GPD Pocket 2 Review

GamePad Digital, or GPD. You might already know what they do but if not here is a quick summary.

When you think "Laptop" a very solid image comes to mind. The format of laptops has been pretty stable and while  technological advances have brought progress in either cost, power, weight and thickness  most of the big computer brands have to compete with either gradual improvements  or experimenting with some occasionally questionable gimmicks.

Chinese newcomer GPD figured that rather than try to compete in the already crowded market  they could specialize in what was a relative ignore niche: Tiny, tiny Laptops.

GPD got its name from doing gaming handhelds, first running Android and then Windows, of  which I have done a fair bit of content and eventually decided to gather the lessons learned  from handhelds to do  an entire line of Pocket Laptops, and if you are a little bit older this might sound a  bit familiar.

In what now feels like prehistory the original line of Intel Atoms allowed for the netbooks.

Cheap tiny laptops with or 2 GB of RAM that would barely run Windows 7 starter edition.

The idea was to make super-portable devices meant for light tasks and they were not very  good.

I should know, this netbook was my personal laptop when I was starting university almost  8 years ago.

Now that initiative was killed because not long after smartphones became a thing and  they were much more portable and better at those tasks.

Now Phones are great but certain tasks are better suited for a keyboard like writing  any long document or of course gaming and advancements on the new line of Intel Atoms,  Intel m3, m5 and Intel Pentium meant the moment was ripe for some company to bring netbooks  back in spirit.

I am in part an almost ideal user for this sort of device.I have carried my original intel Atom-powered GPD Pocket in pretty much every conference  and trip that I do. I have written entire video scripts on this, I have done a lot of research and a lot of  channel managements since the YouTube studio app in Android is very insufficient. And you might ask, isn't a regular-sized laptop better for that.

Yes, yes it is, but if you had to walk 3 days of Vidcon with a full laptop in your bag versus  a GPD Pocket you might arrive at the same conclusion as I did. Now, there have been 3 models of the GPD Pocket. The Pocket 1, The Pocket 2, and  the GPD 2 Max... a larger model that I hope to review someday in the future. All past videos I have done on the devices I own are in the cards in the corner or on  links in the description. Which takes us to today. GPD has released a refresh of their Pocket 2 and this one... is actually downgrade from  the older Pocket 2 model. Yes, this is a weaker PC. And that actually makes sense!  I already did a video on the original Pocket 2, on which I praised its improved performance  and its keyboard.

The Pocket 1's keyboard is a bit cramped while the Pocket 2 sacrifices mouse usability to  maximize keyboard surface which actually makes this form factor work much better. Now, problem GPD products tend to run is price. In general, they tend to be a bit premium on their original launch campaigns and some  of their stuff gets pricier after release. Alex: And that leads to this, the new version of the GPD Pocket 2. Now, this is my mate, Nate. He's a Spanish Techtuber extraodinaire who's actually I've asked to give me a second opinion  because I know a lot of you guys have opinions regarding miniature computers and he has never  seen one of these before. So, I asked him to evaluate both usage, built quality, keyboard, etc. and give me his opinions  and what have you thought so far?  Well, my attention is that the chasis is very similar to the macbook Air,  actually I have my macbook Air over here and if you compare those, you can see that obviously  the design was inspired by this laptop.

And that's not something bad, actually is very good.

Alex: It's actually really good.

Nate: Yeah.

Alex: It's not a cheap copy, it's a really good material.

Nate: Yeah.

Also, the chasis is very similar in the stiffness and also the hinge is very, very  strong.

Alex: Yes, very difficult to open.

Nate: Compared to the MacBook Air, you can open it with one hand but that's just a detail-  small detail, but the construction is very nice.

It's very strong and premium.

Alex: It has more ports than the MacBook.

Nate: But you can use this without a dongle, that's something good about this laptop.

The thing I can't figure out is how to write here because I really miss the keys everytime.

Alex: Yeah, it's just, it's a matter of habit.

