This looks neat, but it looks like it's trying to be everything to everyone, and while that's always tempting for a new product, I think it's usually doomed to failure.
Why does it support an RS232 port, especially on such a small form factor? Why does it focus so much on local LLM support? Why has it got such a high resolution display? Why has it got swappable ports?
Each one of those features makes sense in isolation for some market, but together I'm not sure there's anyone who's the target market for all of them, and because of that there are likely to be better options for each target market. Want to run an LLM? A Mac is going to do that much better with its unified memory and ML acceleration. Want to do sysadmin stuff plugged into an old switch? You probably already have an old Thinkpad for that. etc.
Thank you for the input, now you mention it I have heard of GPD many years ago, I didn't realise this was an existing product line. Sorry for jumping to conclusions here.
"Doomed to failure" was too strong in hindsight, it seems GPD have found their niche. It does however sound like it is quite a niche. This product does have a bunch of tradeoffs that work for that niche, but that make it unlikely to be suitable for a mainstream audience.
These and other related machines are super popular among people interested in handheld gaming. I agree that the AI label is just for hype, but GPD does make good machines.
This is not GPD's first laptop in this size and design.
Yes, many people who buy laptops like this need a physical rs232 port and a kvm port.
Yes, you could buy an old thinkpad, and it won't fit in a pocket, you could buy sometehing small, and it'll be slow, or you could buy this and get both.
Why does it support an RS232 port, especially on such a small form factor? Why does it focus so much on local LLM support? Why has it got such a high resolution display? Why has it got swappable ports?
Each one of those features makes sense in isolation for some market, but together I'm not sure there's anyone who's the target market for all of them, and because of that there are likely to be better options for each target market. Want to run an LLM? A Mac is going to do that much better with its unified memory and ML acceleration. Want to do sysadmin stuff plugged into an old switch? You probably already have an old Thinkpad for that. etc.