GPD Pocket 2 Amber Black Mini Laptop Ultrabook ; with Core m3-8100Y, UHD Graphics, 7" Display ; 8GB RAM, 256GB Storage ; Dual-Band Wi-Fi, BT [PCKT-2-M3-AB]

Product Information

Recharge speed is pretty good from the included charger. Even when the machine is running at max capacity the processor only consumes around 6-8W, and it could recharge from the included USB C while under load. If you have been following GPD you will know that they were originally not going to include an optical sensor at all and instead rely solely on the touch screen to select things. I am super glad that they did not go down this route, navigating a full Windows 10 OS (or Linux distro) on a 7 inch screen using only touch is something that I would not wish upon my worst enemy and the inclusion of the optical sensor above the keyboard, while slightly inconvenient make the machine usable.

But I was able to run Ubuntu 18.04, Debian 9, and Fedora 28. Some worked better than others using the default settings. I did not install any of these operating systems to the built-in storage and didn’t do very much to alter system settings, so I don’t have much to say about performance, battery life, or long-term usage, but I wanted to at least see what the out-of-the-box experience was for each operating system. Ubuntu notes Given how horrible most laptop cameras are… and how ubiquitous smartphone cameras are, I suspect this is a feature most people won’t miss. But it’s still probably something you should be aware of. GPD has managed to squeeze a full laptop into a seven-inch handheld, which is nice. The Intel Atom processor is not exciting, but an Intel Core i5 or i7 would be out of the question. These processors require more space, much more power, higher heat dissipation and cost three times as much as the Intel Atom, making it unfeasible. This is the operating system that took the longest to boot, but when it did I was pleasantly surprised to see that scaling seemed to be set to 200 percent. Text, graphics, and everything else looked great. I didn’t need to squint to see anything and I didn’t need to adjust any font or display settings.

Keyboard

An exception would of course be if you are playing games, while I do not keep many games on this machine due to the limited storage space I do use an indoor cycling simulation program called Zwift where there is a noticeable difference between the different modes. To be fair Zwift also triggers my Macbook Pro fan to turn on at full speed and is clearly a resource hog. There is a dedicated fan toggle button for when you want absolute quietness. But it’s also very much a niche device. Some people are never going to be happy typing on a computer with keys this small. The display is too small to comfortably fit a lot of information at once. And GPD’s choice of placement for the optical touch sensor is less than ideal. The GPD XD Plus excels at Android gaming. It can handle the latest games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and favourites such as Space Marshals and Stranger Things: The Game. There is a vast library of games to play on the Google Play Store which you have full access to. Is the device perfect, no of course not. The display bezels could be smaller, there is no webcam, the optical pointer/mouse buttons are a little bit frustrating and having a proper, full speed, SSD would be great. But this device nails all the really important aspects – all day battery life, a silent mode and being a really fast machine make this one of, if not the best UMPC that you can get on the market at the moment. Again, I hit the Windows key, typed “terminal” and enter to open a terminal window, and then used the “xrandr -o right” command to rotate the display.

In 2006, the concept of Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC) became a reality with small, inexpensive laptops aimed at the masses. UMPC was a collaboration between Intel and Microsoft to create a new market for peripherals. With touch screens and support for a stylus, UMPC was a precursor to modern smartphones, but without cellular connectivity. I also didn’t encounter any major bugs, issues or strange experiences with Windows 10. Everything worked as expected. Again, I’m only looking at the default settings. It’s possible that advanced Linux users will be able to troubleshoot the issues I encountered. But so far the closest I’ve come to a non-Windows operating system where everything works the way you’d expect it to is Ubuntu 18.04.GPD set the default scaling to 175 percent on my demo unit, and that seems to be a pretty good compromise… but some applications still handle scaling in Windows 10 better than others, so don’t be surprised if every now and again you encounter software where all the menus and icons look incredibly tiny. I still had to manually rotate the display. And while the screen brightness keyboard shortcuts worked, the volume keys did not. Some keys are in awkward locations. The F11 and F12 keys are above the F9 and F10 keys, for example. And the command and comma and period keys are placed to the left and right of the up arrow. The CPU and GPU here are not meant for gaming, the primary purpose is media consumption and Microsoft office apps. This device can’t be used for gaming and limited SSD means no heavy tasks like video editing. But the exhaust fans will work well in keeping the device cool and usable for a longer duration. The battery life of about 6-8 hours makes it great for watching movies. Ports and connectivity But according to a report from DroiX, the 4th-gen model could be powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor with Radeon 780M integrated graphics, and that could mean it will be able to handle many modern games… assuming you want to play them on a mini-laptop that’s not much bigger than the game controller you’ll probably want to plug in.

But after confirming that GIMP, LibreOffice, and a few other apps worked… and that the text and graphics were still rather tiny, I decided to try something a little different.One thing the GPD Win 2 isn’t good for? Recording video: there’s no webcam. That means you won’t be making any Skype or Hangouts video calls, broadcasting any Twitch or YouTube live streams, or recording any videos on this device unless you connect a USB camera. While the G1 also has a USB4/Thunderbolt port that will let you connect it to a wide variety of devices The keyboard is one of the major differenciators when comparing this laptop to others in the same niche such as the One Mix Yoga 2 and I was able to happily bash out this review on my morning train commute without any frustrations. So next I opened Fedora’s display settings and tried to change the display orientation that way. Nothing happened.

For some gaming on the side, you can head straight into the action or if you want some extra performance you can increase the TDP to 20W to get more in the performance area of the GPD gaming handhelds.When I ran Geekbench in fanless mode, I got a single-core score of 3035 and a multi-core score of 5777. I turned on the fan and ran the test again, and the scores were lower, probably because the system was warmer than it had been when I started. The laptop’s 1920 x 1200 pixel display looks pretty great, but you may have to adjust the DPI scaling if you want to fit more content on the screen at once… or if you want to fit less content and make text and images large enough to see without squinting.