GPD Pocket 4 미니 노트북

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.

The GPD pocket 4 is a great piece of hardware for those who want a portable laptop to do a variety of things on. It's very lightweight (less than 1kg!), it has an amazing battery life of 4-6h of working, playing videos and even small games and can even run more complex games or something like a game engine, though you shouldn't expect more than a decently smooth performance. If you want to use it for drawing though, you're out of luck. I tried the universal GPD capacitive stylus and it can't even draw lines, so either get a drawing pad or use something else. Despite this, the touchscreen works phenomenally with your fingers, and the twistable screen makes it a great travel buddy. This is your choice if you're looking for a quality versatility tool and aren't on a tight budget, but be realistic and don't expect to run something like Cyberpunk at 100 fps, it's tiny size still imposes some limitations.

Mini computer

Update: The 5/5 stars is for gpdstore.net/droix customer support. I don't think they should have a bad review for GPDs failings. I did end up getting a fast refund after more delays.

1/5 Stars for GPD

I ordered the 370 with 64gb of ram on January 16, 2025. I finally received my laptop today March 25, 2025. I was so happy to finally get to be able to play with this thing all weekend. I boot up the laptop and I find out that someone put the 365 with 32gb of ram in the box. The box says that it's the 370 model but it's not. I emailed support and will update how they fix this but I am going to have to wait EVEN LONGER. I am wondering if this was intentional because they didn't have enough 370 models and was hoping people wouldn't notice or maybe it was just a mistake. Either way, I am so disappointed and can only imagine how much longer this will take to send back the incorrect model and receive the correct one.

1/5 stars. I did in fact receive A laptop...eventually, just not the one I paid and waited so long for.

Edit: Just for anyone wanting to buy through droix/gpdstore.net, it is a good idea for cases like this where GPD sends the wrong or broken equipment. The support was always fast and took care of everything, though I did have to pay to ship it back. It's up to you if you want to pay the slightly higher price for assurance that you will at least get what you order. From what I've read the GPD support is lacking so going through a third party instead of indigogo is probably worth it.

As for the laptop, I still haven't gotten a replacement. At the very least GPD could have expedited the replacement but they didn't. With that in mind, this will be my first and last time buying a GPD product. But may use droix in the future.