Yeah, first time it happened to me. But I wanted to underscore the lack of thunderbolt in the review as well as the audio quality, which could be deal-killers for some.
@@LearnLinuxTV It was a good review. Thunderbolt seems like an oversight but I don't have any Thunderbolt compatible peripherals so I'm probably going to pick one of these up myself. I have a Dell XPS 15 running Pop right now and it's really good. That's basically the only reason I don't have a Lemur Pro already.
Your Lemur Pro reviews helped me make the leap! I'm coming over from years of using Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. I've found the Lemur Pro and Pop OS a surprisingly easy transition.
I have the Lemur Pro. I've had it a few weeks now. I agree with your review. One item you didn't mention is the track pad. I find it nearly as good as a MacBook Pro. I like that by default it turns off when typing. My experience with battery life is the same. It is 7:30 p.m. and I've had the laptop on all day (from about 7:00 a.m., doing general development work, not editing video or compiling kernels). I have an estimated 6 hours remaining. It is almost too light. When I lift the lid, the base comes along for the ride for a bit. The enclosure looks like it is plastic, but it's actually made of a magnesium alloy. Being black, fingerprints can build up. I have no complaints about the screen. I thought I'd miss the Retina display of a MBP, but I don't. I adjusted to the keyboard fairly quickly. Never liked the location of the control key on the MacBook Pro. It's a little treat having Home and End and Prt Sc keys. Yeah, speakers are so-so, but I don't care. I think the best speakers I've heard were the 2012 MBP. I don't understand why they designed this so the screen can lie flat (180°). But a few times reclining on a sofa, it's been a nice little feature. If you're a maker or an engineer, you are the target audience for this laptop. Sure, you know how to install Linux on all kinds of hardware but it is very nice to get one of these, power it on, and in 60 seconds be off and running with no fuss at all. And PopOS is very good. One other item you didn't mention: the power cord is ridiculously short. Of course, with such long battery life, it may make sense. But even before my Lemur Pro arrived, I ordered a Chanzon 2 Prong Non Polarized 10 ft AC Power Cord from Amazon ($8). If anyone is about to order this laptop, definitely get one of those. Also, after I ordered the laptop, System76 called and left a voice mail thanking me for my purchase. Who does that???? :-)
For some reason, I didn't notice how short it was until after the review when I set up the power cord permanently underneath my desk (I bought two power cords for mine). Do you have a link to the power cord you purchased? Please share that, I may consider it and others may want to check it out too.
Could someone give a more detailed review of the trackpad? I currently have a goodle pixelbook and it's glass trackpad is the best thing i've ever used. always smooth and responsive and absolutely love the way it handles gestures. Also of note is the way clicking and tapping work. It took a little getting used to, but I love not having any separate buttons to click, the multi-touch and software logic handles these things nicely. Curious how the Lemur Pro compares? Judging from it's relation to the keyboard keys, I'd say it's size is about the same as the pixelbook, so that's a plus. Very curious about the rest.
@@JimTomatore I've used MacBook Pros for eons. The trackpad on the Lemur Pro is not quite as nice but it did not disappoint me. I was never a fan of gestures, so on the MBP I turned them off (I don't need to rotate photos, for example). Like you, I prefer not having separate hardware buttons. So the Lemur Pro is the same. I suspect you would have a similar reaction to this touchpad: not perfect, but close enough.
Individual Sections: Introduction: 0:00 Hardware overview: 0:42 Ports: 3:42 Display: 5:43 Keyboard: 6:11 Build quality: 7:13 Some Downsides: 8:07 Fan, noise & bios: 10:27 OS Screen Capture: 13:39 Thoughts about battery life: 14:08 Configuration overview: 15:59 /proc/cpuinfo output: 19:20 Heat/sensors output: 20:20 lspci output: 20:38 Sound quality: 21:19 Overall thoughts: 23:42 Made for mobile users. I know this may be fixed, but sometimes I encounter it. This part is funny to me: 5:17 Because the audio cuts rightnafter Also my laptop is from 2019, and it doesn't have a lit keyboard, so your wrong And my laptop has good sound quality
I've used Linux on most of my personal computers for at least 10 years, and at work as a devops engineer when allowed. I've owned the Lemur Pro for 30 days. For me it's a strong keeper, for all the pros and cons that Jay mentioned. I think that Jay hit the mark on degree of each pro and con, with one exception that I'll explain in the last paragraph. Overall, super well done review. I learned a few things, even though I own the laptop. Anyone watching and thinking of buying the Lemur Pro, I'd urge you to watch this review twice, and take notes. Lots of nuggets. Pros and cons are spot on IMO, again with the one notable exception. I think that the con side of coreboot is understated. Not only can't you screen capture while the bios is updating, but you can't do ANYTHING except chose boot device order, because that's the only option that's exposed. Jay, when you said that if thunderbolt were available on the Lemur Pro, one could disable it in bios if not in use, to alleviate security concerns, well not unless System76 chose to expose that option in the bios. Also for example, forget about hardware level encryption on your nice EVO 760 Pro SSD. As far as I know, to do that one needs to set the encryption password in bios. But wait, that's not available. I know, there's security concerns with hardware level SSD encryption, but still, one might wish to experiment.
When I mentioned you can disable Thunderbolt, I was aware that Coreboot may not expose the option to disable it - however, you can still disable it in GNOME Settings. The focus on the System76 implementation of Coreboot is to focus on speed, and they do enable things people generally want. I do agree though, exposing actual options would be much better. There should be the ability to record the BIOS from Coreboot, another CZcams (a friend of mine) messaged them about turning that on, and IIRC they agreed to do that. I wish we didn't have to ask them to enable things though, and I hope they change the way they do this, but I guess it will get us by for now.
@@LearnLinuxTV on the other hand it's great they are so responsive. System76 strikes me as an already good company that is going to get better as it goes.
