Wallmart may have the cheapest Ryzen laptop around with “MOTILE Performance Laptop”, a 14″ laptop powered by AMD Ryzen 3 3200U dual-core/quad-thread processor, coupled with 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. Price? $209 shipped to the US.
MOTILE Performance Laptop (M141-RG) specifications:
- SoC – AMD Ryzen 3 3200U dual-core/quad-thread processor @ 2.6GHz / 3.5GHz (Max boost clock) with Radeon Vega 3 Graphics @ 1200 MHz; 15W TDP
- System Memory – 4GB DDR4 RAM, upgradable up to 16GB (1x SO-DIMM slot)
- Storage – 128GB SSD
- Display – 14” 1920×1080 display with LED backlight
- Video Output – HDMI
- Audio – 2x 2W speakers and microphone, 3.5mm headphone jack, THX Spatial Audio
- Camera – 720p IR webcam
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 4.2
- USB – 1x USB-C 3.0 port, 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 port
- Battery – 4,100 mAh
- Power Supply – 19V/3.42A (65W)
- Dimensions – 320.2 x 21.45 x 16.8mm
- Weight – 1.16 kg
The laptop comes with Windows 10 Home 64-bit pre-installed, and ships with a power adapter and user manual. One downside is the use of single-channel memory that can reduce the performance of graphics and other applications susceptible to memory bandwidth.
Performance-wise Ryzen 3 3200U processor is slightly faster than a 10W Pentium J5005 Gemini Lake processor, but the Radeon 3 GPU will be about twice as fast as an Intel UHD 605 graphics found in Gemini Lake processors.
Since the MOTILE laptop will be hard to find outside of the US, I tried to look on Aliexpress for others Ryzen 3 3200U laptops, but no luck so far. There ‘s a similar HP model available on eBay for $240 plus shipping.
You may find further details on MOTILE M-141 product page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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pity it’s got a weird proprietary charging cable and not usb-c pd
I’ve been using USB-C for about a year on my laptop and am still not that much confident in the connector’s longevity compared to the good old barrel connectors that never broke. So this is not a choice I would that much criticize, especially given how easy it is to find such a 19V power supply nowadays.
On another point, I find that its connectivity is pretty correct, especially for this price. It even has RJ45 which becomes rare on laptops, and has stereo speakers, which is not that common either on cheap models. Overall the specs look pretty good for this price!
Barrel connectors that never broke??? You’ve lived a charmed live. I’ve replaced the socket on at least three different laptops and I’ve retired a large number of power supplies for cable/connector failures.
I’ll assert that barrel connectors have proven to have good longevity, but they’re not perfect. We need more experience to see if C is in the same class.
Well, I don’t replace my laptops often, the previous one (t430s) lasted 5 years and the one before (compaq nc8000) 8.5 years. Both plugged/unplugged twice a day, thrown on my car’s passenger’s seat 2-4 times a day, used in field at customers, moved in various directions on messy desks, and really I never broke them. However, the oldest one saw 3 different power supplies, and the second one only two. The lenovo PSUs particularly like to progressively pull off the cable from the adapter block. I’ve even suspected it was on purpose and by design to encourage replacement, because it just requires a molded plastic stopper (or even a knot) to avoid this.
But connectors solidity can really depend on the brand, and I can very well imagine how the female plug could break over time on a flimsy motherboard, especially if the male one is too long and not correctly stopped by the enclosure.
It looks like this one is the same and ships worldwide, but is signficantly more expensive ($314+$68 shipping): https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-MOTILE-14-Performance-Laptop-Silver-Ryzen-THX-4GB-128GB-SSD-HDMI-M141-SL/143509708769
Any serious publication should _never_ use userbenchmark as a frame of reference for performance.
Here, passmark is showing 50% faster performance for the amd part
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-3-3200U-vs-Intel-Pentium-Silver-J5005/3431vs3144
Specs look good for the price. But the manufacturer is highly questionable in my opinion.
Web site contains only a phone number — no company info whatsoever.
Even the web site ownership is hidden behind a proxy registration service.
Everything is setup so this “manufacturer” can easily disappear without any trace.
So do you feel lucky? The hardware may be perfectly fine but personally, I wouldn’t count on warranty or repair or any any type of service.
