Another Modular Laptop??? - GPD Pocket 3
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,564 words · ~12 min read
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- As a longtime fan of ultra compact PCs, obviously the one that I'm most jacked about right now
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is the Valve Steam Deck, but there's a company that's been innovating in this space
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since before the Steam Deck was even a twinkle in Valve's eye, and that's of course is GPD.
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Meet the Pocket 3. Now, if the Steam Deck is for gamers,
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the Pocket 3 is for everyone else. It's kind of like a modern take on the netbook.
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Remember those things? Those slow and loud,
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and kind of crappy, cheapo PCs
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that were, well, about this size. This is that, but way better,
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better cooling, better IO, better quality of materials,
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and most importantly, better performance.
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Okay, accessories first though. Man, they have made a lot of improvements to this thing.
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Okay, we got, hey, a wrist strap.
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Remember wrist straps, Brandon? - [Brandon] Yeah, I do. - What do you think, is it gonna hold?
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- [Brandon] O God. - All right. Look at that, they made it Linus proof.
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We've got a Type C to Type C cable, looks like about a 60 watt Type C wall wart.
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And that's it. That's it. That's all for accessories. Let's start on the outside
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because there's some pretty trippy stuff going on here. Over on the left,
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we've got HDMI out and USB-C,
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which is for charging as well as connecting peripherals.
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Then, these are actually an HDMI and a USB-C input.
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One of the most obvious applications for this, would be a server or something like that.
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You just roll up to a machine, plug, using maybe a VGA to HDMI connection,
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or just native HDMI, and then anything to USB Type C and boom.
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You can use the built-in screen, and keyboard, and mouse
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to control that external device. Actually, I guess we can probably demo this.
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Okay. So my Framework will take on the host role. This will be the target role.
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Boop. Just gonna casually do some stuff
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like go to lttstore.com.
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Crazy. Okay. For the people who don't care,
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I get it, you don't care. But for the people that this is useful for,
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this is blowing your mind right now. And I know it.
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I love it. And get this, on the subject of Framework,
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who by the way, I am invested in, disclosure, they are now no longer
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the only ones building modular IO plates for their laptops.
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Let's say, you're not that into the single port KVM functionality,
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as they call this. Oh, interesting.
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Oh, cool. It uses all spring loaded pins for the interface back here.
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Check this out. These puppies just spring load.
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So there's no fingers to kind of slide in
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and slide out and wear out. Check this out, Anthony,
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it's gonna blow your mind. Look at this, modules for the new GPD Pocket.
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- [Anthony] Oh, is Framework making it? - So, no, no GPD's making it.
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Ah, they sent over a couple of the other modules. They've got a serial module.
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- [Anthony] Serial? - I know, right? Or if you just want another USB 3, they've got that too.
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I actually have no idea what other modules they're gonna be coming out with in the future.
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But oh, there it is. That's what all those other pins are. So those appear to be dedicated serial pins.
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So serial is one of those ports that again,
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if you're not into it, you don't care. But man, if you've got scientific equipment
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or some kind of industrial equipment that still uses serial,
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having a properly compatible serial port in 2021,
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absolutely a valuable thing to have.
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This module alone, pretty much guarantees that this thing is not going back to the inventory pile,
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because tap would come in handy all the freaking time.
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And I haven't even talked about specs yet. This is a Core i7-1195G7.
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So you can expect this thing to actually pack a pretty reasonable punch,
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especially considering its size. It's got four cores, eight threads,
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and turbos up to five gigahertz. It's got 16 gigs of LPDDR 4X memory.
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It's got a one terabyte NVMe SSD, actually supports PCI Express Gen 4.
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Oh and also Thunderbolt 4, which is pretty freaking awesome.
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And it's got Intel Xe graphics with 96 execution units,
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which basically means in layman's terms that you should be able to play modern casual games
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or even older AAA games on this thing on the go, even though it's not a gaming first device,
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like say for example, their Win series. Thanks to Govee for sponsoring today's video.