I haven't played with this laptop or coreboot, yet. But this unit has been on my wish list since before it's launch. As for coreboot and options go, it strikes me that the entire purpose of coreboot is the openness and accessibility for anyone to see and modify the code. Therefor, I would assume that anyone with specific needs, or the desire, could build their own version of the bios and install for themselves. unsupported by the mfg, but totally in line with the design of this system. If this is not the case, please enlighten me! My plan is to get this laptop, install slackware as my primary OS and run a number of guest OS's (including other linux distros and multiple windows versions), when needed. My current daily use machine is a google pixelbook and this thing is super light and thin with awesome battery life. But booting other linux distro's isn't so smooth due to hardware configs. So, that's where my interest in this laptop comes in. while i'm at it, personally both the sound and thunderbolt issues don't concern me. When I want better sounds I'll hook up to better headphones/speakers/sound systems. And to me thunderbolt is an apple thing, which doesn't have a place in my life. I get that it isn't strictly limited to apple, but that's just my stance. At the end of the day the purpose of a laptop is portability. Weight and battery life are paramount, with speed/power second in line. Everything else should compliment that. Want a bigger display? Go external. Want better sound, go external (including premium headphones). Want other hardware gadgets (like cd/dvd/bluray), go external. If I was in to gaming I'd probably spec a laptop, or desktop, for that purpose. I think most consumers fall in to the category of casual gamers, or even less. Historically Linux was never much of a gaming system so it makes sense that, on this model laptop, gaming related features be of lower priority. To me, the biggest negative about this laptop is the lack of more USB-C ports. The industry is working it's way toward everything using this connector and by now most of my connections have adopted it. Having at least 2 USB-C ports should be the minimum, especially when anabled with power delivery and displayport features. Personally, I'd love to have only USB-C ports and just use adapters for my USB-A plugs, when needed. Get rid of the barrel connector and use that space for another USB-C port. I do like having a micro-SD slot built in, along with a dedicated hdmi port. Other then that, I feel that USB-C should be the only other ports, the more the merrier! Just my thoughts...
Hi! Great review. But on the webpage it says "1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C / Thunderbolt™ 4". Have they upgraded the port to have Thunderbolt since your review?
Thanks for this review. I actually recently ordered mine and really excited to get it. I've been a long time Mac user but have really fallen out of love with the MacBook pros of recent years. This will actually my my first full time Linux machine and first system76 machine. I'm a web developer and I still feel 16 gigs of ram is overkill, and never listen to laptop speakers, so these negatives won't affect me at all!
Nearly identical boat as you (webdev on 2015 mbp looking at my next computer and wanting to move to system76, even boot into pop os every now and again), but I have had 16 gb in my mbp since 2015 and couldn't agree less that its overkill. What concerns me is the trackpad, how does it compare to your mbp? Hope you're loving it :)
@@nomadtrails Great to see someone else in my shoes here! So in short, I haven't regretted the move ONE bit. I haven't even been on the apple website browsing the new models like I usually do. The laptop is shockingly light (even moreso than a MacBook Air).. keyboard action, feel and backlight is great. I only really have 2 minor complaints. 1. The trackpad... when compared to other PCs.. it's great and better quality than i'm used to. Compared to a Mac, it's just not there. I didn't realize how used to using the whole trackpad as a button I was used to. This trackpad is more typical in that is only physically clicks towards the bottom, and it feels like a deeper press is needed and an audible click. Sadly, I much prefer the Mac big solid trackpad with taptic. I've combatted this issue by just relying on tap to click (and disabled tap+drag), and of course can still do 2 finger tap for right. But it's getting used to the tap VS the press was the answer for me. 2. The keyboard arrow keys.... if you look at the keyboard, you'll see the left and right arrow keys are tiny and in a grid with page up /page down. I understand why this seemed like a good design. But as a developer, i'm often using those arrow keys to precisely get the the start of a variable or something. And it's SOOOOO easy to accidentally hit Page Up instead of left arrow. And you could imagine how jarring that is.. I really wish they had not tried to cram those buttons in there. Who uses page up and down anyway?! haha. But again.. i'm getting used to it and it's not as much of an issue anymore. That's it for drawbacks.. System76 has been amazing to work with.. I distrohopped for a bit (Manjaro KDE and Mint mostly) but came back to Pop and do love that PopOS and the lemur pro feel tightly bounded like it feels on a mac. Performance wise, the specs suggest this was the same as my 2019 Macbook Pro.. but it feels 100x faster. All my web development stuff sets up SOOO easy on linux as well. In fact, if you run a LAMP stack, i've even built a short script that installs it all for you in a jiff
@@mikekellytech Sick man, thanks for the detailed reply. My concerns exactly align with your drawbacks, but I'm glad to hear that its working so well for you. I'm actually in Ft Collins not far from Denver so I asked System76 if I can come to the office and test drive the Lemur.
I'm still on the 2013(!) macbook pro - after that, apple stuff goes towards horrible to be honest. An API developer here ;) who works in a "cloud native" way so local performance is not much of an issue for me. Am also looking at this machine for my next one as my 2013 thing is getting a bit weary. My other option is a Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook tough. Just sent System76 a question as I'm not sure if I order this from the UK will it some with a UK keyboard layout or is it US layout across the board? I don't like the US layout mainly as I've used either EU international or UK keyboards all my life ... so if they do ship with this layout I'm considering getting it, otherwise the Flex 5 is the winner and getting that with very similar specs.
I have watched a good amount of your videos over the course of the year and I now find out you are a Pink Floyd fan?! You are the man! Can't thank you enough for the time and effort you put into these videos (especially that Arch install series) to help noobs get broken in like me.
Amazing review man I highly appreciate how thorough you are about everything. Is there any way to physically remove the webcam, microphone, and/or GPS tracking?