Its a walmart inhouse brand. They contract building and designing to 3rd party like clevo and stamp their name on it. As long as walmart exists, you’ll be able to get a warranty.
Ok, sure. Just show me your source for this info with regard to this particular product. You didn’t just make this up did you?
Walmart’s brand is nowhere to be found anywhere on this product, the web site or any of the available paper work .
The warranty card lists only a phone number and email address for service — both of which can easily disappear without notice. Walmart’s web site lists the same for warranty service.
I wouldn’t indeed count a on viable warranty under such conditions, but at this price, it’s just as if you bought it second hand, just consider you have no warranty and you’ll live better 🙂
Agreed with one significant caveat.
With a “used” laptop of known origin, parts can be obtained to do simple repairs yourself. For example, if a hinge breaks or a power supply fails.
if a device like this sells on EU soil, it has to have mandatory warranty repair (i believe its 1 or 2 years) no matter what brand it is. If brand ceases to exists, its the sellers obligation to either refund you the money or give your something comparable.
I dont know if such laws exist in US of A.
In the US of A, we have a saying, “You can’t get blood out of a rock”.
You have no idea where this “manufacturer” is located or who the people are behind it. For all you know, they could be located in Shenzhen, Shanghai or elsewhere.
Good luck scouring the world in order to enforce any “obligations”.
You’ll note that Benjamin’s words are important. It’s not the customer’s problem to figure who the manufacturer is because it’s the seller‘s responsibility to cover himself with the manufacturer’s warranty, as in any case the seller remains responsible of the warranty for the final customer. This model ensures customers are protected and encourages the whole chain to act well as anyone making a lenient choice in the chain becomes responsible for the end of the chain.
So any manufacturer’s warranty is really the seller’s warranty in the EU?
Not true in the USA. All the seller is responsible for is any product that is dead upon arrival — that does not function as advertised out of the box.
Beyond this, the manufacturer is the one providing any manufacturer’s warranty service if such was clearly stated up front.
So if you bought a product in Walmart, and it becomes dysfunctional after a few months, can you bring it back to Walmart, or do you have to send it to the manufacturer yourself?
Here, I can just bring it back to the seller, and they will handle it (meaning send it back to the manufacturer for repair). Of course, if the manufacturer is gone that won’t work…
In the US of A, Walmart offers a 30 day return policy on electronics provided the item has not been damaged by you and you have a purchase receipt and original packaging. This is really intended to address items that are defective out of the box.
Beyond this, the manufacturer’s warranty is handled by the manufacturer in accordance with their prescribed terms and conditions.
The only obvious exception is a WalMart branded product — i.e where WalMart is listed as the manufacturer. Walmart is not the manufacturer of Motile.
You can find these and more details here:
https://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3228/~/returns%2C-replacements-and-refunds#R4
Yeah. That happended to a WD BestBuy disk I bought, DOA, but figured it out after 1 year. Had to RMA to WD..
> So any manufacturer’s warranty is really the seller’s warranty in the EU?
It’s even simpler: the seller is the only one the customer has to know about. You bought a product somewhere, if it breaks, you bring it back to the same place, and if they tell you they can’t fix it because the manufacturer disappeared, it’s their responsibility to provide you with an equivalent one as a replacement or to refund you (at their choice). However some manufacturer will provide extended warranties, which can be seen as a separate contract. For example you can buy a laptop in a shop with an extra 3-years warranty. The first two years will go through the seller, but for the last 3 years you’ll have to contact the manufacturer yourself (or one of their partner, whatever contact is mentioned in the extension contract in fact). Some of them will be “fake” warranties in that they won’t be able to provide you with any fix nor replacement but will refund you (so you can see that just as an insurance). They’ll just make sure the average warranty extension price will be higher than the failure ratio applied to the product’s cost so that the refunds are paid by the warranty extensions, and overall everyone is happy.
I get the distinct impression that jqpabc is expressing considerable glee about another persons ill luck when dealing with shady corporations.
I mean, Benjamin is just pointing out something obvious, that a seller has a responsibility, and jpq is basically saying: “Noooohooo, they haven’t! And you are stupid to expect that they are responsible.”
