Home » News » A 7-inch, open-source MNT Pocket Reform laptop costs less than $900.

A 7-inch, open-source MNT Pocket Reform laptop costs less than $900.

(Image Credit Google)
Image Credit: Indiegogo The 7-inch MNT Pocket Reform crowdfunding campaign has officially launched and is acting as a de facto preorder system for the device, which means the makers of the all-open-source MNT Reform laptop are getting closer to releasing its handheld counterpart. The Pocket Reform's base price is $899; it is also available in purple for $969; and for $1,299, it can be purchased in a package with a 1TB SSD, a carrying case, a user manual, and a poster. Currently, mid-October is the estimated delivery date for all versions. Newly released on Crowd Supply is the MNT Pocket Reform, a smaller version of the MNT Reform laptop with a 7-inch display and an NXPi.MX8M Plus system-on-module is compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4, Pine64 SOQuartz, NXP Layerscape LS1028A, and AMD Kintex-7 FGPA modules. mnt-pocket-laptop Image Credit: Liliputing The open-source modular laptop also has a 128GB eMMC flash, 8GB RAM, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity built right into the module, an optional 1TB NVMe SSD, a backlit 60-key mechanical keyboard with an optical trackball and four buttons, a few USB ports, a micro-HDMI port for connecting an external display, and Ethernet via an ix industrial connector. The mechanical keyboard in the pocket edition uses open-source hardware, and customers can select either white or red Kalih switches. In addition to having fewer and smaller ports—two USB-C, one micro-HDMI, one microSD port, and one ix industrial mini-Ethernet port—the pocket version has a 7-inch 1920 x 1200 LCD screen instead of a 12-point 5-inch model. Its trackball-style pointing device has been shrunk to fit into the smaller design, and its keyboard has an individually programmable RGB backlight. pocket-reform-purple-cropped Image Credit: CrowdSupply Additionally, the Pocket Reform has integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 128GB of built-in eMMC storage, and a slot for an expansion card for 4G cellular connectivity. The device can also be used to boot from microSD cards or an NVMe SSD that have been inserted into the M.2 slot. It can run for about four hours thanks to its 8000 mAh batteries. The laptop's shoddy hardware performance is, however, its main issue. Its 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex A53-based CPU has roughly the performance of a Raspberry Pi 3 or a mid-2010s budget smartphone—barely enough to get by for basic browsing and document editing, fine for command-line work, and challenging to live with for just about anything else. The performance of the Pocket Reform slightly improves on this front with an increase in clock speed of 1.8 GHz and 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB, but it still falls far short of a contemporary PC or Mac, smartphone, or even a Raspberry Pi 4. On the MNT Pocket Reform, users can install a variety of Linux distributions, but the default setup is Debian Linux with the GNOME 4 desktop environment, which is suitable for most users or Sway Wayland compositor for power users. The system images for Reform laptops can be found in one git repository, and the KiCAD hardware design files for all the boards used in the Pocket Reform can be found in another. Read More: How to Download Windows Subsystem for Linux for Windows 10? The Crowd Supply campaign is succeeding, having raised approximately $115,000 of the $135,000 funding goal in less than a day. Rewards range from $899 for the Pocket Reform Black to $1,369 for the "Pocket Reform Hyper Purple," which includes a 1TB NVMe SSD, a Piatex (leather-like) sleeve, and some printed materials. Deliveries will begin in the second half of October 2023, and shipping costs are already included in the price. But if you live in San Francisco, you might be able to see an early prototype in action soon because the MNT Pocket Reform will be on display at the Humanmade makerspace on Monday, March 20, starting at 5 PM.

By Omal J

I worked for both print and electronic media as a feature journalist. Writing, traveling, and DIY sum up her life.

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