Thank you very much for the detailed review. There is one thing that seems peculiar to me in that laptop. The 8GB memory stick soldered on board. AFAIK, Intel UHD graphics require (or at least benefit) from dual channel memory. As I understand it, that usually means 2 identical memory sticks, which means only 16GB of RAM on the machine. Did you have a chance to check whether greater amount of memory really impair graphics performance, or maybe it actually works in flex mode?
I had the same thought, but I haven't had time to dig into that. It's true that at one point, you had to have matching sticks for dual channel. I think we've gone beyond dual channel now, and I'm not sure how newer machines play into that. I hope to look into it if I can get some free time to research it.
Great review. I've always thought the audio on Apple laptops were pretty good relative to other machines. The audio is my only complaint that I've had with my Darter. A lot of premium cell phones have relatively good audio so laptops should be able to have good audio too. I hope that's something that System76 works to improve in future models. That said, I wouldn't let the sound stop me from buying another machine. Their computers are great, and I can't stress enough how great their support team is; truly best in class.
Great review! One point about the Thunderbolt though. Thunderbolt is a proprietary technology. The whole ethos of 76 is to give you a machine that has as little proprietary code as possible. Thus it's a very understandable omission even if Thunderbolt would be convenient.
Great and helpful review! I have question for you since I see you own many system 76 machines.. Are you only using pop os on them? Can you get full potential with another distro? (For example the distro I use is opensuse leap) also is pop os coming with kde out of the box?
One question and one comment: Did you try charging via USB-C PD? I ordered my Lemur Pro and found that the first unit had what sounded like coil whine when docked to to charge/connect my external monitors. System76 support is world class, so they are doing advance replacement of this unit - no red tape, no hoops to jump through...but I was super curious if you experienced coil whine while powering over usb-c if you'd tried it? One thing I was really surprised you didn't talk about that I love about this unit is the great work they did making this thing use native coreboot rather than traditional slowpoke bios. This thing both boots faster and resumes from sleep faster than any other laptop I've ever seen, from any manufacturer running any OS. Entering my full-disk encryption password literally takes more time than the rest of the boot process combined, which I think is a standout feature.
This is great additional information to have. With advertising specifically for USB-C charging it is definitely interesting for there not to be a supported USB-C power adapter or cable in the box. It may not be a compatible power supply or cable. I've ran into issues using an unsupported cable, even with USB type C. For me, another topic that always comes up when deciding on a laptop is how upgrade friendly the device is. Is there room for a sata drive along with M.2 at the same time? And is the RAM soldiered on or is that able to be upgraded without desoldering to replace?
I didn't spend as much time on the PD aspect yet, I'm planning another dedicated video about that subject. But that kinda backfired because I'm having some difficulty getting that recorded, since one aspect I'm going to discuss is external GPU docks, but I can't get that to work on my Thinkpad :( Can you post an update when you get your laptop back, and if it solved the problem?
Yes. This thing boots insanely fast. And Linux on laptops has generally for me been hit our miss when it comes to resuming from sleep. Not with this machine. I haven't had the slightest glitch on this laptop on waking it from sleep.
I have been a long time Mac user and really enjoy the audio and video on MacBooks. I would love to purchase a laptop that is comparable. What is your goto laptop?
I know that its not really your cup of tea to compare with Apple, but since you alluded to the keyboard approximating or improving upon the Macbook keyboard prior to "butterfly" key design, I wonder if you could touch on the Lemur Pro trackpad. Its widely agreed that Mac trackpads are the best in the business, but this also has to do with the well integrated gesture and smooth scrolling in OSX. What I want to know is, how much of a downgrade is the Lemur Pro in terms of trackpad and scrolling in Pop OS as compared to MBP + OSX? As a long-time OSX user (web programmer), who boots into Pop OS for fun, variety, and in no small part, philosophy/ethics, I want nothing more than to move to a System76 system to support everything I love in the personal computing space... but I fear that like a drug, I will never be at home without this trackpad. What do you think?
@@BlademanZX I pulled the trigger on a lemur pro! Ultimately, I think its worth it for me to downgrade trackpad and fantastic buttery scrolling and gestures in osx. I'll let you know just how much of a downgrade I feel it is after a few weeks.
@@BlademanZX been driving the lemur pro for a month now, and I can say with confidence that the downgrade in trackpad is barely noticeable now. I just tap to click (anywhere on the pad) rather than pressing the button all the way down (only can do this towards the bottom of the trackpad). I opened up my MBP recently to move some old files to the cloud, and pressing the "force touch" trackpad down already feels weird/foreign... That's how fast I got accustomed to my new laptop. Lemur Pro is as close to perfect for me as I think is possible, and escaping Apple is a joy every single day. I'm in love.
I have a 2015 MacBook (the super small/light/thin ones that they don't sell anymore), and it has super good sound out of its speakers (loud and good quality), so it is actually possible for a laptop to have good sound. For some reason, many don't though, not sure why.
you can set the cpu govener to performance to get the maximum performance boost...but it will indeed drain the battery quicker (command=cpupower frequency-set --governor performance)(as root) you can also add it to /etc/rc.local...check if the file exists. If it does not exists just google on how to create one for your distro
Well, the speakers on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15 inch that I have seems pretty good, they are not miraculous but are fast and very long with little distortion. The only downside is that there's still a bug with the drivers that sometimes makes audio desync for almost a second in browser playback.
Thanks to your review, I just purchased this laptop.. I will keep you posted.. My main need was battery life... When I'm rich again I will go for something like the SERVAL or a Thelio. Gave up on my MacBook Pro.. Looks like MAC may be dumping the Intel Chip too, or that is what the little birdies are saying.
