgraded repeatedly.

For the last 10 years it has been considered a war crime to use an emmc as an OS drive, the punishment is life imprisonment. Time to put PC vendors on trial. As a fellow non-sportsball fan I nominate Anthony to be judge and a Foxconn factory to be executioner.

I always thought that those eMMC Laptops were just the perfect opportunity for companies to get rid of all their Celeron crap.

LMG missing the salient point: emmc storage in low end laptops is often in low capacity, 64GB or even 32GB. 64GB is very hard to use in Windows for literally anything. 32GB is e-waste before you break the tape on the packaging. It is literally unusable. Windows will fail to update OOB. This is much more important than the speed concern. Linux users can be okay.

Sadly, in practice, that eMMC is barely 2 times faster than a cheap 2.5" HDD, except cheap 2.5" HDD has on average 500Gb capacity and can be upgraded to SSD should speed really become a problem (with 128 and 256Gb SSD being dirt cheap).... So by buying one with eMMC you're basically buying a piece of electronic waste with no upgrade path other than throwing it away and buying a new one in a year or two

I made a set top box for my dad using a cheap SBC with eMMC. Despite the total price(approx £50), it really outpaces the speed of his TVs built in smart functions. He was getting really pissed off at how laggy it was. Really useful for any kinda thin client machine.

HDD: I'm known for being worse than an SSD SSD: I'm known for better than an HDD eMMC: I am worse than both HDDs and SSDs and only better than HDDs in a few cases because I am not mechanical

I bought a second hand HP Stream 11 laptop a few years ago for next to nothing. A problem with this laptop is that Windows 10 occupies 20 Gb of the 32 Gb on its eMMC SSD. Up until a year ago this meant that it was almost impossible to update Windows 10 on its eMMC drive. You had to delete all none Windows 10 files from the eMMC drive before it was possible. It is now possible to update Windows 10 more easily because Microsoft will by default use an external removable drive to provide temporary storage for the update. In my case it used a plug in low profile 128 Gb USB 3 disk drive for temporary storage.

Great video! I also want to complement you guys on always including the credits for who worked on the video, more channels should do this!

The problem is the longevity. I've got plenty of laptops that are slower than hard drives because the eMMC storage has worn out. And of course they wear out faster because they are typically full, because they aren't really big enough for a copy of windows in the first place. You'd think formatting and reinstalling should provide some form of wear levelling that would improve the performance but I haven't found that to be the case.

had the displeasure of using emmc laptop... it was painfully slow, basically unusable. Even simplest tasks like opening up windows setings app to change default browser was taking a solid minute.

How can they justify only including 32gb when that isn't even enough to update Windows?

eMMC Laptop, yes...run away

My problem is that eMMC usually tops out at 64Gb, but usually even less on retail hardware like HP's Stream notebooks. Once once windows or linux is on there, you get essentially no space for user files.

I’ve seen eMMC laptops with decent(ish) (256GB) amounts of storage and low to mid-tier processors for sale when I was shopping for my laptop. I absolutely REFUSED to even consider anything with soldered storage or RAM. Picked up one with a Ryzen 5700u, a 512GB NVMe, and 16GB 3200Mhz removable RAM. It’s been a pretty good portable productivity machine.

At least the cheap laptops with eMMC usually have a free m2 slot. Bought my gf a Jumper Ezbook Pro 3 in 2018 and after adding an SSD it ended up being a snappy and reliable machine that lasted her through nursing school. It’s still going strong today.

Every time someone brings me a cheaper note/netbook with an EMMC, It's almost always unfixable because the main thing that goes is the built in flash storage. Either I install windows on a usb external drive and tape it to the machine (or use a usb flash device that must stay plugged in) or I tell them it's a paper weight. Once it goes then most the system aside from the ram and perhaps screen is useless and cannot be replaced.

Crap, that's what eMMC is

Having that little amount of non-upgradeable storage means you are gauranteed to run out of space one day when performing an update. It happened to a friend of mine and the laptop was basically useless for it's intended purpose (for school, required Windows and some base programs).

I didn't even know eMMC was used in anything but Raspberry pis and other SBCs until this video. It is great for limited space that you want to or need to remove the SD card slot used for the boot media to fit into

The Steam Deck coming out showed how little people knew about eMMC. The amount of people who couldn't fathom an M.2 eMMC drive was astounding lol.

