Last time I mentioned I bought an RK3588 laptop. It used a no-name OEM chassis, but the overall experience still beat my expectations. I also mentioned that the laptop had a few shortcomings, and fixing them would be a huge improvement: Fast typing on the keyboard causes double presses (probably a chassis issue) Battery capacity isn’t big enough Build quality is a bit poor, the whole body is plastic Only one USB-A port Too much empty space inside So is there an RK3588 laptop that solves all those pain points? Yes, there is, my friend, there absolutely is.

Around May last year I was thinking about replacing the laptop I’d been using for over three years. Unfortunately, the only new stuff out at the time was either a Ryzen 7840HS with mediocre Linux support, or the new Intel Meteor Lake ThinkPads. Even though going from an 11th-gen chip to Meteor Lake would have been a big jump, Meteor Lake barely improved over the previous generation — it even regressed in places — so I decided to wait it out. While waiting, I stumbled onto this “Chinese-made laptop,” the Cool-Pi CM5 Laptop. ARM architecture, RK3588, native Linux support, 32GB of RAM, hard drive expansion, and interest-free installments on the Tmall store. I thought about it and figured I’d play with it for a bit. Ended up buying one.