I have nothing to do with system76 other than the fact that I am a huge fan. I had Mac laptops all my life. I even got the new M1 MAC. obviously the build on the M1 MAC is beautiful and nothing can compare to it blah blah blah. i ended up taking a class on binary exploitation and we were required to have a computer wtih an intel architecture so i was forced to buy a new computer. i got the lemur pro. I freakin love the thing. PopOS runs so much smoother than mac OS. I can find my files so much easier. I can see how you might think it has a slightly cheap feeling to it but not really. It is super light and fun to type on. It is the best computer I have ever owned. The only thing my MAC is better for is music and video editing and that is important to me. But nah, i love my lemur pro. So happy with everything. love POP. I didn't even know such a computing experience was possible I feel like I have a relationship with the thing now. Oh yeah and the speakers are not good. but see you can't go into it expecting that. People shouldn't be relying on laptop speakers anyway, buy proper speakers! They work fine if you are just watching videos but def not good enough for music . especcially if you care about good bass or whatever haha.
Great review! Thanks for being so detailed! I do have one question. How many nits is the screen on max brightness? I've looked into this laptop quite a bit, but I can't find anyplace that tells me how many nits the screen is on max brightness. I like to work outside whenever possible. Is it easy to see the screen when you take this laptop outside?
i believe the nec lavie zero was the lightest notebook at about 750 grams or something. i doubt it had the battery life like the lemur pro. this is impressive and great review
I'm sorry. What? The device doesn't support Thunderbolt? What version of the Lemur Pro is this? The lemp9 or the lemp10? The 10 lists Thunderbolt in it's spec sheet. Was this the 9? Did they only make the 9 for a few months and realized that they had made a huge mistake and did an upgrade to the lemp10?
I'd like to use this laptop with an Arch-based distro. Is it possible? Does System76 publish their packages to be able to do things like firmware updates or those custom Gnome menus (basically, the extensions they ship with)?
Nice review! I am so sorry about the lack of thunderbolt. I was hoping to connect it to an apple display. The terrible speakers do not bother me, because I would use Bluetooth headset. Do you know whether the Bluetooth part would work smoothly with headsets, in particular the microphone ? I had trouble with it under Ubuntu 18 on some other machine. Also, the question of fan noise specifically while using zoom video conferencing would be important for me to know.
I really don't think fan noise on zoom would be a problem. It was a problem for me on the Gazelle, I literally had to suspend it to avoid noise getting into zoom (I was using a different PC for the meeting, the Gazelle was in the same room). The Lemur fan noise is the best of any laptop I've ever used. I haven't tested Bluetooth, because I have serious Bluetooth issues in my house, and I haven't figured it out yet. Something is disrupting Bluetooth in my office and interfering with it, to the point it's barely usable. So until that is figured out, it's hard to test. This has nothing to do with the Lemur, it's like that on other devices in my house. I think my IoT devices are interfering with Bluetooth, but I haven't proven that yet.
Here's a question. Is there a docking station that works flawlessly with the Lemur Pro, including to drive 2 external 1080p monitors, or even 3? I have the Dell WD19. It has one issue, at least with my monitors. One external monitor is fine, but the second one is iffy. It worked for awhile from the docking station, but now it doesn't. So now I plug both the usb-c and an HDI cable into the laptop when at my desk. I haven't tried powering everything down and then back up. I figured if it happened once it will just happen again.
Is that a dock with DisplayLink technology? If so, that's why. Avoid DisplayLink. Non-DisplayLink should work just fine. In my experience, all docks I've tried work flawlessly unless it's using DisplayLink. The majority nowadays don't seem to use DisplayLink anymore.
Hi everyone. Thank you for the informative video. Can anyone let me know how the microphone quality is? Unfortunately it has become quite important over the last year.
On a laptop that has good audio quality: I think the latest macbook air and 16" macbook pro are machines that are definitely the best laptop speakers ever. the other I think would come in a very very close second is that pixelbook go from google which also is fantastic. However I'm not sure how much that matters to most users?
I've heard that the pixelbook go and macbook pro 16 have great speakers, but I've never owned / tested either before. In my experience though, most laptop speakers aren't that good for things like movies and music, but are usable for vocals only (just not at max volume, In my experience, the lower the volume the better). A good example of that would be your videos, were it's most, if not all talking.
Have you had any problem with the spacebar? I bought a Lemur in 2016. The spacebar failed to work about every third word. System 76 sent two replacement keyboards but both had the same problem. They would not take the laptop back. I need to type a lot, so I eventually got rid of the Lemur.
About Thunderbolt: It’s not included because it’s proprietary Intel Tech. But it honestly doesn’t bother me as I only see the Usecase to attach a GPU für Gaming but the CPU is really not up for that anyways :-/
Před 3 lety
Can you test this with dual 27inch 4k monitors connected via usb-c running a couple of docker containers and IntelliJ at the same time? maybe importing a database and running tests at the same time. A typical web developer set up. You said you wanted people to ask you questions :D I want to know if that tiny laptop can handle that much work (and is not that much, my 15inch mbp does it with out stress). BTW, this is the most comprehensive review for the lemur, was watching a ton of them and they were very basic.Thanks!
How does this laptop compare with Thinkpad X1 Extreme? Watched both reviews, and like both equally. This one for battery life and lenovo for reliable build quality. I need laptop that will last me a long time and one with great battery.
How is the webcam quality of Lemur Pro? I'm planning to buy this laptop but on Reddit I saw people complaining about its webcam video being grainy, noisy, poor quality, orange/red.
I bought one of these based on this and other reviews. While I have been using highest end Apple laptops for about a decade, I found this product to lack audio quality to a degree that was not communicated as strong as I've experienced.
I know it's months later, but in terms of "best sound" I can honestly say that the MSI GT75 Titan has very impressive sound for a laptop. Does it beat a set of bluetooth headphones or speaker system? No. But I haven't heard anything that comes close to the Titan (yes, that includes you Apple MacBook). :-)
To be honest, if I had money to buy a 64GB RAM, I wouldn't buy Core i7, I would prefer Xeon or even better Ryzen 9. So max 40GB is ok for me, I probably go with 32GB single stick anyway.