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Govee's Glide Wall Lights display up to 16 million colors at one time,
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allowing for beautiful color combos and flowing multicolor effects.
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You can shape your lighting to your style with the seven glide segments that are easily interchangeable.
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And you can keep your gaming sessions and your parties vibrant and lit
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with six reactive music modes. They offer hands-free voice control through Alexa
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and the Google Assistant so that you can focus on the task at hand
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while changing things up on the fly. And you can save over 35% on Govee products
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during their Black Friday Sale, which we're gonna have linked down below.
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They're really utilizing the thickness of this thing.
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That is a very substantial fan, which I guess makes sense,
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given the kind of performance they're packing in here.
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Using a Biwin SSD that does have a DRAM cache.
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So that's always good to see. Here's our soldered memory,
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CPU is gonna be right under here. Here's where the module plugs in.
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Antenna seems to go up into the display. So it's got Wi-Fi 6.
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Now that's funny because I thought their spec sheet said,
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10,000 mAh batteries. So are there two of these?
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- [Brandon] Yeah, two 5,000. - There's two 5,000 mAh batteries.
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Okay. So they must be stacked. That is a lot of battery.
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And if you're using it just in display and peripheral mode,
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I guess that would actually last even longer. Now, okay.
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Now I'm really curious. Can I use it in that mode when it's not even,
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when the computer itself is not even powered up?
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No, no. I think it does, in fact, have to be powered on
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at least a little. What is that? A total of like 90 watt hours of battery
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in a tiny little device like this. This thing should last a long time.
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They actually rate it for about nine and a half hours of video playback, meaning you can get through all but the longest flights
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watching movies on something like this. As usual for GPD,
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they've got configurable TDP settings in the BIOS. So you can play around with it.
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If you wanna optimize for battery life, you can turn down the power consumption.
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If you wanna optimize for performance, you can do the opposite of that.
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The memory runs at 3,733 megahertz. So that's actually, well,
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wow, that's really fast for DDR4, but you need that when you're using onboard graphics.
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Now, if all this sounds expensive, it's because it is.
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But thankfully this is not the only spec of this machine. You can also get it
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with an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor,
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whatever that thing is. Eight gigs of RAM, normal Intel UHD graphics,
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no Thunderbolt 4, but that will limit your external display devices a little bit.
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So this config it's got HDMI 2.0 B. So that'll do, what is that?
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4K 60 or whatever. And then over the Thunderbolt 4 port,
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it'll also do 8K 60, but that other version will only do dual 4K 60 displays.
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That one only supports a PCI Express Gen 3, and it only has 512 gigs of NVMe 2 storage.
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Okay. Now, how does this work? I've seen better fit and finish,
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but usually these guys send me an early sample.
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So it's probably the case this time around as well. Right, the base IO, USB 3, combo microphone headphone jack,
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two and a half gig Ethernet, freaking awesome.
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And of course those display outputs I mentioned before, but the best part is in here,
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and we need a point of reference for this. This is the Pocket 2.
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And Pocket 2, neat machine. Definitely more compact.
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See that, so it's substantially smaller, really pocketable.
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Whereas this one is like, ah, yeah, if you had a giant pocket, you might get away with it.
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I mean, I could probably fit it in my pocket.
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I wouldn't say that that's a pocket computer
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in the same way that this one is, right?
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Different, different levels. But in terms of usability, it's a lot better.
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So the Pocket 2 relied on the little nipple for mouse navigation
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and had a keyboard that frankly was not usable.
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Pocket 3, on the other hand, I love this.
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So this seems to be kind of inspired by some of their other devices
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that have joysticks or controllers up here. And this is great.
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You've got this thumb touch pad, fingerprint sensing power button,
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and then your left, middle, and right click buttons that are over here.
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So this is how you use it. And it's not light. Like I wouldn't hold it up like this and use it.
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This is not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it's not heavy either.
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And if I'm sitting at a desk, man, I could very easily, very comfortably,
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and for a long time, use it like this. And you don't have to, right?
