- As a longtime fan of ultra compact PCs, obviously the one that I'm most jacked about right now
is the Valve Steam Deck, but there's a company that's been innovating in this space
since before the Steam Deck was even a twinkle in Valve's eye, and that's of course is GPD.
Meet the Pocket 3. Now, if the Steam Deck is for gamers,
the Pocket 3 is for everyone else. It's kind of like a modern take on the netbook.
Remember those things? Those slow and loud,
and kind of crappy, cheapo PCs
that were, well, about this size. This is that, but way better,
better cooling, better IO, better quality of materials,
and most importantly, better performance.
Okay, accessories first though. Man, they have made a lot of improvements to this thing.
Okay, we got, hey, a wrist strap.
Remember wrist straps, Brandon? - [Brandon] Yeah, I do. - What do you think, is it gonna hold?
- [Brandon] O God. - All right. Look at that, they made it Linus proof.
We've got a Type C to Type C cable, looks like about a 60 watt Type C wall wart.
And that's it. That's it. That's all for accessories. Let's start on the outside
because there's some pretty trippy stuff going on here. Over on the left,
we've got HDMI out and USB-C,
which is for charging as well as connecting peripherals.
Then, these are actually an HDMI and a USB-C input.
One of the most obvious applications for this, would be a server or something like that.
You just roll up to a machine, plug, using maybe a VGA to HDMI connection,
or just native HDMI, and then anything to USB Type C and boom.
You can use the built-in screen, and keyboard, and mouse
to control that external device. Actually, I guess we can probably demo this.
Okay. So my Framework will take on the host role. This will be the target role.
Boop. Just gonna casually do some stuff
like go to lttstore.com.
Crazy. Okay. For the people who don't care,
I get it, you don't care. But for the people that this is useful for,
this is blowing your mind right now. And I know it.
I love it. And get this, on the subject of Framework,
who by the way, I am invested in, disclosure, they are now no longer
the only ones building modular IO plates for their laptops.
Let's say, you're not that into the single port KVM functionality,
as they call this. Oh, interesting.
Oh, cool. It uses all spring loaded pins for the interface back here.
Check this out. These puppies just spring load.
So there's no fingers to kind of slide in
and slide out and wear out. Check this out, Anthony,
it's gonna blow your mind. Look at this, modules for the new GPD Pocket.
- [Anthony] Oh, is Framework making it? - So, no, no GPD's making it.
Ah, they sent over a couple of the other modules. They've got a serial module.
- [Anthony] Serial? - I know, right? Or if you just want another USB 3, they've got that too.
I actually have no idea what other modules they're gonna be coming out with in the future.
But oh, there it is. That's what all those other pins are. So those appear to be dedicated serial pins.
So serial is one of those ports that again,
if you're not into it, you don't care. But man, if you've got scientific equipment
or some kind of industrial equipment that still uses serial,
having a properly compatible serial port in 2021,
absolutely a valuable thing to have.
This module alone, pretty much guarantees that this thing is not going back to the inventory pile,
because tap would come in handy all the freaking time.
And I haven't even talked about specs yet. This is a Core i7-1195G7.
So you can expect this thing to actually pack a pretty reasonable punch,
especially considering its size. It's got four cores, eight threads,
and turbos up to five gigahertz. It's got 16 gigs of LPDDR 4X memory.
It's got a one terabyte NVMe SSD, actually supports PCI Express Gen 4.
Oh and also Thunderbolt 4, which is pretty freaking awesome.
And it's got Intel Xe graphics with 96 execution units,
which basically means in layman's terms that you should be able to play modern casual games
or even older AAA games on this thing on the go, even though it's not a gaming first device,
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They're really utilizing the thickness of this thing.
That is a very substantial fan, which I guess makes sense,
given the kind of performance they're packing in here.
Using a Biwin SSD that does have a DRAM cache.
So that's always good to see. Here's our soldered memory,
CPU is gonna be right under here. Here's where the module plugs in.
Antenna seems to go up into the display. So it's got Wi-Fi 6.
Now that's funny because I thought their spec sheet said,
10,000 mAh batteries. So are there two of these?
- [Brandon] Yeah, two 5,000. - There's two 5,000 mAh batteries.
Okay. So they must be stacked. That is a lot of battery.
And if you're using it just in display and peripheral mode,
I guess that would actually last even longer. Now, okay.
Now I'm really curious. Can I use it in that mode when it's not even,
when the computer itself is not even powered up?
No, no. I think it does, in fact, have to be powered on
at least a little. What is that? A total of like 90 watt hours of battery
in a tiny little device like this. This thing should last a long time.
They actually rate it for about nine and a half hours of video playback, meaning you can get through all but the longest flights
watching movies on something like this. As usual for GPD,
they've got configurable TDP settings in the BIOS. So you can play around with it.
If you wanna optimize for battery life, you can turn down the power consumption.
If you wanna optimize for performance, you can do the opposite of that.
The memory runs at 3,733 megahertz. So that's actually, well,
wow, that's really fast for DDR4, but you need that when you're using onboard graphics.
Now, if all this sounds expensive, it's because it is.
But thankfully this is not the only spec of this machine. You can also get it
with an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor,
whatever that thing is. Eight gigs of RAM, normal Intel UHD graphics,
no Thunderbolt 4, but that will limit your external display devices a little bit.
So this config it's got HDMI 2.0 B. So that'll do, what is that?