Legit concerns. The screen can't compare to a Mac retina display or other hidpi screen, but interestingly, gnome hasn't quite got scaling on point, and running non-gtk apps won't respect scaling settings anyway. I'm sure it's possible to get perfect scaling set up in all your apps, but I found it too troublesome running Pop on a 2015 MBP. Things were too large or too small, and inconsistent. The standard 1080p screen on the lemur doesn't need scaling, and therefore is no issue. I find I'm not missing hidpi, but ymmv. For the tiny arrow keys, accidentally hitting pgup and pgdown is an annoyance, but those buttons can be easily disabled or mapped to function+button to get around this. Cheers.
Some manufactures are not including thunderbolt because it is considered a security risk. Microsoft for example does not include it on their laptops for this reason. Not saying that is why System76 is leaving it out, but it may be one reason. www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/tech/intel-thunderbolt-security-vulnerability/
Did the machine you order have any different specs from the review machine they sent you? Otherwise, you could’ve just paid to keep the review machine!
is this too slow and small if I need to do virtural machines for pentesting and set up a test lab? and perhaps have two distros, like Pop_OS for daily stuff and Kali Linux for python programming and pen testing in school!?
I'm running three virtual machines on mine for a project I'm working on. Three Ubuntu Server VMs with no GUI, and they're just as fast as I need them to be. Actually, the CPU is faster than the servers some people run in their home labs, so I would suspect it would be just fine for you. It's fine for me.
LearnLinuxTV thanks! what kind of projects would you say need the Thelio desktop? At what point does their desktop becomes clearly necessary? I am trying to understand where the level goes between a laptop like this or Oryx Pro and when, as in what peojects the Thelio actually is the correct choice. Can you from a tech perspective give me examples so that I who is a student beginning computer science now can easily understand when Thelio is best to use... I really love its' design and concept... but when do I need it!? 😂🎉
Agree with that one. But on the other hand do you personally ever use laptop speakers for anything? (be it a macbook pro or other) btw a the google picelbook go I reckon matches(ish) the sound quality of the mac... yet I still doubt I want that to be my audio source ever ;)
Sorry about that. I have audio issues in the studio, so it's kind of hard right now to measure something like fan noise when the audio itself needs editing to even sound normal. The studio is still a work in progress, there are a lot of flaws in the recording, audio quality, and editing I'm trying to figure out.
I don't like the arrow keys with the PgUp and PgDown Keys like that. I have a Dell XPS with same config and it just sucks. It would stop me from getting one of theses.
i have the l340 gamer as well. have had difficulty finding a modern distro that would run stable on it. ubuntu would keep hanging when swapping to disk. found that clearlinux has been stable.
I love the review! On my HP Envy x360 the sound really sucks. On my previous HP laptop the sound was perfect. I love everything else about my new one, except Ubuntu doesn't seem to understand when I use the 360 feature or the fingerprint reader. Aside from that, I love it. Maybe someday I'll have more money and buy one of these.
Jay, I absolutely agree that laptops GENERALLY sound awful. I've seen some beautiful looking machines with good to great performance that would make anyone drool with desire to own one of them ....right up until you hear what comes out of their speakers. They sound AWFUL. I'm no audiophile either, but I know awful sound when I hear it, and when it comes to laptops, 99.9% of the time, I hear awful sound. Okay, that's the disclaimer over and done with. Back in 2014, I was in the market for a new laptop with decent specs that would have no, or as few problems as possible, installing and running Linux. I settled on the HP Envy TS-15 ...with Beats Audio - four surround speakers and two sub-woofers (TS in the model name = Touch Screen). Even under Windows 8 (upgraded to Windows 10) that it came pre-installed with, it sounded good, but under Linux, especially in conjunction with pulseaudio-equalizer installed, this thing sounds like it's going to shatter and blow the double-glazed windows in whatever room I'm in, out of their frames. The bass is deep and rich, the mid-range clear, and the highs crisp. Vibration, none, except if you crank up the volume, and the bass in the equalizer, and overdrive the sub-woofer ...which is normal and expected. The only "downside" is that on installing Linux, it initially sounds as awful as, if not worse, than most laptops. That's because the Beats Audio system isn't configured properly out of the box, until you install alsa-tools-gui, and use HDAJackRetask to re-configure the sound card pins. Once done, you just would not believe that such sounds could possibly come out of a laptop. It'll easily drown out a conversation, and blows any other laptop I've ever come across out of the arena. I mentioned about installing pulseaudio-equalizeer previously. I hope no one thinks or says I've given it an added boost, because it came from HP pre-installed with a audio equalizer specifically made for the Beats Audio system, so under Linux, I've simply given it the same advantage. As mentioned, it sounded excellent right out of the box under Windows, but sounds like a completely different beast under Linux ...even without pulseaudio-equalizer installed, let alone with it. I don't think HP make laptops with Beats Audio any more, and even among their current Envy range of laptops, I think they now use Bang & Olufsen. I've never heard one of those ones, but I honestly can't imagine that they sound as awesome as the previous ones with Beats Audio, and would be extremely surprised (and glad) if they do. If you can get your hands on a HP Envy with Beats Audio even for a few hours to try out, I'd highly recommend grabbing a flash drive with a Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint (which I use) on it, and booting it up, and then installing alsa-tools-gui and then re-configuring the sound card pins with HDAJackRetask. You can find diagrams online as to how to set the pins, and then test out the sound for yourself.
Editing video. A single complex rendering task can saturate 12GB or more, and if I'm running a lot of other things, it will make the system crawl to the point I'd have to force restart it. I've installed earlyoom to avoid that going forward, but 32GB is a happy medium, avoids that issue, and is more future-proof.
@@LearnLinuxTV Fair enough. I didn't realize you use your personal laptop to edit video. I assumed you had a dedicated workstation for that task. Thanks.
"I liked it so much that I bought one" is always a pretty damn convincing review.
Yeah, first time it happened to me. But I wanted to underscore the lack of thunderbolt in the review as well as the audio quality, which could be deal-killers for some.