Good that consumer protection is way better in Europe. It seems that in MeriKka, the sellers are merely shifting blame unto an unfindable manufacturer. Made possible by laws instilled by corrupt politicians, most of them no doubt, republiKKKan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l32orFMzCIk
here. he explicitly says, that motile is walmarts brand. And because walmart itself doesnt make laptops, manufacturing is done by someone else like clevo (as it’s being done by many other brands, that dont have their own factories like origin pc, razer etc..)
So you got your info from “Austin’s” YouTube video? Really???
The price of this unit was actually lower last month. It was $200. Another good thing about this notebook is that the memory and nvme ssd is upgradeable. It has 1 memory slot, so you have to remove the 4gb sodimm and replace with up to 16gb and it supports 2 nvme drives.
> so you have to remove the 4gb sodimm
To do what exactly with it? Throwing it away?
Note sure it matters that much on such low cost hardware, but one commenter on Facebook mentioned the laptop supports SATA SSD only:
one m2 is sata key (used)
one seem to be a nvme key but not tested. (sorry i forget B-L-E-F or Y bullshit name)
walmart cancel my order shipped to a relay outside USA but hopefully i found mine on ebay at 220$, it’s weird.
How many minutes to compile a linux kernel with this 3200U? benchmark didn’t answer but i like the price, the microsd card reader in front.
Perfect to make backup of nvme or m2 sata ssd without invest in another adapter box, just run a live linux.
Cheap enough to try hazzardous diag test on car canbus, play around dusty CNC 🙂
I think it’s more like „Total Est. $232.33“, not „$209 shipped to the US“, because of the US always showing prices without tax.
Not all states have sales tax
Well, you can live in a state, that doesnt have sales tax like montana or oregon.
I was intrigued by this deal and decided to get the device. Was in the market for a small new ultrabook or 2-in-1 device, but most are under-powered Celeron CPU’s for anything close to this price.
Disagree with 2 points of the original news post:
1) “One downside is the use of single-channel memory that can reduce the performance of graphics and other applications susceptible to memory bandwidth.”
– The only downside is that the device ships only with 4GB ram card, which should be 8GB minimum for this CPU because the Vega3 GPU needs 2GB RAM reserved. I immediately installed a Samsung 32GB ram card in its place. As you may notice “upgradable up to 16GB” for the RAM specs is also wrong, and 32GB ram worked just fine.
2) “Performance-wise Ryzen 3 3200U processor is slightly faster than a 10W Pentium J5005 Gemini Lake processor,”
This Ryzen CPU device may be selling in devices that are closer in price to Intel Celeron and Intel Pentium processors, but it should otherwise be more closely compared to Intel’s 15W mobile processors like the Intel Core i3-7130U or Intel Core i3-8130U processors.
Benchmarks from my Motile R3 device:
PASSMARK PerformanceTest 9.0
– Passmark Rating = 2069.2
– CPU Mark = 4311.7
– 2D Graphics Mark = 400.9
– 3D Graphics Mark = 771.1
– Memory Mark = 1575.5
– Disk Mark = 3482.9
PCMARK10 = 2713
Octane 2.0 = 24458
Geekbench 4.4.2
– Single-Core = 3323
– Multi-Core = 5549
– OpenCL = 17830
I heard about this marvelous laptop way too late, otherwise I would have bought one.
The most amazing thing about this was the price, of course. It was originally $200 for the lesser version (M141, AMD-R3) which had two features above average: the backlit keyboard and the extra USB port (total of four), Also the not-too-shabby THX sound system, it’s a great brand!
But alas, I was too late, and even just ONE YEAR later, these units now sell for more than double the price, over $500 on ebay. You can find cheaper ones, but nothing under $350.
There’s a hard-luck story about the M142/1 (on reddit or somewhere?) how the backlit keyboard on the silver version is hardly visible, so one should always get a black one. Ideally, I’d get a silver one, with a black keyboard, but their customer service is non-existent.
Sadly, this is a rare, rare bird like the HP 15q-dy0007au, also a superlaptop with extremly high value for money:
15”, dvd-drive, backlit kb, 1TB HDD for just € 350!!
That one isn’t even available anymore…