GPD Pocket 3 mini-laptop review (8 inch screen, modular ports, convertible design)

The GPD Pocket 3 is a small but versatile mini-laptop computer with an 8 inch display that supports pen and touch input, a swivel hinge that lets you fold the screen down over the keyboard for use in tablet mode, a backlit keyboard that’s just big enough for touch typing, and support for up to an Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor. There’s also a highly unusual feature: a modular design that lets you swap out one of the USB ports for other I/O options.

It’s the latest device from GPD, one of a handful of Chinese companies that have revived the dream of the UMPC (ultra mobile PC) by delivering a series of tiny laptops and handheld computers in recent years, and I’ve been testing a pre-production prototype for the past few weeks and it makes a pretty compelling case that there’s still room for UMPCs in a world where they’ve largely been supplanted by tablets.

The GPD Pocket 3 is up for pre-order through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and it’s expected to begin shipping in January, 2022.

GPD is offering two different configurations. The first is a cheaper model with a $650 starting price (during crowdfunding) and an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 low-power processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

The second version features an Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. It sells for $1000 during crowdfunding and that’s the version I’ve been testing, and it has the horsepower of a high-performance thin and light laptop stuffed into a compact design half the size of a typical model.

Specs

Background

GPD is almost single-handedly responsible for reviving the UMPC market. In 2016 the company introduced the GPD Win handheld gaming PC with a 5.5 inch display and a tiny keyboard for thumb typing, and the next year the company followed it up with the GPD Pocket, a more business-like design including a larger 7 inch screen and keyboard, but no game controllers.

Since then, GPD has expanded its lineup with newer models featuring higher-performance specs and updated design. The company has also faced growing competition from other Chinese PC makers, particularly One Netbook, which has a habit of adding features that GPD’s hardware lacks.

Most recently, Valve’s Steam Deck has become the 800 pound gorilla in the handheld gaming space – with prices starting at low as $399 and best-in-class graphics, the Steam Deck is going to be hard to beat… if it ever ships. It’s been delayed until at least February.

The GPD Pocket 3 stands out in a few key ways. While it’s a handheld computer that certainly can be used for gaming, that’s just one of the many things it can do. It’s basically a full-fledged laptop packed into a device that weighs just about 1.6 pounds and which is almost small enough to fit into a pocket.

In some ways, the Pocket 3 is what you get when you smush together earlier GPD Pocket devices with the GPD MicroPC, an unusual device designed for IT professionals who could make use of its Ethernet and serial COM ports, among other things.

About those modular ports

The Pocket 3 has full-sized HDMI and Ethernet ports, two full-sized USB-A ports, and a USB-C port. That’s more ports than you’ll find on some 13 inch laptops these days.

It also has a modular port section. By default, one of the ports on the back of the mini-laptop is a third USB 3.0 port. But remove the two screws holding it in place and you can pop out the USB module and replace it with either an RS-232 serial COM port or a KVM module with HDMI and USB inputs.

You have to pay extra for those additional modules. During crowdfunding, you can buy a bundle that includes the serial and KVM modules for $80 more than the price of a Pocket 3 with just the USB Type-A module.

But the serial and KVM modules could be seriously helpful for network administrators or other IT professionals. While most consumers haven’t needed a serial port on their computers in decades, it’s still helpful for connecting to server hardware for debugging purposes. Some point-of-sales hardware (like cash registers) and other purpose-built machines also still use serial ports.

The KVM module allows you to use the Pocket 3 as a sort of terminal for headless computers. Run a video output cable from your server or another PC into the HDMI input and the GPD Pocket 3 will treat it like a video capture card, allowing you to see the output from another PC on the mini-laptop display.

The USB-C input, meanwhile, basically turns the Pocket 3 into an input device for any connected hardware. Start typing on the keyboard or using the touchpad and your input will be sent to the connected machine rather than the Pocket 3, just as if you had plugged in a standalone keyboard and mouse.

Used together, it’s like running remote desktop software without the remote part. Connect the Pocket 3 to a headless server and it acts like a connected terminal, allowing you to see and interact with that machine.

I’m not an IT pro, so the easiest way for me to test this was by plugging the Pocket 3 into another laptop, and it did indeed work as promised. It’s not something I’d need to do very often, but I can see how the feature would be useful for IT pros.

That said, from what I understand, most servers still have VGA ports rather than HDMI, which means that the target audience for the GPD Pocket 3 + KVM module may need a VGA to HDMI adapter to get the most out of this little device… and those adapters can be a bit wonky.

But one of the nice things about modular systems like this is that it opens the door for additional modules in the future. In theory, GPD could release another module with a VGA input or other functionality… assuming there’s enough demand to make it worth the company’s while to do that. The company is already said to be looking into a 4G LTE module, but it’s unlikely to be released for at least half a year, if at all, since it would need to gain Chinese regulatory approval.