I had a Chromebook with this type of storage. It's still doing it's thing about 5 years later... Though I barely ever use it.

i have one that was given to me by a friend, a lil DellI Inspiron with an a6 9220e and a 32gb Emmc and has 4gb ram. i managed to make it tolerable by using a script to shave down the Win10 install image, cutting out things like telemetry etc, and adding a 64gb MicroSD. It's tolerable and can even play games like Untitled Goose Game and older stuff like Prince Of Persia Two Thrones, but i mainly use it as an 'Edgebook', adding sites as an app. But it's great on vacation, had it up to the cabin for Thanksgiving and was not bored, to say the least.

Anthony is a great host - well paced and articulate enough for novice users even with complex topics

Your descriptions are very on point and your view on it is also very reasonable. I liked it

One important thing to note with eMMC storage is that 32 GB and 64 GB is nowhere nearly enough for modern (Windows) usage. Microsoft's OS will never let you miss an update and if you happen to use the 32 GB model, that space is gone in a matter of seconds. If you reduce the amount of BloatOS by deleting Microsoft Office and various components you never intended to use, the next update will install them right back up and 5 minutes later (because Windows update will throttle everything so hard, it will take at least 5 minutes to download your regular BloatOS) it will ask you if you have some spare USB device to download more BloatOS for update. And Windows updates regularly so be prepared for the same shit to happen next month. If you plan on using the cheap laptop in the long run, consider replacing the Windows it usually comes with, with any light Linux distro.

In my experience eMMC is even slower than a decent mechanical drive. Although the newer eMMC standards have upped the bandwidth a bit, bottom of the barrel computers do not opt for the faster chips, and go for the same old eMMC 1.0 junk.

The biggest issue is the amount they use. Woefully inadequate and essentially stops windows being able to be updated.

Some fun facts. eMMCs chips are connected to the system using a chip called an SD controller (aka. a card reader chip). Since from the controller's perspective, eMMC is just a stanadard memory card, with enough skill you can actually solder-on an SD or a microSD card in place of an eMMC. Reverse is also true - eMMC chips can be read by any standard SD card reader if you can connect the chip to the reader.

I'd rather have the mechanical sata drive over the eMMC storage, as it can easily be swapped out with a $20 SSD.

Yes, it's a cost cutting and planned obsolescence measure that you need to avoid like the plague. It's bad for consumers, doesn't give any benefit and makes your machine obsolete and not upgradeable way sooner than you'd want. Just like soldered on RAM modules, which aren't even mentioned in spec sheets. Avoid avoid

Great video! I always wondered about that thing.

Thanks. You're providing useful & straightforward explanation for me. Cheers 🍻

I would say yes, eMMC should be avoided like the plauge, I don't know if things have improved but really when I tried it on an old windows tablet, it was just barely any faster than a 2.5mm hdd, the atom processor wasn't actually completely terrible, the storage was still the main bottleneck.

I know it's been said a million times, but I'll say it a million more. I love Anthony as a TechQuickie host.

I'm not sure how it is today, but when these became common in 2017-2018 a lot of retailers would advertise these cheaper laptops having SSD's when infact they had much inferior eMMC, quite infuriating.

Emmc was common on Android smartphone. I am using my note 5 pro for 4+ years with heavy use it's still working just perfectly finely.

I had experience with one of this laptops it was the 32gb model and after windows updated you had like 4 gigs left i used an usb stick as another storage drive that enabeled more ram and file storage and an external 100gb ssd for games and stuff it had a celeron with integrated graphics and ran sims 4 at 20ish fps civ 4 was better and nfsu1 was quite nice too so in fairness for older or indie games not a bad pc just need to reinstal windows each time instead of updating oh also died in 2 years

I find this interesting because the smartphones we all know and love use eMMC for much of their storage… in fact, some versions of eMMC would put perform the competing UFS standard that was also available in both read and write times…

hahahhaah that honesty at the end is why I love your channel man xD

These laptops aren’t an issue running chrome OS but any version of windows 7-11 completely overwhelmed the process with Windows updates

eMMC, a proud partner of mobile celerons and 4gb of ram

A crime.

Worth noting that some / many eMMC laptops have the ability to add an nVME drive, which makes a huge difference.