@@LearnLinuxTV It was a good review. Thunderbolt seems like an oversight but I don't have any Thunderbolt compatible peripherals so I'm probably going to pick one of these up myself. I have a Dell XPS 15 running Pop right now and it's really good. That's basically the only reason I don't have a Lemur Pro already.
@@LearnLinuxTV Looks like there is one thunderbolt port on it right now.
SYS 76 IS FUCKING JUNK .
@@mtunit ???
Your Lemur Pro reviews helped me make the leap! I'm coming over from years of using Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. I've found the Lemur Pro and Pop OS a surprisingly easy transition.
Did u make the leap? Whaddya think?
Good news-- on the latest Lemur Pro model, the usb-c/DP port is replaced with Thunderbolt 4! Still no Ethernet though :(
I have the Lemur Pro. I've had it a few weeks now. I agree with your review. One item you didn't mention is the track pad. I find it nearly as good as a MacBook Pro. I like that by default it turns off when typing.
My experience with battery life is the same. It is 7:30 p.m. and I've had the laptop on all day (from about 7:00 a.m., doing general development work, not editing video or compiling kernels). I have an estimated 6 hours remaining.
It is almost too light. When I lift the lid, the base comes along for the ride for a bit.
The enclosure looks like it is plastic, but it's actually made of a magnesium alloy. Being black, fingerprints can build up.
I have no complaints about the screen. I thought I'd miss the Retina display of a MBP, but I don't.
I adjusted to the keyboard fairly quickly. Never liked the location of the control key on the MacBook Pro. It's a little treat having Home and End and Prt Sc keys.
Yeah, speakers are so-so, but I don't care. I think the best speakers I've heard were the 2012 MBP.
I don't understand why they designed this so the screen can lie flat (180°). But a few times reclining on a sofa, it's been a nice little feature.
If you're a maker or an engineer, you are the target audience for this laptop. Sure, you know how to install Linux on all kinds of hardware but it is very nice to get one of these, power it on, and in 60 seconds be off and running with no fuss at all. And PopOS is very good.
One other item you didn't mention: the power cord is ridiculously short. Of course, with such long battery life, it may make sense. But even before my Lemur Pro arrived, I ordered a Chanzon 2 Prong Non Polarized 10 ft AC Power Cord from Amazon ($8). If anyone is about to order this laptop, definitely get one of those.
Also, after I ordered the laptop, System76 called and left a voice mail thanking me for my purchase. Who does that???? :-)
For some reason, I didn't notice how short it was until after the review when I set up the power cord permanently underneath my desk (I bought two power cords for mine). Do you have a link to the power cord you purchased? Please share that, I may consider it and others may want to check it out too.
Could someone give a more detailed review of the trackpad? I currently have a goodle pixelbook and it's glass trackpad is the best thing i've ever used. always smooth and responsive and absolutely love the way it handles gestures. Also of note is the way clicking and tapping work. It took a little getting used to, but I love not having any separate buttons to click, the multi-touch and software logic handles these things nicely. Curious how the Lemur Pro compares? Judging from it's relation to the keyboard keys, I'd say it's size is about the same as the pixelbook, so that's a plus. Very curious about the rest.
@@JimTomatore I've used MacBook Pros for eons. The trackpad on the Lemur Pro is not quite as nice but it did not disappoint me. I was never a fan of gestures, so on the MBP I turned them off (I don't need to rotate photos, for example). Like you, I prefer not having separate hardware buttons. So the Lemur Pro is the same. I suspect you would have a similar reaction to this touchpad: not perfect, but close enough.
Individual Sections:
Introduction: 0:00
Hardware overview: 0:42
Ports: 3:42
Display: 5:43
Keyboard: 6:11
Build quality: 7:13
Some Downsides: 8:07
Fan, noise & bios: 10:27
OS Screen Capture: 13:39
Thoughts about battery life: 14:08
Configuration overview: 15:59
/proc/cpuinfo output: 19:20
Heat/sensors output: 20:20
lspci output: 20:38
Sound quality: 21:19
Overall thoughts: 23:42
Made for mobile users. I know this may be fixed, but sometimes I encounter it.
This part is funny to me: 5:17
Because the audio cuts rightnafter
Also my laptop is from 2019, and it doesn't have a lit keyboard, so your wrong
And my laptop has good sound quality
Why do Linux youtubers always have high production value with everything except mic quality lol
Great video though
I've never thought about it. It's true though.
Because microphones aren't open source
I've used Linux on most of my personal computers for at least 10 years, and at work as a devops engineer when allowed. I've owned the Lemur Pro for 30 days. For me it's a strong keeper, for all the pros and cons that Jay mentioned. I think that Jay hit the mark on degree of each pro and con, with one exception that I'll explain in the last paragraph.
Overall, super well done review. I learned a few things, even though I own the laptop. Anyone watching and thinking of buying the Lemur Pro, I'd urge you to watch this review twice, and take notes. Lots of nuggets. Pros and cons are spot on IMO, again with the one notable exception.
I think that the con side of coreboot is understated. Not only can't you screen capture while the bios is updating, but you can't do ANYTHING except chose boot device order, because that's the only option that's exposed. Jay, when you said that if thunderbolt were available on the Lemur Pro, one could disable it in bios if not in use, to alleviate security concerns, well not unless System76 chose to expose that option in the bios. Also for example, forget about hardware level encryption on your nice EVO 760 Pro SSD. As far as I know, to do that one needs to set the encryption password in bios. But wait, that's not available. I know, there's security concerns with hardware level SSD encryption, but still, one might wish to experiment.
When I mentioned you can disable Thunderbolt, I was aware that Coreboot may not expose the option to disable it - however, you can still disable it in GNOME Settings. The focus on the System76 implementation of Coreboot is to focus on speed, and they do enable things people generally want. I do agree though, exposing actual options would be much better. There should be the ability to record the BIOS from Coreboot, another CZcams (a friend of mine) messaged them about turning that on, and IIRC they agreed to do that. I wish we didn't have to ask them to enable things though, and I hope they change the way they do this, but I guess it will get us by for now.