The Pocket 3’s permanent ports include two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.0b port, a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a USB-C port (it’s a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on the Pentium Silver model or a Thunderbolt 4 port on the Core i7 version of the mini-laptop).

Performance notes

The model I tested features an Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor, which is a 15-watt, 4-core, 8-thread chip with a base frequency of 2.9 GHz and support for burst speeds as high as 5 GHz. It’s the most powerful 15-watt chip in Intel’s Tiger Lake family, and honestly it might be overkill in a device where portability is a bigger selling point than raw horsepower.

But if you were worried that the Pocket 3’s small size would keep the processor from reaching its full potential, that does not seem to be the case. I ran a series of benchmarks including Cinebench, GeekBench, Passmark, PCMark, and 3DMark and the Pocket 3 was consistently one of the highest performance devices I’ve tested in the past year or two.

Interestingly, the model I’m testing seems to have some configuration settings unlocked in the UEFI/BIOS, allowing me to change the TDP settings between “Nominal” (15-20W), “Up” (20-25W),’ and “Down” (12-15W) modes. As you’d expect, increasing the power limits allows the computer to achieve higher scores in benchmarks, while decreasing it should help extend battery life, at the cost of performance.

I do not know if GPD will leave these settings exposed in the version of the Pocket 3 that ships to customers, but folks who are willing to spend some time tweaking the settings may be able to find a balance of performance and efficiency that meets their needs.

What’s it like to use?

The first thing I should point out is that the model GPD sent me for testing is a pre-production prototype, and a few things will be different on the retail model that ships to customers and backers of the crowdfunding campaign.

For example, the model I’m testing doesn’t support automatic screen rotation because there’s no gyroscope or accelerometer. So I have to rotate the display manually by digging into Windows 10’s Display Settings if I want to switch between portrait and landscape orientation when holding the Pocket 3 as a tablet. But the mass production model will support automatic rotations.

GPD says the plastic film over the touchpad that was used for the prototype will also be replaced with frosted glass which is said to be harder and more responsive.

The model I’m testing also has a wireless card with support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, which is what you’ll get if you buy the mass production version of a Pocket 3 with an Intel Pentium Silver processor, but the final version of the Core i7 model will have WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 support.

But for the most part, the unit I’m testing is very similar to the GPD Pocket 3 that will ship to customers. The size, shape, keyboard, display, and internals have all been finalized. And overall I have to say that GPD has done a pretty good job of balancing portability with usability.

It’s hard to fit all the commonly-used keys from a full-sized keyboard into a laptop that measures just 7.8 inches across. But GPD managed to fit keys that are large enough for touch-typing, while improving on the layout of some of other mini-laptops. The Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift keys are all standalone keys rather than being attached to number keys, for example.

There are a few aspects of the keyboard layout that take some getting used to. The colon, semicolon, quotation mark and apostrophe keys are to the right of the keyboard, for example. And the plus, minus, equal, and underscore keys are above the 6 and 7 keys in the keyboard.

The Fn key setup is also a little odd. You can press Fn + a number key to trigger them… but the F1 key is on the tilde key, so rather than pressing Fn + 1 for F1 you have to press Fn + F2.

Some folks with larger hands might find typing uncomfortable, and even after spending some time getting used to the Pocket 3 keyboard, I’m still not typing quite as fast on it as I am on a normal laptop or desktop keyboard. But I can fairly exceed 60 words per minute for a few minutes at a time.

The keyboard is also backlit, and you can toggle the illumination on and off by pressing the Fn + space bar.

\While most larger laptops have a touchpad below the keyboard, GPD put the Pocket 3 touchpad above the keys, in roughly the same position where you’d find it on the GPD MicroPC.

That position makes sense on the MicroPC, which is a smaller device with a 5.5 inch display meant to be held in your hands – if you’re using your thumbs to type, you just have to shift them up a bit to use the touchpad.

I find the touchpad placement to be less intuitive on the Pocket 3. While it’s not that hard to remember to move my right hand upward to the touchpad in order to move a cursor, I’m constantly trying to hit the space bar to “click” instead of remembering to move my left hand up to the spot where the left, right, and center keys are positioned.

If you’re holding the Pocket 3 in two hands with your thumbs near the trackpad and buttons, this won’t be an issue. But it’s a little too wide for comfortable thumb typing, so I’m not really sure how often you’re likely to hold it in that position.

But there is at least one good reason for this layout – it allowed GPD to use a larger trackpad than would have been possible if the company had chosen to position it below the keys, since there’s a little extra space next to the top right row in the keyboard.