Not everyone is going to be willing about using such a small keyboard. It is interesting however that- How expensive is that MacBook again?  Nate: $/€ 1000  Alex: That's in Euros while this device has been dropped now to  between €350 and €400, and that is because they did a significant cut in specs,  now instead of using an Intel M3 they're using an Intel celeron which is a Dual Core, 1.5  ghz, non-hyperthreaded CPU, which is very basic and is very centered towards common  office tasks rather than gaming, and we'll get to the gaming part later, don't worry  about that.

Nate: So, the new model is a downgrade.

Alex: Exactly.

At some point, they figured that most people were  using the previous model for general tasks, and that there was no point in preserving  the higher specs and will use something that will heat up less, have better battery life  and will be actually cheaper.

And the result is why I'm calling the GPD Pocket 2 lite.

GPD is not calling it that way, they're just calling it the new GPD Pocket 2 and honestly  I kinda prefer it over the old GPD Pocket 2.

It always comes with 8 gb of RAM, which is fantastic, that was a huge problem with the  other one and it works for most tasks that you're going to do with something like this.

Like, what I was mentioning before is that I take this usually when I go to conferences  and I do a lot of my scriptwriting, a lot of my management of my editor, and a lot of  like creating thumbnails for videos or doing small adjustments, and that led to a curiosity  on the video in your channel that we were working together.

Nate: Yeah, we made the thumbnail for this video actually- well for my video  Alex: Yeah, you were curious about how- If we could create an entire thumbnail for your  video in this device,  so we connected it to an external monitor which was running in an obscene 2K resolution  that I thought it would not work here and you got to it and what was the result?  Nate: Yeah because- well, the result was very good, I mean, you can do a thumbnail in this  computer but basically  I always dreamt of a- some kind of computer/laptop/smartphone whatever that you can bring with you, all  the day and then you get home, you plug it to your monitor, your keyboard, your peripherals  and you just use it as your every day computer. Alex: General computer  Nate: And I was trying to figure out that a device like this was able to do that. Alex: Yeah, it would be very interesting- an experienced company like GPD would actually  try to do a mobile device, and also be a laptop, like that would be something I'd be definitely  into because they have a very good track record with their small devices so far.

The latest ones have been superb so that would be a pretty interesting idea. Nate: Also, one thing I like to mention is that, the first time you handed it to me,  I didn't see, of course, the touchpad but, the first thing I thought is... well, there  is no touchpad, the screen must be a touchscreen so I tried to touch it and it worked, and  I think it's ok to use this laptop in a touch way, you know what I mean?  Because, you actually have like iPads nowadays, that's how people use iPads and other tablets  without a keyboard because you can actually touch it and...

Alex: That might be why the hinge is so strong, because it needs to resist the pressure of  clicking it continuously, yeah.

Nate: That makes sense.

Alex: That makes sense... um but yeah, we sort of prooved that as a general work office  device, this works actually excellently.

Nate: Yeah, this can be your only computer  Alex: It can be your only computer.

So, the real question there is, what sort of gaming can you do with it?  And there, I got a little bit creative. Gaming on this device is going to be a bit of a challenge for several reasons. The dual-core Celeron is combined with a comparatively better  Intel HD Graphics 615.

However, a locked Bios and no turbo boosting means that we have no way to alter the TDP  so we are going to run into thermal limits on the GPU and a very significant bottleneck  on the CPU for most games  Now that does not mean that it is not possible, it just means that since there is very little  that can be tweaked to deal with a CPU bottleneck we have to carefully pick games that can at  least get 30 fps from the CPU. Lighter indie hits like this year's Blasphemous work just fine, with only occasional CPU usage  spikes.

And I played a significant amount of cuphead on a machine that was way weaker than this  one and that was at 720p at full 1080 or 1200p for the aspect ratio of this screen the game  works with just occasional slowdowns. Both of those will play the best if you connect a Gamepad,  but since that is another thing to carry around I was looking for  something that could be played just with a keybord and a mouse and something like Age of empires 2 HD works just  just great. Both here and in the original GPD Pocket 1  But none of those are big surprises so let's turn on the heat. Good classics like Skyrim are old enough at this point that wihout modification the CPU  can manage a pretty playable framerate with the GPU at 720 having a fair enough space  for lowest settings. I played a significant ammount of skyrim on my intel atom gpd win 1 so this is not much  of a surprise.