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So you can also have a hand on the keyboard still
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and you can use just taps in order to navigate.
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Or if you're more into it, you can go left click like this.
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You can navigate like this. It's like, it's surprisingly flexible.
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I immediately, I really like it. And the keyboard is actually freaking usable on this one,
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which is sort of a big deal because if this is a device that you're expecting
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to serve the role of being your keyboard and mouse for another device,
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you need it to actually be functional. Okay. Let's, oh, okay.
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The apostrophe is not where I expected it to be, at it.
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Okay. It's gonna be a bit of a learning curve. How much of a learning curve it is going to be?
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Period's in the right place. It's really usable.
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Definitely gonna take some training, but there are Shifts on both sides, which is a huge plus and all of the major keys,
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Tab, Caps, Control, Alt, are pretty much where you'd expect them to be.
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You don't get a full Function row, but you do get some additional functions.
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So this one you can adjust, I believe this adjusts the fan profile,
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something like that. You've got your volume adjustment up here.
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Brightness of the screen is right here. And then I don't actually see, oh yeah, here it is.
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And here's your keyboard backlight. There's just on and off for this.
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Now the screen. One of the reasons I had to turn it down is 'cause it'll do 500 in its peak brightness.
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It's 1920 by 1200, which I think is the perfect resolution
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for a device like this. This is an eight inch screen, so you're not gonna see the freaking pixels,
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but you're not gonna waste any power driving more pixels than you absolutely need.
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And it's an IPS type display, which means looks pretty freaking good.
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Oh, yeah. We haven't even talked about the fact that it's a convertible now, right.
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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,
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it's got support for their own active stylus, it's got support for the surface pen.
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Apparently it'll do 4,096 different levels of pressure.
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Now, one thing that's a little off about this unit
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is that the gap on the left side and the gap on the right side are not the same.
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So you can see it's kind of sitting off kilter. Maybe that's something kind of just, (grunts)
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it also, isn't the most confidence-inspiring hinge,
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but it also hasn't broken from me wrenching on it.
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So you can make of all of that, what you will. (chuckles)
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Oh, it has a webcam. We can actually test that. It's over here on the left,
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which I think is that's a better compromise than having it under the display, that's for sure.
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Not a great, especially considering that we are under lighting conditions
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that are pretty favorable.
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Yeah, not the world's greatest webcam. So it's really, oh my god,
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man, almost greyscale, can barely even tell that my, is it the hoodie,
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can barely even tell that my tooth is green. It's worth noting that neither version is cheap.
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The high end one is around 1300 U.S. dollars. And that's after the early bird discounts, right?
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- [Jono] Yeah, that's uh. - That's regular price. - Yeah. - Yeah, and then the base one
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is still around a thousand U.S. dollars. So to me, these are more of a tool than a toy.
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But if you're the kind of person who needs one of these for work,
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man, you gotta be looking at this going, "Holy crap, how did this not exist before?
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My mind is blown, I need one." I love it. I like, I will be definitely keeping this thing.
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Oh, it's playable. (crew talking)
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I mean, other than Intel's driver issues, but let's see if CS:GO fares a little better.
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At least this is a game that's officially supported. I guess we could listen to the speakers.
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(CS:GO theme music) They're pretty rough.
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I'd plug in your headphones. Definitely seeing some FPS dips.
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But if the question was, can you play some video games on it? I think the answer is yes.
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Well for $1,300, I think that it's possible
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that you could do a little bit better. But the utility, Brandon. - [Brandon] Yes.
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- Like think back all the years we've been doing this. - [Brandon] Yes. - Having to like run upstairs,
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and grab a monitor and a keyboard and mouse, when I could've just had this thing
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back at the Langley House or whatever, like it's super cool. (gun firing)
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Ah, no! Well, I got dead.
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I didn't hit him at all? Alrighty then, well, fine.
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I blame the GPD Pocket 3. It's not a good gaming computer.
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Sorry, sorry, GPD. In all seriousness though.
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Super cool machine. Great utility.
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Freaking love it. A little pricey. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.