Customer review: The Cm5-Laptop

[A Former User]

Intro

I have been looking into Arm architecture laptops for a good while, but
The offerings have been rather poorly designed, expensive (2000$+) and lacking Linux support ( Acer Aspire 1, Lenovo thinkpad X13s )
I originally stumbled upon the pre-production? variant of the Cm5 laptop on AliBaba last year, and was intrigued. So when it became available on Ali-express i ordered one right away. Placed the order 24 apr and received it 15 may (3 weeks)

First impressions

The laptop has a unusually thick shell (about 2,0mm+ and more in other places) Can`t think of any 14" laptop that feels as sturdy as this one, very little flex. The Keyboard has a quality feel to it, good to type on and low noise.
Touch-pad is large, a bit noisy when clicking, otherwise okay.
Screen is a 14" IPS, fair brightness (250nits) and vibrant colors, some light bleeding in the lower corners, but that is to be expected.
Ah and the "intel inside" sticker made me chuckle (before i removed it)

Hardware

The hardware is impressive, 8 core RK3588, 32gb lpddr4x (on a core board) Mainboard with Nvme, pcie slot for wlan, 1x USB3 and 1x USB-C port and internal connectors for additional boards and HW.

Initial expirience

First time i started it i is was taken back a bit by the boot time, but its on par with other comparable boards booting from emmc (looking forwards to future nvme boot support).

The bundled Ubuntu image (22.04) was minimalist. Only bare essentials and the kernel is quite old (5.10), so my scheme to turn it into Pop! OS Arm edition did`nt quite make it all the way. (there are recipes out there on how to do this).
So i loaded the 24.04 image that (failed due to a bad usb cable) corrupted the emmc partition, made a usb stick with 21.04, repaired the partition and loaded 24.04 (again) with a new cable.

After that, i installed Flathub (i hate snap) for apps, and installed the usual things i use on a daily basis. Customized the settings to mimic Pop OS (as close as i could get it anyways) I also put an Samsung 970 Pro drive in it, and had plans to "top it off" with a Intel AX200 card, but found that there was no firmware loaded for it, so ive put that on hold for now (it holidays, and i`m too lazy right now to bother with installing firmware)

I plan to daily this thing, and use it as my main laptop.

[george]

@Rebel-Rider
Thank you very much for your support of Coolpi products. As a DIY laptop, the extreme thickness is not very user-friendly, and the main issue is that there may be a lack of sufficient internal space for secondary development.
Regarding the issue with the kernel version, as the original factory has not yet submitted an update to the hardware encoding and decoding part of the 6. x kernel video, the machine is currently using 5.10.110. We will synchronize the submission once this issue is resolved.
After the mainline kernel 6.8, devices that natively support CM5 have also been designed for laptops based on the CM5 core board, allowing for synchronous use of the mainline kernel. The mainline version of uboot has also been merged into the mainline recently.
Communicate promptly if there are any issues during use. Thank you again for your support.

[george]

@Rebel-Rider
Regarding the issue of startup speed, it is mainly due to the initialization time of the RTL8852BE driver, not the speed of the EMMC. We are still trying to find ways to optimize this.Think you.

[A Former User]

@george

Thanks for your reply and insight. As for the thickness of the shell, i actually think that is a positive point, the thick shell makes it very well suited for people like me (ict-manager) I feels like it will travel well: The sturdiness, passive cooling, power efficiency and having a large battery is just what i need.
As for the RTL driver slowing boot time, thanks for the info. If i used the AX200 instead i probably wouldn't have known about it.

If i where to put my finger in something, (im being really nit-picky now) The charger has an awkward shape (43mm wide). Asus has a nice 12v 3A charger (36mm wide) with the correct 4.0x1.7 plug. Just ordered an off-brand variant for 25$ (inc. shipping and vat)

Having used it for about a week now, there is very little that i would change about the laptop itself, (Optional back-lit keyboard maybe?)
When kernel support hits mainline, I think the CM5 laptop will become interesting to a wider group of people.