Between the touchpad and buttons there’s a power button with a built-in fingerprint reader, which you can use to turn the computer on and then to login with a fingerprint.

Directly above that power button is where you’ll find the Pocket 3’s hinge. While most modern convertible laptops have what Lenovo calls a “yoga” style design, with a pair of 360-degree hinges that allow the screen to fold all the way back, this little laptop has an old-school swivel hinge.

Instead of pushing the screen back, you can rotate it 180 degrees so that it faces away from the keyboard, and then fold the screen down flat over the keyboard. This allows you to have hold the computer like a tablet without leaving keys exposed. It also means that the exhaust vent and ports on the back of the computer are never covered.

For the most part, the hinge does its job. But it does seem a little less sturdy to have a single hinge that joins with the lid at a single point. It’s probably the spot on the computer that’s most likely to break, but the hinge feels fairly sturdy and rigid and I suspect that you’d have to work reasonably hard to break it.

The screen does wobble a bit if you reach up to touch it while using the Pocket 3 in laptop mode. But that only happens when I touch the screen, not when I’m typing on the keyboard.

While the Pocket 3 does have stereo speakers, they’re small and not particularly bass heavy. They’re good enough for a quick video call, but if you plan to listen to music or watch movies, you should expect rather tinny sound unless you connect an external speaker or a set of headphones.

And speaking of video calls, there is a 720p webcam in the screen bezel on the left side of the display. It’s a pretty low-quality camera: expect choppy video if you’re recording, live streaming, or making a call, and even the preview window for still photos is sluggish and choppy. But at least there is a webcam, which isn’t always a given on computers this small.

The Pocket 3 also works with a pressure-sensitive digital pen, which is included with both models up for pre-order during crowdfunding. My handwriting is awful and I’m not much of an artist, so I haven’t spent much time using the pen, but I can confirm that it works as promised.

You can hover the pen over the screen to move a cursor, tap it to the display to register touch input, and when using supported apps, you can use pressure sensitivity so that pressing lightly in an art app will result in a thin line, while pressing harder will give you a thicker line.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this is an actively cooled computer. That means that in addition to a heat pipe, there’s a fan that helps dissipate heat generated by the computer. Air is drawn in through a vent on the bottom of the Pocket 3 and blown out through a vent in the back.

It’s a pretty quiet fan though – I had to be in a silent room to really notice it, even under heavy load. And if it’s too loud for you, there is a fan control option. Just press Fn + = to toggle the fan speed up or down. Keep in mind that if you slow down the fan, the computer is more likely to overheat, which can lead to CPU frequency throttling.

Even with the fan running at full speed, the bottom of the computer can get rather warm under heavy load, which may be a problem if you plan to hold the Pocket 3 in your hands or place it on your lap. But the cooling system must be doing something right, because as shown above in the performance section, the Pocket 3 is comparable to other high-end thin and light laptops in synthetic benchmarks.

All of the benchmark results above, by the way, were recorded while the Pocket 3 was running on battery power, as I don’t imagine that this is the kind of computer you’re likely to use while plugged in very often.

While battery life will likely vary widely depending on what you’re doing with the Pocket 3, don’t expect all-day run time. I was able to get about 5 hours of battery life while streaming 1080p video from YouTube over WiFi with the screen brightness set to 50 percent.

You may be able to extend that a bit if you’re using the computer with WiFi and Bluetooth disabled and the screen set to a dimmer setting. But I think it would be unrealistic to expect more than a few hours of battery life while gaming or video editing or more than 4-5 hours while using the computer for web browsing, document editing, or other productivity tasks.

The Pocket 3 comes with a 65W USB-C charger and should also be able to charge from power banks that support USB Power Delivery at 45 watts or more.

Can it run Linux?

In two words, yes… mostly.

In a few more words, another thing you can do from the BIOS/UEFI menu is choose an alternate boot device. So I prepared two bootable USB flash drives and took Ubuntu 21.10 and Fedora 35 for a spin on the GPD Pocket 3.

Out of the box, the screen was rotated to portrait orientation in both operating systems, but I was easily able to switch to landscape mode by opening the Display Settings and choosing “portrait left” from the drop-down menu. Once you get used to the idea that portrait is landscape, and landscape is portrait, most other things seem to work as expected.

That includes the keyboard, touchpad, and touchscreen as well as pen input. One thing that did not work out of the box was audio. But following a suggestion from The Phawx, who is also testing a pre-release Pocket 3, I took the following steps, which I’ve confirmed work with Ubuntu:

1. Open a terminal and type “sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf” (without quotes) to create a new audio configuration file.
2. Type “options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1” into that file and hit save.