4K 60 or whatever. And then over the Thunderbolt 4 port,
it'll also do 8K 60, but that other version will only do dual 4K 60 displays.
That one only supports a PCI Express Gen 3, and it only has 512 gigs of NVMe 2 storage.
Okay. Now, how does this work? I've seen better fit and finish,
but usually these guys send me an early sample.
So it's probably the case this time around as well. Right, the base IO, USB 3, combo microphone headphone jack,
two and a half gig Ethernet, freaking awesome.
And of course those display outputs I mentioned before, but the best part is in here,
and we need a point of reference for this. This is the Pocket 2.
And Pocket 2, neat machine. Definitely more compact.
See that, so it's substantially smaller, really pocketable.
Whereas this one is like, ah, yeah, if you had a giant pocket, you might get away with it.
I mean, I could probably fit it in my pocket.
I wouldn't say that that's a pocket computer
in the same way that this one is, right?
Different, different levels. But in terms of usability, it's a lot better.
So the Pocket 2 relied on the little nipple for mouse navigation
and had a keyboard that frankly was not usable.
Pocket 3, on the other hand, I love this.
So this seems to be kind of inspired by some of their other devices
that have joysticks or controllers up here. And this is great.
You've got this thumb touch pad, fingerprint sensing power button,
and then your left, middle, and right click buttons that are over here.
So this is how you use it. And it's not light. Like I wouldn't hold it up like this and use it.
This is not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it's not heavy either.
And if I'm sitting at a desk, man, I could very easily, very comfortably,
and for a long time, use it like this. And you don't have to, right?
So you can also have a hand on the keyboard still
and you can use just taps in order to navigate.
Or if you're more into it, you can go left click like this.
You can navigate like this. It's like, it's surprisingly flexible.
I immediately, I really like it. And the keyboard is actually freaking usable on this one,
which is sort of a big deal because if this is a device that you're expecting
to serve the role of being your keyboard and mouse for another device,
you need it to actually be functional. Okay. Let's, oh, okay.
The apostrophe is not where I expected it to be, at it.
Okay. It's gonna be a bit of a learning curve. How much of a learning curve it is going to be?
Period's in the right place. It's really usable.
Definitely gonna take some training, but there are Shifts on both sides, which is a huge plus and all of the major keys,
Tab, Caps, Control, Alt, are pretty much where you'd expect them to be.
You don't get a full Function row, but you do get some additional functions.
So this one you can adjust, I believe this adjusts the fan profile,
something like that. You've got your volume adjustment up here.
Brightness of the screen is right here. And then I don't actually see, oh yeah, here it is.
And here's your keyboard backlight. There's just on and off for this.
Now the screen. One of the reasons I had to turn it down is 'cause it'll do 500 in its peak brightness.
It's 1920 by 1200, which I think is the perfect resolution
for a device like this. This is an eight inch screen, so you're not gonna see the freaking pixels,
but you're not gonna waste any power driving more pixels than you absolutely need.
And it's an IPS type display, which means looks pretty freaking good.
Oh, yeah. We haven't even talked about the fact that it's a convertible now, right.
If you just wanna use it as a display, you can set it up like this. If you wanna use it more like a tablet,
it's got support for their own active stylus, it's got support for the surface pen.
Apparently it'll do 4,096 different levels of pressure.
Now, one thing that's a little off about this unit
is that the gap on the left side and the gap on the right side are not the same.
So you can see it's kind of sitting off kilter. Maybe that's something kind of just, (grunts)
it also, isn't the most confidence-inspiring hinge,
but it also hasn't broken from me wrenching on it.
So you can make of all of that, what you will. (chuckles)
Oh, it has a webcam. We can actually test that. It's over here on the left,
which I think is that's a better compromise than having it under the display, that's for sure.
Not a great, especially considering that we are under lighting conditions
that are pretty favorable.
Yeah, not the world's greatest webcam. So it's really, oh my god,
man, almost greyscale, can barely even tell that my, is it the hoodie,
can barely even tell that my tooth is green. It's worth noting that neither version is cheap.
The high end one is around 1300 U.S. dollars. And that's after the early bird discounts, right?
- [Jono] Yeah, that's uh. - That's regular price. - Yeah. - Yeah, and then the base one
is still around a thousand U.S. dollars. So to me, these are more of a tool than a toy.
But if you're the kind of person who needs one of these for work,
man, you gotta be looking at this going, "Holy crap, how did this not exist before?
My mind is blown, I need one." I love it. I like, I will be definitely keeping this thing.
Oh, it's playable. (crew talking)
I mean, other than Intel's driver issues, but let's see if CS:GO fares a little better.
At least this is a game that's officially supported. I guess we could listen to the speakers.
(CS:GO theme music) They're pretty rough.
I'd plug in your headphones. Definitely seeing some FPS dips.
But if the question was, can you play some video games on it? I think the answer is yes.
Well for $1,300, I think that it's possible
that you could do a little bit better. But the utility, Brandon. - [Brandon] Yes.
- Like think back all the years we've been doing this. - [Brandon] Yes. - Having to like run upstairs,
and grab a monitor and a keyboard and mouse, when I could've just had this thing
back at the Langley House or whatever, like it's super cool. (gun firing)
Ah, no! Well, I got dead.
I didn't hit him at all? Alrighty then, well, fine.
I blame the GPD Pocket 3. It's not a good gaming computer.
Sorry, sorry, GPD. In all seriousness though.
Super cool machine. Great utility.
Freaking love it. A little pricey. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.