The Pinebook is a low-cost

notebook A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking. History ...

developed by

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

-based computer manufacturer

Pine64 Pine Store Limited, known by its trade name Pine64 (styled as PINE64), is a Hong Kongbased organization that designs, manufactures, and sells single-board computers, notebook computers, a smartwatch, and smartphones. Its name was inspired f ...

. The Pinebook was announced in November 2016 and production started in April 2017. It is based on the platform of Pine64's existing Pine A64 single board computer, costing US$89 or US$99 for the 11.6" and 14" model respectively. Its appearance resembles the

MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of ultrabook computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. It consists of a full-size keyboard, a machined aluminum case, and, in the more modern versions, a thin light structure. The Air was originally positi ...

. The Pinebook is sold "at-cost" by Pine64 as a community service.

Hardware

Unlike traditional notebooks, Pinebook uses an ARM

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

rather than x86. It uses the

Allwinner Technology Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd is a fabless semiconductor company that designs mixed-signal systems on a chip (SoC). The company is headquartered in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. It has a sales and technical support office in Shenzhen, Guangdon ...

A64 SoC, containing quad ARM 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 cores and

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Ma ...

-400 MP2 GPU, together with 2 GB RAM LPDDR3 and a 10,000mAh battery. Instead of a

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

, it uses 16 GB of

eMMC The MultiMediaCard, officially abbreviated as MMC, is a memory card standard used for solid-state storage. Unveiled in 1997 by SanDisk and Siemens, MMC is based on a surface-contact low pin-count serial interface using a single memory stack ...

5.0 flash memory, expandable to 64 GB. The storage capacity can be further extended using the

microSD Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between San ...

card slot (up to 256 GB). It supports

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wa ...

802.11b/g/n and

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limit ...

4.0 wireless networks, has 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 mini

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controll ...

port and a headphone jack. It also contains 2 downward-facing speakers. The display is an IPS LCD with a resolution of 1366 x 768. The device weighs 1.04 kg (11.6"), or 1.26 kg (14") respectively.

Software

The Pinebook supports

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and Android operating systems. As of 2019, the Pinebook can be run on free software in the form of

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM architecture, ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its ...

and

. Common choices include

Manjaro Manjaro ( ) is a free and open-source Linux distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system that has a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility. It uses a rolling release update model and Pacman as its package manager. It is deve ...

Arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vau ...

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

, Armbian,

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...

, Gentoo,

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

OpenSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, s ...

, and Q4OS. Support for most hardware has been merged into the kernel mainline as of 4.19, with other drivers slowly trickling in.

Gallery

File:Pinebook 14 Inch with Ethernet Adapter.jpg, Pinebook 14" with Ethernet adapter File:Pinebook.jpg, Pinebook File:Pinebook Pro.jpg,

Pinebook Pro Pine Store Limited, known by its trade name Pine64 (styled as PINE64), is a Hong Kongbased organization that designs, manufactures, and sells single-board computers, notebook computers, a smartwatch, and smartphones. Its name was inspired fr ...

References

External links

Pinebook homepage

Unboxing the Pinebook64
{{Linux devices Laptops Single-board computers 2017 introductions

Hardware

Software

Gallery

See also

References

External links