After that, the next step would normally be to reboot the computer. But I didn’t install Ubuntu to the Pocket 3’s SSD and was instead running from a liveUSB, so I’d lose any changes if I rebooted. Instead, I restarted the audio services by opening a terminal window and typing these commands:

1. pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload
2. systemctl –user restart pulseaudio

Once I did that, I could hear audio from the Pocket 3’s speaker when streaming video from YouTube. There were some audio glitches from time to time, which I did not experience with Windows, but I suspect a reboot would probably help.

Another quirk is that the webcam is a little wonky when running Ubuntu and Fedora. The video preview is even slower than it is in Windows, video capture is so slow that it might as well be unusable, and if you rotate the screen to portrait orientation, the camera won’t get the message. It’s possible that a driver update or some other tweak will resolve these issues, but I haven’t explored that possibility extensively.

Since I only tested a liveUSB, I have not tested battery life, suspend or resume, the fingerprint sensor, or some other functions in Linux. But overall at least the Intel Core i7 version of the GPD Pocket 3 seems to be reasonably Linux-friendly.

Can I upgrade it?

There are six small screws holding the aluminum bottom panel in place. Remove them and you can… almost get the case open.

You’ll probably also need a prying tool that you can use to gently feel your way around the left and right edges of the computer to find a pair of latches that also hold the bottom cover in place. This took a bit of work, but when I was finished, I was able to see that the Pocket 3 has a user replaceable M.2 2280 SSD for storage, but the RAM is soldered to the motherboard.

Theoretically that means you could swap out the SSD for a different card, but the 1TB PCIe NVMe included with the model I tested is pretty fast and offered plenty of storage, so I doubt I’d feel the need to upgrade. The equation might look different if you opt for the cheaper model with a Pentium Silver processor and 512GB of storage.

You also may be able to swap out the battery if you can find a compatible model, or repair or replace some damaged components including the fan or speakers. But the upgrade options for the Pocket 3 are limited.

Verdict

The GPD Pocket 3 is a compelling little computer for… fans of little computers. It’s not necessarily the best option for everyone looking for a compact computer. The small screen and keyboard are selling points if you’re looking for something incredibly portable, but they also make actually using the Pocket 3 a little more tedious than using a larger laptop.

Still, it has one of the best keyboards I’ve used for a mini-laptop this small. It has some features that GPD has been reluctant to add until now including a convertible tablet-style design and support for pen input. The webcam stinks, but at least it’s there. And there’s a fully-functional, if awkwardly placed touchpad.

With plenty of full-sized ports, the Pocket 3 would be easy to use with an external display, a wired internet connection, and any number of peripherals. But the modular port section takes things to another level by opening the possibility of using the Pocket 3 for network administration or other tasks where the KVM and serial modules would come into play.

Still, with prices ranging from $650 to $1080 during a crowdfunding campaign and expected to climb as much as 30% higher after crowdfunding ends, the Pocket 3 isn’t exactly an inexpensive device. And so there’s at least two more things to consider.

First, small Chinese companies like GPD, One Netbook, Chuwi, and Teclast have a less-than-stellar track record when it comes to offering technical support and customer support for their products. If you’re thinking of ordering a $1000 mini-laptop, you may want assurances that if anything goes wrong you’ll be able to send it in for repairs or return it for a refund. But the internet is littered with stories of customers who have had trouble getting support from GPD and some of these other companies.

So I’d suggest you only spend money on a device like the GPD Pocket 3 if you’re comfortable attempting your own repairs if necessary and/or eating the cost if something breaks.

The second thing is that $1,000 is a lot of money to spend on a niche device that’s smaller than most laptops, and unlikely to be a primary work machine for most users. I just can’t imagine sitting in front of the Pocket 3 and working on its 8 inch screen all day. This is a portable computer that’s best used in small doses.

If you look at the computer’s specs, it’s easy to conclude that it’s actually pretty reasonably priced. $1,000 is pretty good for a laptop with a full HD touchscreen display, a Core i7-1195G7 processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. I’m just not sure you need that much power in a mini-laptop that’s not designed explicitly for gaming or other tasks that would truly take advantage of the hardware.

The good news is that GPD does offer a cheaper options with a Pentium Silver N6000 processor. The less good news is that at $650 and up, it’s still not exactly an impulse purchase. And as far as I’m aware, GPD hasn’t sent out any demo units with that processor to testers, so you probably won’t see any real-world reviews until after the Pocket 3 begins shipping to backers of the crowdfunding campaign (the Core i7 model appears to be much more popular with crowdfunding backers anyway though).

All of which is to say, I really like the GPD Pocket 3. I’m just not sure I’d recommending spending $650 – $1080 (or more) on it unless you completely understand its risks and limitations and are willing to live with them.