@@LearnLinuxTV on the other hand it's great they are so responsive. System76 strikes me as an already good company that is going to get better as it goes.
I haven't played with this laptop or coreboot, yet. But this unit has been on my wish list since before it's launch. As for coreboot and options go, it strikes me that the entire purpose of coreboot is the openness and accessibility for anyone to see and modify the code. Therefor, I would assume that anyone with specific needs, or the desire, could build their own version of the bios and install for themselves. unsupported by the mfg, but totally in line with the design of this system. If this is not the case, please enlighten me!
My plan is to get this laptop, install slackware as my primary OS and run a number of guest OS's (including other linux distros and multiple windows versions), when needed. My current daily use machine is a google pixelbook and this thing is super light and thin with awesome battery life. But booting other linux distro's isn't so smooth due to hardware configs. So, that's where my interest in this laptop comes in.
while i'm at it, personally both the sound and thunderbolt issues don't concern me. When I want better sounds I'll hook up to better headphones/speakers/sound systems. And to me thunderbolt is an apple thing, which doesn't have a place in my life. I get that it isn't strictly limited to apple, but that's just my stance.
At the end of the day the purpose of a laptop is portability. Weight and battery life are paramount, with speed/power second in line. Everything else should compliment that. Want a bigger display? Go external. Want better sound, go external (including premium headphones). Want other hardware gadgets (like cd/dvd/bluray), go external. If I was in to gaming I'd probably spec a laptop, or desktop, for that purpose. I think most consumers fall in to the category of casual gamers, or even less. Historically Linux was never much of a gaming system so it makes sense that, on this model laptop, gaming related features be of lower priority.
To me, the biggest negative about this laptop is the lack of more USB-C ports. The industry is working it's way toward everything using this connector and by now most of my connections have adopted it. Having at least 2 USB-C ports should be the minimum, especially when anabled with power delivery and displayport features. Personally, I'd love to have only USB-C ports and just use adapters for my USB-A plugs, when needed. Get rid of the barrel connector and use that space for another USB-C port. I do like having a micro-SD slot built in, along with a dedicated hdmi port. Other then that, I feel that USB-C should be the only other ports, the more the merrier!
Just my thoughts...
Hi! Great review. But on the webpage it says "1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C / Thunderbolt™ 4". Have they upgraded the port to have Thunderbolt since your review?
I have lemur pro, and yes my old MacBook Pro does have much better sound.
Thanks for this review. I actually recently ordered mine and really excited to get it. I've been a long time Mac user but have really fallen out of love with the MacBook pros of recent years.
This will actually my my first full time Linux machine and first system76 machine.
I'm a web developer and I still feel 16 gigs of ram is overkill, and never listen to laptop speakers, so these negatives won't affect me at all!
Nearly identical boat as you (webdev on 2015 mbp looking at my next computer and wanting to move to system76, even boot into pop os every now and again), but I have had 16 gb in my mbp since 2015 and couldn't agree less that its overkill. What concerns me is the trackpad, how does it compare to your mbp? Hope you're loving it :)
@@nomadtrails Great to see someone else in my shoes here! So in short, I haven't regretted the move ONE bit. I haven't even been on the apple website browsing the new models like I usually do. The laptop is shockingly light (even moreso than a MacBook Air).. keyboard action, feel and backlight is great. I only really have 2 minor complaints.
1. The trackpad... when compared to other PCs.. it's great and better quality than i'm used to. Compared to a Mac, it's just not there. I didn't realize how used to using the whole trackpad as a button I was used to. This trackpad is more typical in that is only physically clicks towards the bottom, and it feels like a deeper press is needed and an audible click. Sadly, I much prefer the Mac big solid trackpad with taptic. I've combatted this issue by just relying on tap to click (and disabled tap+drag), and of course can still do 2 finger tap for right. But it's getting used to the tap VS the press was the answer for me.
2. The keyboard arrow keys.... if you look at the keyboard, you'll see the left and right arrow keys are tiny and in a grid with page up /page down. I understand why this seemed like a good design. But as a developer, i'm often using those arrow keys to precisely get the the start of a variable or something. And it's SOOOOO easy to accidentally hit Page Up instead of left arrow. And you could imagine how jarring that is.. I really wish they had not tried to cram those buttons in there. Who uses page up and down anyway?! haha. But again.. i'm getting used to it and it's not as much of an issue anymore.
That's it for drawbacks.. System76 has been amazing to work with.. I distrohopped for a bit (Manjaro KDE and Mint mostly) but came back to Pop and do love that PopOS and the lemur pro feel tightly bounded like it feels on a mac. Performance wise, the specs suggest this was the same as my 2019 Macbook Pro.. but it feels 100x faster. All my web development stuff sets up SOOO easy on linux as well. In fact, if you run a LAMP stack, i've even built a short script that installs it all for you in a jiff
@@nomadtrails If you need to set up a LAMP stack on Pop (or anything *buntu). github.com/mkellyxp/Install-Lamp-on-Ubuntu
@@mikekellytech Sick man, thanks for the detailed reply. My concerns exactly align with your drawbacks, but I'm glad to hear that its working so well for you. I'm actually in Ft Collins not far from Denver so I asked System76 if I can come to the office and test drive the Lemur.
I'm still on the 2013(!) macbook pro - after that, apple stuff goes towards horrible to be honest. An API developer here ;) who works in a "cloud native" way so local performance is not much of an issue for me.
Am also looking at this machine for my next one as my 2013 thing is getting a bit weary.
My other option is a Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook tough.
Just sent System76 a question as I'm not sure if I order this from the UK will it some with a UK keyboard layout or is it US layout across the board?
