Pine64, the makers of a popular Raspberry Pi rival, have kicked off pre-orders for a $200 Linux laptop, the Pinebook Pro.
In an age when smartphone owners are balking at $1,000 price tags on super-powered smartphones, the single-board computer world, championed by the Raspberry Pi, is producing capable machines at the other end of the price spectrum using Arm-based hardware. They also make the pinephone. A seriously cheap mobile phone based on the same principles.
There are Intel-based Windows 10 laptops from the likes of Chuwi that are available for around $200, and plenty of choices when it comes to DIY Raspberry Pi-based laptops, but this is is an elegant Linux based laptop which packs enough of a punch to make people stand up and take notice.
Here are some of the specs for this little bit of affordable awesomeness:
- $199 USD price tag
- Rockchip RK3399 SOC with Mali T860 MP4 GPU
- 4GB LPDDR4 RAM
- 1080p IPS Panel
- Magnesium Alloy Shell body
- Bootable Micro SD Slot
- 64GB of eMMC (Upgradable)
- PCIe x4 to m.2 NVMe SSD Slot (requires optional adapter)
- SPI Flash 128Mbit
- HD Digital Video Out via USB-C
- USB 2.0 Host
- USB 3.0 Host
- USB-C (Data, Power and Video out)
- Lithium Polymer Battery (10000mAH)
- Stereo Speakers
- WiFi 802.11 AC + Bluetooth 5.0
- Headphone Jack
- Microphone
- Front-Facing Camera
- ISO & ANSI Keyboard Variants
- Privacy Switches for Camera, Microphones and BT/WiFi
- Large Trackpad
- UART Access via Audio Jack
- Barrel Power (5V 3A) Port
Read the rest of this article at Techrepublic (ZdNet)