I remember many years ago, I had an Acer Aspire One D255E netbook with a 10.1-inch display with 1024 x 600 resolution. I liked its portability, but the performance was rather poor and I got headaches with the 600-pixel vertical resolution, and some badly designed programs, such as USB firmware flashing tools, would not show fully on the display and be unusable.
Well almost ten years later, I’m happy to report you too can experience the same pain, with Topton L4 mini laptop equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen display offering a 1024 x 600 resolution. On the plus side, it comes with an Intel Celeron J3455 processor, 8GB RAM, and up to 1TB SSD storage, as well as a webcam and Lenovo TrackPoint-like pointing stick both of which are pretty rare on 7-inch laptops.
Topton L4 mini laptop specifications:
- SoC – Intel Celeron J3455 quad-core Apollo Lake processor @ 1.50 GHz / 2.30 GHz (Burst(, Intel HD Graphics 500; 10W TDP
- System Memory – 8GB RAM
- Storage – 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB M.2 2280 SSD; MicroSD card slot
- Display – 7-inch 1024×600 HD touchscreen display
- Video Output – Mini HDMI port
- Audio – Stereo speaker, 3.5mm audio jack
- Webcam – 2MP camera on left side of display
- Connectivity – Dual-band WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.0
- USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports
- User input – QWERTY keyboard with 18.5mm key pitch (second language: Russian, Spanish, Italian or Arabic can be printed on request), touchscreen, left/right mouse buttons, TrackPoint-like pointing stick
- Misc – Copper pipe + fan cooling,
- Battery – 38Wh
- Dimensions – 18.5 x 14.1 x 2 cm
- Weight – 650 grams
The laptop ships with Windows 10 operation system, a power adapter, an international plug adapter, and a user manual. The webcam can apparently be used for zoom conference calls.
Topton L4 also supports an optional pen, but as noted by Liliputing, since the display cannot fold back 360 degrees for use in tablet mode, it might not be very convenient to use.
Topton L4 is sold on Aliexpress for as low as $299, but that’s for the odd 32GB SSD plus 8GB RAM configuration, so you may want to select an option with more storage capacity unless you plan on using your own SSD.
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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Some good points about portability (i.e. removal of the touchpad that tries to compete with screen size these days and causes awful keyboard layouts). But as you mention, the 1024×600 screen resolution is a pain. That’s what I’m still using on my small netbook that I use to read my messages while drinking my morning coffee. Some GDPR banners are annoying there. The arduino IDE’s menus don’t show up completely (you can’t access the boards at the bottom), and a few such issues are common (they’re all badly designed UIs but it’s important to be aware of that). And I don’t understand why they didn’t use a USB-C power connector for something that aims to be brought everywhere. Plus I suspect it has a glossy screen as most touch displays, making it unusable outside or in any bright place. But the format and specs are nice, so there are some ideas to be reused and improved there.
Agreed. Just the form factor is good. If only they put something like rk3588, 8gb, 128gb, ips at least 1366×768 and linux. Absolutely better than this.
As a mobile device, I think this might only be useful as a portable SSH console or serial/terminal, otherwise you’d definitely want to use an external monitor.
It feels like bad ergonomics. Keyboards are make for resting hands on top, not hands grasping sides. Might be better with dual mousepad rather than a keyboard, supporting exotic gestures.
It’s a fairly standard keyboard for mini-laptops. My One Mix 2 from 2018 uses exactly the same, GPD use similar.
It’s manageable once you start typing with your thumbs, though non-latin layout users suffer a bit more.
I agree that having something using two touchpoints or even twin-sticks (like on some GPDs) would be awesome, but so far no WM/DE provider bothered to investigate the matter.
It’s fairly niche and writing yet another Wayland composer in Rust finishing at 0.0.8 version is likely more fun and marketable.
Well, Valve had something like it in SteamOS, but it was bad all around. Maybe SteamPal (if it exists) will breath new life into a twin-stick desktop?
the distance between the lower screen border and the device back edge (when closed) is not aceptable for 2021, also extreamply thick, it remember me the very old eee pc.