My final thoughts on the pinetab 2

So I have been using the pinetab 2 for about 6 months or so on and off. Mostly off to be honest. My final thoughts are that I can’t really recommend this device to basically anyone. Even as a power user and someone that does software development I can say this device is a slog.

Cons: In terms of raw computing power this device is slow even with 8 GB of ram. Programs take a long time to start Once they do launch they are mostly fine however video playback in most modern browsers is terrible and stutters. You can actually get DRM playback to work if you are willing to put in 3 + hours to get widevine installed from AUR and modify your user agent. However it’s not really worth it because the actual playback is awful.

It seems as though Wifi is never going to work. From what I have read there is practically no one working on the driver and it seems like the driver is so complex to do that with the community size it’s basically a non-starter. So essentially this means you will always need an external Wifi dongle. Ubuntu touch has implemented the internal Wifi card but it’s so unstable as to be unusable mostly.

The device is heavy. With the keyboard case attached it’s heavier than my laptop and it’s bigger than my laptop too. So the idea of it being portable is only true without the keyboard case.

The screen is not very good and is definitely dim even with the brightness turned all the way up so using it in full sun is not something I would recommend. The resolution is also low for a modern device. It’s serviceable but not what someone would expect out of a modern tablet 50$ walmart tablets will be as good if not better.

Pros:

There is something magical and that just joyful seeing linux running on a tablet. As a linux enthusiast I still want it to be a thing but this might not be the place it happens. There are other linux tablets on the market that look like they are more modern and have better support : us.starlabs.systems/products/starlite?shpxid=5a56… But obviously they are a lot more expensive.

The keyboard is very good and once you get used to it’s smaller form factor it’s actually a good typing experience for what you would expect for a tablet case.

The tablet without the keyboard case is just nice and a good form factor and a joy to hold. They onscreen keyboard is responsive enough in all the OS choices I tried and doesn’t become too cramped or too wide.

I appreciate the selection of ports having two usbs and an hdmi as well as a headphone jack is very uncommon in a tablet. not to mention the microsd card slot. It probably has the best selection of ports in a tablet.

swapping OSes: Being able to swap Oses just with the microsd card is a lot of fun. I just wish any of them were less beta at this point. With that said it’s so easy to just grab an image write it to disk and reboot with the disk in and try out a new OS.

Final thoughts: Well I tried to put my overall impression right up front. However to reiterate I don’t think this device is really read for real workloads. It’s a fun sort of toy and to maybe if your goal is to tinker and work on a project it’s okay. If you need a real world daily driver tablet there are better options for a linux tablet. If you just need a cheap tablet there are better options too. I wish I could say that the community loved this idea and that there was lots of exciting things coming. However it seems like the community around this tablet is very small, development has been slow to non-existent. so in conclusion I can’t recommend it.