Thoughts on the GPD Pocket2
Don Harper
The Pocket2 is a nifty little device. It is what some people call a mini- or micro-laptop. It is small enough to be put into a jacket pocket (8.1" x 5.8" x 0.7") and weighing only 1.5 pounds without the USB-C charger. The screen is a nice, crisp 1920x1200 8.9" screen while small is very usable.
The one I bought has an Intel Celeron Processor 3965Y CPU with 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage. The main reason I bought it was to run Linux on it as a travel laptop. For that reason, I installed Ubuntu Mate 19.04 on it and then installed the I3 window manager and my normal load of mainly console-based apps. I have a USB-C hub with HDMI which works very well.
So, how does it work for me? Well, I can run most of a day on a charge, only using it to check emails and the odd web page. I have never actually run the battery down. The optical mouse takes a bit of getting used to, but works fairly well, along with the touch-screen. The keyboard is laid out very oddly to make it fit into the space of the shell, but it will work once you get used to it. And the WiFi has yet to let me down. For the primary role of a travel laptop and one that I take into work to keep an eye on non-work things, it works great.
Where the device falls down for me is trying to use it as my main machine. The disk access is a bit laggy and bursty when trying to load larger files, and the CPU is a bit week when trying to do graphical things. Opening up two web pages at the same time will bog the whole system down whilst they load.
I think that with a better CPU, this would be a great machine, but I am not sure what that would do to the battery.