Remember netbooks? Small-screened internet machines that, for the most part, were woefully underpowered but supremely portable. A Chromebook waiting to happen, kind of. The GPD Pocket 2 sees a return to the once popular format, but with a little more power under the hood. It marries the touchscreen of a 7-inch tablet and the traditional keyboard of a laptop, packs in a 7th gen Intel SoC and runs Windows 10.
As its name suggests, the GPD Pocket 2 is the second version of the company’s Pocket laptop, which raised more than 3.5 million bucks on Indiegogo last year. Naturally, given such phenomenal support from the crowdfunding community, GDP has returned to Indiegogo to raise production funds for its latest portable.
The Pocket 2 more than doubles the performance prowess of the first gen model, rocking a 7-inch Gorilla Glass 4 IPS touchscreen with a not too shabby 1,920 x 1,200 resolution and a bezel of just 4 mm. Inside, there’s a dual-core m3-7Y30 processor with integrated HD graphics that turbos to 2.6 GHz, which is supported by either 4 or 8 GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 128 GB of solid state storage with SD card expansion. The micro-laptop runs Windows 10 Home 64-bit operating system.
Elsewhere in the 181 x 112 x 8-14 mm (7.1 x 4.4 x 0.3-0.5 in), 465 g (16.4 oz) micro-laptop is Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11a/ac/b/g/n dual-band Wi-Fi, two full-size USB ports and one USB-C, a 6,800 mAh Li-Pol battery that’s reckoned good for 6-8 hours on the go and built-in speakers.
The Pocket 2 wears a stylish magnesium alloy chassis, and features a chiclet keyboard and an optical navigation sensor rather than a space-hogging trackpad. GPD has even managed to squeeze in an active cooling system, “rather than a passive cooling thin design that sacrifices performance.”
The Pocket 2 project has already reached its campaign target with a month remaining on the clock. Pledges for a 4 GB model start at US$529, while you’ll need to stump up at least $599 for the 8 GB flavor. If all goes to plan, shipping is estimated to start in October. The video below has more.
Micro-laptop puts portable productivity in your pocket [New Atlas]