I have been using a RCA cambio with very low specs but it has been excellent for my use case i.e. browsing, notes writing, simple gaming and reading It's battery life has also been great considering it was only $150 while other shops while selling at $100

Its not "random read", random read is as fast as sequencial read, because thats how NAND flash works. What makes SSD/eMMC fast - is not sequencial blocks access speed, its PARALLELISM. or queue depth. If you can parallel your nand access, you will get full speed. eMMC has bad latency, which often mistaken with random read speed. 4KQD1 is slow not because of random, its because of QD1. old eMMC write latency can be a lot worse than HDD seek time(10-20ms).

I have a permanent emmc laptop. I'm here to tell you STAY THE FUCK AWAY from these laptops. I'm suffering so you don't have to..

I have a super basic Celeron laptop I got for stupid cheap (brand new), and after using it 2+ years I installed a 2.5" SATA SSD 'upgrade kit' I got on clearance, and it made that system so much faster.

I have a 16gb Kingston eMMC windows tablet, it was a gift from a teacher from my school, it is with a cracked glass and it wasn't booting, goes straight into recovery mode, but after a lot of flash drives into my main pc and back to the tablet with windows and drivers it came back to life, now it's my main pc together with an 240gb laptop with a jumperwire in the main fuse

Simple..emmc = shitty grade nand storage...the end. There's a reason why some laptop makers put it in their lowest priced laptops for many years straight

The biggest drawback to eMMC is the capacity. 32/64/128G is absolutely nothing

My Asus e200-ha was the best damn affordable laptop ever. Yes, it was an atom processor with 32 gb of eMMC, BUT, that thing has a 12 actual hour battery life, the keyboard was amazing, it was so damn light, and all for 200 dollars. It was hard to manage I admit, and there were some issues with it, but that thing was cheaper than my college books and got me through graduation solo.

I've got a mini pc to run as a home Linux server, with few vm including home assistant. The emmc lasted about 7 month before it died. Bought an ssd and it has worked flawlessly since then. Luckily everything was backed up

AliExpress SDs imo

TL;DR: shitty SSD’s for crappy laptops

Yay Anthony always informative and useful as always

Having moved from a laptop with a HDD to one with a SSD and a laptop with eMMC, I am much happier with both options since startup is just that much faster, as well as most programs opening.

It's a ticking time bomb. I have one of those collecting dust once the eMMC crapped out.

At least mechanical HDD has capacity of 256/512 GB.... I would avoid this as new plague (recommendation for other ppl). IMHO, booting live Linux distro from the USB is much better option than eMMC.

My Dad got an eMMC laptop, and even with nothing else on the drive there wasn't enough storage to download Windows updates. At least his had room to put in a SATA SSD, which solved his storage problems.

emmc was also standard in phones internal storage until it was replaced with faster nvme and ufs memory, debuted with iphone 6s and galaxy S6. the lag was painfull particular starting apps and browsing in galleries

Lmao 🤣 I don't watch sports. I don't think many of us watch sports. 😂

When review channels don't even know what they're talking about. I, too, thought EMMC is soldered to the mobo, but sometimes it ISNT. Like with the 64gb steam deck, the "emmc" isn't soldered in WHATSOEVER because it still uses the pcie m.2 interface.

Have an intel 7th gen 2in1 with eMMc. It really gimps the performance with loading the OS. Luckily, the laptop has a usb c port that allows me to boot from an external ssd. I now run the operating system from that drive and it performs way better than it did stock (bought it 5 years ago i think)

I bought a cheap ASUS E410-MA Celeron N4020 laptop which has a 64GB eMMC drive. I installed a cheap PCI-E NVME SSD and cloned the eMMC drive to it. Then, I made the SSD the boot drive. I left the eMMC drive intact as a backup boot drive in case the SSD fails prematurely. Plus, I took off the eMMC drive's letter in Disk Manager so that it's invisible to other users.

