GPD Pocket

[ZXDunny]

Found a deal on GearBest (£374 with free USB-C Hub and case) so decided to splurge. Arrived in 6 days, which was a surprise - and no customs fees etc.

And god damn, this is nice. It's taken a day or so to get the OS installed properly and drivers updated - the Intel GFX driver was causing problems with Chrome, and the BIOS was heavily locked down - but this thing has a really, really nice screen, fantastic construction (really solid, satisfyingly so) and having owned a Pandora, the keyboard is an absolute dream. Getting about 8 to 10 hours of use while coding (Delphi mainly, some Lazarus/FPC) and it runs SpecBAS at a hell of a speed.

Not done any gaming on it yet, but I really don't think I need to - this is fulfilling all my needs.

Not going to bother waiting for the Pyra now, this has truly surpassed expectations.

 

[torpor]

Hey cool, ZXDunny, I just placed an order too .. are you running yours with Windows or Ubuntu? I bought it mostly so I could have a portable Linux machine (like my Pandora) .. have you had any issues with that so far?

Can't wait to get mine .. would love to hear more from you on your experience with it so far.

 

[ZXDunny]

I run it with Windows, as that's my primary OS for work - and yeah, I can work on this! We develop FL Studio in Delphi and C++, and being able to work on the sofa is awesome... Of course, SpecBAS is also written in Delphi so that's getting a hammering too.

It's surprisingly quick. I mean really, really quick. SpecBAS runs about as fast on this as it does on my macbook pro and it's purely CPU driven with no hardware acceleration at all. FL Studio doesn't run as well as it should though, but it's a very very CPU intensive piece of software. Large sound buffer sizes are needed.

The screen is amazingly sharp at 1920x1200 and the onboard intel graphics hardware does a good job of driving it. Web browsing with the touchscreen is nice, and the mouse nub is really usable with one hand (despite the things our very own keyboard nazis said about it initially) and the keyboard though taking some time to get used to, is very nice and responsive. The only issue there is the very, very insane placement of the caps lock key...

As for the OS - I've installed all the updates and run a cleanup. After that there's about 100GB of space left on the internal drive. I've updated the Intel gfx drivers (necessary, Chrome has issues restoring its window after minimising without it) and updated the BIOS to the Ubuntu unlocked BIOS to tweak some of the settings to gain a touch more performance.

Not tried gaming yet, I'll report back when I do. I'm in the process of moving all my emulation stuff over to it from the Pandora. I have no doubt that it will perform far better at all emulation tasks than the Pandora ever did.

 

[torpor]

Wow, didn't know you worked on FL Studio .. nice one! Thanks for the quick review .. I'll be running Ubuntu on mine, so its interesting to hear of a comparison. Would you say the CAPSLOCK issue would be solved by remapping it to ESCAPE, as I've done on my MPB-Touchbar, and since I'm a vim guy, that'll be useful, rather than painful?

 

[ZXDunny]

I'd remap it to A tbh - it's so close to A that I usually end up hitting caps instead.

 

[pmprog]

Found a deal on GearBest (£374 with free USB-C Hub and case) so decided to splurge. Arrived in 6 days, which was a surprise - and no customs fees etc.

I think you must have got lucky with delivery. Mines been nearly 3 weeks, and still no sign

 

[torpor]

Got mine, love it. Great little system, and very decent performer to boot. Still working on my Linux configuration to make it usable - by default everything onscreen is tiny, but I'm fixing it ... very happy with it though!

 

[ZXDunny]

Here's mine running the best programming language in the world, ever. I've had make some scaling modifications but this is just incredible. It's scaling up from 800x480 to 1920x1200 with no loss of frame rate whatsoever. And the interpreted BASIC runs very slightly slower than my big AMD A8 laptop, which is astonishing.

Edit: That's scaling in software using my own routines, which makes it even more incredible.

When decent drivers for the display are released (and that's more on Intel than GPD) this thing will really rock.

 

[Orkekum]

Oh man, You've pretty much sold it to me already! Haha.
I do have the GPD Win, with the gaming controls, its a nice device for when visiting parents and you want to watch youtube, or plug a usb modem and do some Internets while at a summer-cottage without electricity. Really neat when i can use a batterypack to charge it. (one with three ports with 1A 2 A and 2.4 A )

 

[jontheramer2]

Mine arrived as well; it's a great machine. Like you (ZXDunny) said; the build quality *on the outside* is wonderful. Excellent screen, great keyboard and very very robust body. Ubuntu (didn't try Windows, why would anyone? , after some tweaks, runs perfectly. I want my Pyra because the internals are easy to hack, exchangable battery etc. But yeah... The Pyra with this body and screen....

 

[torpor]

I've got mine set up now, and using it as a normal Linux workstation .. with Steam support, and tons of games .. its really a dream machine. The only issue is getting the Ubuntu Gnome environment set up to be usable - still needs work on thinks like DPI and font sizes, multitouch gestures and so on - but definitely this is an amazing little device.

 

[rygD]

That's what you get for using GNOME.

If only I had more faith in it/GPD, no use for gaming controls, and no interest in the Pyra, I would probably order one. Any of you trying other distros, maybe something "hard"?

 

[pmprog]

This is putting me in a bad mood. It's still not here, and Gearbest have just told me to check the post office. Considering they gave me a Yodel tracking reference, I decided to call Yodel - they don't have any humans answering the phone, and they tell me my tracking reference is invalid (yet, if you go to their website and put it in, it is valid!)

Does anyone have any idea who else I can call to try and find it? is it worth calling Royal Mail?

 

[vcoleiro1]

This is putting me in a bad mood. It's still not here, and Gearbest have just told me to check the post office. Considering they gave me a Yodel tracking reference, I decided to call Yodel - they don't have any humans answering the phone, and they tell me my tracking reference is invalid (yet, if you go to their website and put it in, it is valid!)

Does anyone have any idea who else I can call to try and find it? is it worth calling Royal Mail?

How many weeks has it been?

 

[pmprog]

They shipped on the 17th Sept, so over three weeks. The shipment method was 7-15 days.

 

[vcoleiro1]

It does take a while from memory, last time it took a weeks for me too. I'm waiting on soemthing from them now.

A short time ago they had sent me a tablet and VR goggles for free, to review on my YT channel. Was nice of them, but it did take a little time.

 

[pmprog]

Thanks for that
Never ordered from GearBest before, and all my other orders that tend to ship from Asia are usually about £5 off ebay. So I guess I'm just a bit nervous that something's going to go wrong...

 

[ZXDunny]

Got mine from GearBest, and although I was lucky in that it arrived in 6 days I was pretty nervous the whole time...

 

[vcoleiro1]

I actually feel bad, the Youtube reviews I did on the WIN10 Tablet and VR Googles they sent to me for free, got dismall views. Something like 50-60 views each. I doubt they will be sending me more free things to review . Funny thing is , I was trying to get them to send me a GPD Pocket to review. I almost did get it, but they emailed me later and said they didn't have any in stock at that time, so I had to select something else

I'm still waiting on a keyboard case I bought from them

 

[pmprog]

I've just subbed your YT channel, will have a browse through it later