Rocket League is a great example, on lower settings the game is very GPU light so I have  zero doubts the IntelHD could do it, but online play tends to particularly cause problems  on these sort of low-end CPUs. To my surprise, it managed to keep it together and playable  during an entire match. Due to the TDP limits, the GPU is rarely able to use its full power so I stuck to the lowest  settings but this was still a rather enjoyable result. Now another surprise was the original Tomb Raider reboot from 2013. I have been planning to incorporate more of this game on my test on ultra-limited systems  due to is surprisingly low CPU usage and the fact  that I have made a video with some textures tweaks to improve GPU performance.

On those settings, this device has zero issues on 1280×800 on the benchmarks which are not  amazingly representative but an encouraging result while still being limited on the CPU. Actual combat drops significantly lower but it still much better than I expected except  for any explosions that involve physics and overload the poor CPU and yet this still somewhat  serviceable for an action game. What if we try something that is less reliant on quick reactions, such as an action game  like Xcom 2.

Now XCOM 2 on regular low settings is indeed too much for this GPU  so I pretty much disabled dynamic lightning and reduced resolution to 960x600 using tweaks  from  my very old video on that game. The result is something that kinda works and is now once again limited by the CPU. Action scenes are a bit too much for it but since this is a turn-based game where it actually  accounts you can get usable performance. Now this is not a gake recommendation but as an experiment, it is interesting to see what this device  can do. Ok, but what are you actually want to play something and not just do experiments. Here are a couple of better examples:  I already did a video on pubg lite, a super light re-port of pubg mobile that works on  really absurd low specs.

I did the original video while explaining how to tweak internal resolution to dramatically  low levels to make it work on the first generation Pocket 1 so it stands to assume that this  ligther version of the Pocket 2 would be more than capable to do this on 1920x1200 resolution  with a 70% resolution scale and lowest settings. Given previous results of this CPU that is a great surprise. Just, keep in mind that this game is only available in certain countries, the list keeps  growing but it is still limited. If you are not on the list or you just don't like PUBG or Battle Royale there are still  very solids options like World of Tanks. World of Tanks and World of Warships are a couple of games that I have been meaning to  add to my battery of low-end test more often for several reasons. They have been around for a long time and yet they continue evolving, they have a very  active community, they are free to play, and they are tremendously low end friendly.

During past Gamescom, I attended a talk from Wargaming developer's about how they are implementing  new technologies to increase the capabilities of their games but they mentioned how inside  the company they keep a priority of still keeping the game light on the lowest settings  for entry players. Given how I have had to abandon a lot of my favourite low-end friendly examples like Overwatch,  Fortnite or CSGO for computers on this level since they have bloated on recent updates  with clear impacts in performance I appreciate that a bigger studio still keeps in mind low-end  compatibility as the game moves forward.

Case in point World of Tanks on full resolution and minimum settings works absolutely fantastic  on the Pocket 2, to the point that is likely one of the best recommendations to play on  a device like this. And even better for me, World of Tanks actually agreed to sponsor this video.

Wow, talk about a perfect fit. I am still not sure how that happened. Everything I have said so far is my own opinion of the game, not part of the sponsor read,  but hopefully if I have convinced you to give it a try and also support the channel you  can  use the link in the description or the code TANKTASTIC to get 7 premium days, 500 Gold  and  a Premium soviet tank if you create a new account.

This is a strategic action game inspired by history with historical tanks from 11 different  nations on large epic battles on maps inspired by real locations. Look, if you want to deep game to get lost into that will very likely run in any PC... look  no further.

Just, use the link in the description to support the channel.

In summary, while not a powerful PC by any means I do think GPD made a solid step in  the right direction by aiming for a cheaper device that still maintains the sexy aesthetics,  ultra-portable factor, great keyboard and a CPU that is not as strong as the m3 of the  old model, not even close, but still pretty decent for a basic laptop and will likely  become my travel PC for most conferences next year and that is all I wanted.