Claim your “here within an hour” ticket right here🏆

Well put

We've come so far in computer systems. Back in 2003-2004 when I was 12-13 years old, I dreamed of having the kind of devices we have and the amount of low latency connections we have and the absolute mammoth amount of data we can pump around. My first real computer was a socket 478 Celeron with a rage inducing GeForce fx5200. I remember the desire to own a 6800gtx was so damn strong. All I wanted to do was be able to play doom 3 at high res and fast

I fix and refurbish laptops and PCs as a hobby and I have a laptop with a dead eMMC. I'm in limbo with regards to refurbishing it as the eMMC chip itself is uneconomical to replace (No special equipment, would need to source and configure the correct chip) and because Acer never bothered to solder in circuitry/ports for the absent HDD space I can't just plop one in either (would be a PITA to source the tiny components for that too). I fully support user replaceable parts and repairability as these things are practically e-waste waiting to happen.

The biggest problem with eMMC (aside from having to change the OS) is that for some reason they're always inside TINY laptops. I don't know why manufacturers equate "cheap" or "slow" with small. I'm a writer so all I want is for letters to show up when I press them. I tried the cheapo eMMC laptops a few years ago but had to give up on them. When you have hands like dinner plates, laptops that aren't much bigger than "max" phones just don't cut it.

I remember putting an super lite Windows 7 on an sd card and it was emmc of 15 years ago

very informative, thanks!

3:57 i can hear someone laughing lol

I still have a Samsung Chromebook 3 which has the emmc. IT is a good chromebook and very happy with it enough to warrent getting a used back up unit. The one thing that I like about it is the fact that its 12v, to which I got an extra power plug and made a charger for the car. While the new ones are usb c (which my acer spill 11 have a flaw that kills the ports it you bump them or I am guessing bad solder job) I like that the batttery still last several hours and I am sure that I can still buy replacements for it. $28.98 right now on amazon. If you check around you will find whole computers for not much more than that. They also include chargers and now you have spare parts. You can pick up up for around 30 to 70 dollars depending on who you pick.

I have an eeepc from 2004, still running and srill using it , now in only one specific aplication. But was my main pc in till 2008

I remember when them painfully slow mechanical hard drives were considered not just fast but super fast… I’m old lol

this is the kind of video that makes our lives better. Thanks for that!

Yeah, I think as many laptops have soldered storage chips, a replaceable m.2 or SATA one should be more prominently advertised on laptops that have it.

I love my eMMC Laptop. Use it for office apps etc. Works perfectly and has a long battery life

I use a pinebook pro with EMMC running Manjaro as my travel/light duty laptop and it works great. It's worth pointing out that not *all* EMMC drives are soldered to the board. Some, including mine, are socketed and replaceable.

I still remember the old age when most of smartphones were using eMMC and that was painful. Back in those years most of them tended to be extremely slow after used for even 1 year.

01:07 I’ve waited all my life for this moment

Most, if not all those eMMC laptops run Windows in S-Mode. There are of those that also have an M.2 slot for an NVME drive. I did this to a cheap Lenovo laptop that I recently bought, and cloned everything from the eMMC to NVME. At least, it's future proofed enough to not get clogged up with Windows updates.

Lovely video😂 and Insightful ❤

I bought one when I needed a laptop but didn't have a lot of money. It wasn't bad. I even used the Arduino IDE. But the size of the memory was the big limiting factor. 32 GB was just not enough. And 64 wouldn't be any better for me.

A eMMC is just a SD card or usb stick pretending to be a SSD. This is a deciding point for Windows because it is not willing to install on either. It is also not a thing you want to expect to last a while: No SMART or spare sectors whatsoever. If it breaks you can kiss the whole mainboard goodbye, unless manufacturers who actually care, employ a slot for a M.2 SSD. Cheers for the upload!

The problem I find is that the average person just doesn't know how to read specs. And, there are no real "computer stores" in my area. For example, I have a client that refuses to get a desktop, only buys the cheapest laptop that she can find, and wants to run Statistical software on it like SPSS or SASS. She can't understand that a Celeron Laptop, with 4 GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD aren't enough to power such programs. Her repl is, "But, it is brand new!"

4:04 And not soldered eMMC which is a big bonus as you can replace it for a more proper M.2 2230

I've had one or 2 of these lappys and I've despised them...but I think it's more due to the SIZE of the eMMC drive rather than the speed...I think...great vid as always...

Its amazing how well yall's videos correlate with CompTIA A+ XD

Thanks for the video!

eMMC laptops are fine for a console machine, streaming media, or a basic emulator box if the processor is decent enough, but outside that I can't see much use for them

See windows centrals original tests of the Surface Go.. Great surprise about the emmc one. Nothing wrong with them for a email office laptop.