MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany

I should really write up a long-term review of this thing at some point, but overall I love it. It can be a bit rough around the edges at times, but it's also the coziest little machine I've used in a long time. (And seriously, having a mechanical keyboard in this form factor is great.)

I hope to keep using it long into the future, and the fact that it's open hardware (and that the batteries are standard off-the-shelf pouch cells, or 18650s for the full-size Reform) gives me hope that I will be able to.

It has rough edges but its very usable , especially for somone inclined to hack on their devices. My main trouble being my yearning to use Alpine on it but not quite having the know how personally to get it up and running.

I like it enough though, that I've also got the Next ordered, which I'm very excited for. Being able to upgrade them both more or less ad-infinitum while new boards come out is a big plus too.

I'm wondering what they'll do to replace it. You can still buy the IQS550 chip it's based on and apparently make a very similar PCB. [4] The black frosted glass seems like more of a challenge for most DIY keyboard makers, maybe not for MNT. The replacement project I saw recommended "2mm thick matte acrylic".

[edit: or maybe the TPS65 manufacturing restarted? mouser apparently has it in stock. [5] although that's the A unit without the surface.]

[1] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-capacitive-trackp...

[2] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/azoteq-pty-ltd/TP...

[3] https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus...

[4] https://github.com/geek-rabb1t/GR-Trackpad65

[5] https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Azoteq/TPS65-201A-S?qs=...

I'd go for a framework using the Roma or CIX boards if I wanted to go for an "open hardware but not really" goal.

I love the concept and might just buy one to support the project, but I want something sleeker for my daily use. So I'm considering slimbook & tuxedo atm as buy-from-eu options.

But for mine I really would prefer to wait for the RK3668. My past experience with the current soc is that it's a tad too slow for many cases.

MNT's devices are honestly kinda incredible. I can't recommend them for everyone yet, though that will change soon. Both of them are a kind of "laptop of theseus"; you can open and change and repair them, and honestly I have. Both device's guts are dramatically different than where they started, but changes happened piecemeal.

The Pocket Reform is an incredibly cute device. I can't pull it out anywhere without people fawning over it. Not even just hackers! It's an open hardware cyberdeck you can use as your main device. What's not to love?

The MNT Reform Next will be closer to what many people want out of a laptop. It'll still be chonkier than a normal laptop. But again, these things are incredibly upgradeable and hackable.

Now for the caveats: for most people, I would wait until the MNT Quasar module comes out. The reason being is that while the current "best" module, the RK3588, is honestly pretty good with the 32gb version, it lacks one critical thing for most people and one other critical thing for me in particular. The first thing it lacks is support for suspend. Honestly, it does make working with a tiny computer like this a bit less appealing than the Pocket Reform's form factor could be, since what you really want to do is just be putting it to sleep and taking it out everywhere. The other thing is that Blender doesn't really run on the rk3588 either. You can kind of get a patched version working based on Lucie's patches, and I did, but it doesn't support the Eevee renderer, which is a must-have for me personally.

But the MNT Quasar board will be apparently fixing both of those above issues, and yes, at that point this will be a device that I can recommend generally. And I'll also note that I got the very first MNT Reform when it came out, and holy moly the state of the hardware now vs when it originally launched half a decade ago... it's hugely far between, but the amazing thing is that to get it up to the current state, I didn't need to throw things away, I could just open and tinker with things bit by bit.

In many ways, the MNT Pocket Reform reminds me of the book the main character has in the solarpunk book A Psalm for the Wild Built; a computer that is issued to you at the age of 16 and that which you carry with you for life. You can upgrade and repair it easily, but you don't need to throw it away.

So yeah, it's not for everyone. But if the idea of supporting repairable, upgradeable open hardware made by a lovely bunch of queers in Berlin sounds great? That you can hack on, that has a neat little community, that will be a conversation point amongst fellow hackers for its quirkiness? It's appealing to some, but not all.

I'd love to drop $1700 on a Pocket Reform, it's far more appealing than a GPD Pocket 4, but what makes it hard to justify is knowing I'm just buying into another system hampered by the critical flaw of being an ARM SoC. Even though they're tantalizing as a super-luxury boutique computer, overbuilt and absolutely lovely, at the end of the day I simply can't overlook the awful ARM experience it brings with it.

   echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/ath9k-phy0/brightness

   echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/ath9k-phy0/brightness   # needs root permissions

Mostly I use it at university (studying psychology) for reading and annotating literature, writing papers using LaTeX, statistics in RStudio, and email, or at home whenever I'm not at my desktop PC and need something with a keyboard or otherwise more capable than my phone. Sometimes I'll take it with me on a trip in case I want to do some writing while traveling.

It sure is a conversation starter. I"m certainly "the lady with the cute cyberpunk-ish laptop" at uni now (I have the purple version)

Things I like:

- trackball: I wish more laptops came with that option these days. Love it - keyboard: I use a columnar layout on my desktop as well so the ortholinear one was very welcome and afaik the Pocket Reform is the only laptop available right now with such a layout. - case: it's chunky but very sturdy. I used to run a few MacBooks over the years and I always worried about their super-thin screen assemblies. I never worry about damaging my Pocket Reform when chucking it in a bag. This thing is really sturdy. - community support: whenever I had any issue, people on the user forum were quick to help and usually a solution was found very soon.

Things that could be better:

- battery life: I get about 4h on a full charge, which is fine. And I can easily get to 8h with a small USB-C powerbank. There's a guide on how to replace the battery cells with larger ones for about 8-10h of running time on the user forum but I haven't gotten around to trying that. Sounds promising though. - performance: the RK3588 is fast enough for most everyday tasks but it sure has its limits. I'm not going to edit my 50MP RAW photos on this machine.

Issues experienced:

- Debian unstable: by default the device ships with Debian unstable (sid) which has caused a lot of issues for me early on, just software breaking a lot. However there's a really good community project providing stable (Trixie) images for Reform laptops and since switching to that it's been smooth sailing. - some battery charging inconsistency: might be related to an early revision of the charging board and I'll probably switch it out for a newer one soon.

Who is this device for?

I'd day it's definitely an enthusiast device. If I just needed a laptop, then yes, I could have gotten an old Thinkpad or a Framework or even a Macbook Air for less money as others have commented, but I think open-hardware projects like MNT Reform are important. That's why I joined the early crowdfunding for the Pocket laptop.

I like that I can actually repair this thing when necessary, upgrade components (like I've already did with the RK3588 CPU), that Linux is the "original" OS for this and not an afterthought, that I can talk to the people designing it (I've personally been to their workshop in Berlin) and contribute things myself.

Knowing Linux basics is certainly helpful too. I would not want to throw a Windows/Mac user with no UNIX terminal experience into the deep end, especially not when running Debian unstable.

It's a nerdy and unique machine for people who are fine with some level of tinkering and I really like it. No other laptop feels like this to use and that's hard to express in specs.