GPD Pocket 4 ミニノートPC

I actually needed this for my magicavoxel editing and pixel Asprite editing and for my lore background game I am currently developing.....
This is exactly what I wanted and I'm grateful for Droix for allowing me to purchase it from them.... had no problems so far and yeah you now have a customer for life 👍

I have this one turned on running some scripts 24/7 and when I get home from work I don't wanna open a large laptop-bag and fiddle around with a large laptop - so I turn to the Pocket 4. It's been great so far. Takes a while to type correctly on it but it's just muscle memory. Would recommend!

Great work from GPD to make something like this. I love this little laptop as part of my everyday carry. I got the one with the Ryzen AI 9, with 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD storage. There's plenty of power here to pretty much do anything that I already do on my desktop PC, from all my creative endeavours with illustration and graphic design, to even some light gaming like Helldivers 2. I saved a factory image of the original Windows 11 install in case I ever need to put it back on, and immediately loaded up Linux Mint 22.3. On this distro, it was able to detect the touchpad, keyboard, screen rotation, and touchscreen. However, I too had issues with the screen defaulting to portrait orientation, so linux-users beware, you might have to setup a startup command to rotate the screen rightside, or run a GRUB-level script to correct. Maybe other distros handle this better, but I found my solution. The max battery life that I could pull on power saver with this distro is a whopping 7-9 hours, far more than I would need it to be for my use case. If you're gaming, expect this to drop down drastically to 1-2.5 hrs. 3-5 hrs if your games are much lighter.

The 8-9" size and light weight makes it really easy to throw in a bag and have it disappear, something that I couldn't say about my larger gaming laptop. So the Pocket 4 fills in a niche that I never thought I needed until now. It's just reassuring to always have a near-desktop quality computer quite literally in my back pocket at all times now.

There were a few minor faults though. My model came with a broken T-key scissor switch, which likely broke during shipment as the climate here is far below freezing. However, customer service was able to provide me a replacement switch, and this has been largely corrected. Something to consider if you're living in colder regions. Another fault simply just comes from the size of the device. The extra portability is both a pro and a con. It's big screen for a small device, but a small screen for long-term use. If you're using this for extended periods, it would help to plug in a monitor through the USBC port for a more comfortable extended period.

Overall I love this laptop, and would highly recommend this to anyone even considering a portable laptop smaller than 13". It might just be your next everyday carry laptop.

First I wanna say that I ditched Windows 11 on this in favor of CachyOS. I also tried Bazzite but CachyOS ended up getting straight up like 20% more battery life on light tasks. So that's what most of my experiences are from.

Screen: Very clear and uniform. Colors and contrast are mediocore. Maximum screen brightness is OK, but minimum brightess isn't quite low enough for comfortably using it in the dark. Some games and Operating Systems get really confused by it and the only resolution that maps correctly to your screen is the native 1600x2560 resolution, all others are rotated into the wrong orientation leading to a tiny image with massive black bars around it.
Keyboard: I'm used to full size german QUERTZ layout so this one is pretty different than I'm used to. I'm still adjusting but layout wise it's OK. Though the keys feel a bit flimsy and some take a bit more additional force to register a press past the tactile click which can lead to missed inputs.
Speakers: Servicable, but not at all impressive. At volume levels of about 40% and above the keyboard can start to resonate and buzz on some sounds.
Microphone: The mic placement makes no sense: It is on the main chassis right next to the touchpad so every single touch, movement and noise from fans and speakers get transferred directly into it. You can't truly fix that without an external mic but it would be much better if it was on the lid instead.
Performance: Pretty impressive for it's size. Games I've only played Phasmophobia and PEAK. Phasmophobia runs incredibly well easily getting well above 100 FPS. PEAK struggles a little but it's perfectly playable. In the firmware settings you can switch the available VRAM between 8 and 16 GB which is neat, although that setting is buried between random stuff.
Fan: Audible, but fairly quiet on idle and light tasks. In firmware settings there's a simple option for custom fan behavior, setting those don't do anything.
Battery life: Not very impressive at all. I'm getting around 3 to 6 hours on regular use but it can down to less than 1 hour on full system utilization. In it's defense though, this is such a small device that you physically can not fit that much more battery inside. My biggest issue with it is that there is no ability to slow charge, so many external batteries, power banks and cables don't work at all.

One of the coolest things you can do with it is put it in tablet mode and put it in a clamp-on tablet controller to effectively turn it into a gaming handheld. I used a Steam Deck before this oe but ended up REALLY missing having a physical keyboard so the pocket's size, versatility and performance are like the perfect mix for me, despite some of it's afforementioned issues. I also had a laptop years ago but barely ended up using it because regular laptop sizes turned out to be just a bit too cumbersome.

The laptop is and has everything you could want from a full-size one (and even more).

So far, I've tested with Windows and it works okay, including LTE modem. The only problematic thing is sleep and wakeup. In 70% cases, the laptop either won't go to sleep (heating up in the case), or goes to sleeps but wakes to a black screen (some workarounds like putting it to sleep again sometimes help). This is definitely not the Modern Standby experience Windows wants from laptops... I tried enabling S2/S3 sleep in UEFI, but the behavior was basically the same. From system log, it seems that the culprit is the fingerprint sensor. I updated its driver to latest version, which helped a bit, but not 100%.

Also, GPD should figure a good and reliable way of distributing firmware updates. When I wanted to download the fingerprint reader driver, the google drive link said that download quota has been reached for that day and that's it.

I really hate the F-keys only via Fn button. Some laptops have these goodies like automatic Fn when Alt is pressed (for Alt+F4 to work, for example).

Using a different than English keyboard in the OS is a good brain training because with the non-standard layout, you have no idea where are all the punctuation marks etc. :)

The fan can get pretty noisy quite easily, but that's understandable with this small body. And there's the easily accessible slow fan mode which reduces the noise to a reasonable level.

The calibration of the touchscreen seems to be a bit off and I haven't found a tool to correct it (under Windows).

So teeny tiny, so powerful

Wonderful! Easy to access interior too. Wish there was a way to stop screen from rotating when I don't want it to though.

A lot of things has been done great with this little device. The choice of AMD over Intel was a great idea, having a physical LAN port is useful, the display has 16:10 ratio and an amaying image quality, tablet mode is comfortable for reading news or ebooks. The frame looks sturdy, keyboard is usable despite its small size, and Arch linux runs great on it (it is a lot more efficient than Windows 11 actually). When I ordered, I was a bit afraid of the heat management, but as I am using it for weeks now, I can say that despite the small size, it has an adequate cooling system (I have the 8840U model). It isn't loud under Linux at all, and during gaming it won't get uncomfortably hot or noisy either. The battery also has a decent capacity compared to its small size. Speakers could sound better though, although I understand they weren't the main focus, and in general they are still OK. The KVM module works perfectly under Linux, which I am really happy about.

Everything is good. It’s a great laptop that doesn’t have a good battery life and a 2 in one laptop+heater. It does test you and I guess that’s a good thing. And also I can’t forget the ONE MONTH delay, tested my patience so much. All aside, the laptop is amazing, I would prefer this more than other laptops. Just the screen isn’t that good, which it was oled and curve edges. The bezel is incredibly wide. The tablet mode isn’t quite tablet mode.
All the ports are GREAT. Amazing. Support services are amazing. At first yes, not very friendly and sounds VERY SARCASTIC. Well in my opinion. Nevertheless, amazing. Recommend, or maybe not.