I don't like the US layout mainly as I've used either EU international or UK keyboards all my life ... so if they do ship with this layout I'm considering getting it, otherwise the Flex 5 is the winner and getting that with very similar specs.
I ordered one today. Thanks for wonderful review.
do you live in India?
does system76 ship to India?
I have watched a good amount of your videos over the course of the year and I now find out you are a Pink Floyd fan?!
You are the man! Can't thank you enough for the time and effort you put into these videos (especially that Arch install series) to help noobs get broken in like me.
Amazing review man I highly appreciate how thorough you are about everything. Is there any way to physically remove the webcam, microphone, and/or GPS tracking?
11th gen lemur pro comes with thunderbolt port.11th gen processor has speed upto 4.7Ghz in i7 variant.
Web page spec expansion: 1× USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A, 1× USB 3.0 Type-A, 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C / Thunderbolt™ 4, MicroSD Card Reader
Thank you very much for the detailed review.
There is one thing that seems peculiar to me in that laptop. The 8GB memory stick soldered on board. AFAIK, Intel UHD graphics require (or at least benefit) from dual channel memory. As I understand it, that usually means 2 identical memory sticks, which means only 16GB of RAM on the machine. Did you have a chance to check whether greater amount of memory really impair graphics performance, or maybe it actually works in flex mode?
I had the same thought, but I haven't had time to dig into that. It's true that at one point, you had to have matching sticks for dual channel. I think we've gone beyond dual channel now, and I'm not sure how newer machines play into that. I hope to look into it if I can get some free time to research it.
Great review. I've always thought the audio on Apple laptops were pretty good relative to other machines. The audio is my only complaint that I've had with my Darter. A lot of premium cell phones have relatively good audio so laptops should be able to have good audio too. I hope that's something that System76 works to improve in future models. That said, I wouldn't let the sound stop me from buying another machine. Their computers are great, and I can't stress enough how great their support team is; truly best in class.
Great review! One point about the Thunderbolt though. Thunderbolt is a proprietary technology. The whole ethos of 76 is to give you a machine that has as little proprietary code as possible. Thus it's a very understandable omission even if Thunderbolt would be convenient.
Well they have thunderbolt on the updated models now.
Great and helpful review! I have question for you since I see you own many system 76 machines.. Are you only using pop os on them? Can you get full potential with another distro? (For example the distro I use is opensuse leap) also is pop os coming with kde out of the box?
One question and one comment:
Did you try charging via USB-C PD? I ordered my Lemur Pro and found that the first unit had what sounded like coil whine when docked to to charge/connect my external monitors. System76 support is world class, so they are doing advance replacement of this unit - no red tape, no hoops to jump through...but I was super curious if you experienced coil whine while powering over usb-c if you'd tried it?
One thing I was really surprised you didn't talk about that I love about this unit is the great work they did making this thing use native coreboot rather than traditional slowpoke bios. This thing both boots faster and resumes from sleep faster than any other laptop I've ever seen, from any manufacturer running any OS. Entering my full-disk encryption password literally takes more time than the rest of the boot process combined, which I think is a standout feature.
This is great additional information to have. With advertising specifically for USB-C charging it is definitely interesting for there not to be a supported USB-C power adapter or cable in the box. It may not be a compatible power supply or cable. I've ran into issues using an unsupported cable, even with USB type C.
For me, another topic that always comes up when deciding on a laptop is how upgrade friendly the device is. Is there room for a sata drive along with M.2 at the same time? And is the RAM soldiered on or is that able to be upgraded without desoldering to replace?
I didn't spend as much time on the PD aspect yet, I'm planning another dedicated video about that subject. But that kinda backfired because I'm having some difficulty getting that recorded, since one aspect I'm going to discuss is external GPU docks, but I can't get that to work on my Thinkpad :(
Can you post an update when you get your laptop back, and if it solved the problem?
Yes. This thing boots insanely fast. And Linux on laptops has generally for me been hit our miss when it comes to resuming from sleep. Not with this machine. I haven't had the slightest glitch on this laptop on waking it from sleep.
Really hope they make a thunderbolt edition. This is the only must have that this laptop is missing. But it seems to surpass all of my nice to haves.
now they do :)
@@DanyaalShaozab that's a shame I literally just bought a laptop last week :(
@LearnLinuxTV, how about the laptop sleep mode, will the battery be drained a lot while you close the lid for like a day ?
Great review!
January 2021, you may want to upgrade the review as I just booked my own lemur pro with TB 4...(confirmed by support that can use eGPU with nvidia)
His model was the lemp9 the latest one is the lemp10 which yes has Thunderbolt 4
I have been a long time Mac user and really enjoy the audio and video on MacBooks. I would love to purchase a laptop that is comparable. What is your goto laptop?
now that this thing is getting Xe graphics with the new 11th gen CPU's...
Might be viable for some casual gaming
That's what I thought.
Thank you so much for this review. Since you mentioned Ansible can you do a series on Ansible for beginners? Thank you for all you do!
Yes, I think I am going to do this. The idea has been floating around in my head for a while. I'll see about starting it soon, if all goes to plan.
Great review, man. Thanks a lot
Lemur doesn't replace the Galago, there is a new Galago with 11th gen intel + GTX1650 (both have Thunderbolt 4 now).
I know that its not really your cup of tea to compare with Apple, but since you alluded to the keyboard approximating or improving upon the Macbook keyboard prior to "butterfly" key design, I wonder if you could touch on the Lemur Pro trackpad. Its widely agreed that Mac trackpads are the best in the business, but this also has to do with the well integrated gesture and smooth scrolling in OSX. What I want to know is, how much of a downgrade is the Lemur Pro in terms of trackpad and scrolling in Pop OS as compared to MBP + OSX? As a long-time OSX user (web programmer), who boots into Pop OS for fun, variety, and in no small part, philosophy/ethics, I want nothing more than to move to a System76 system to support everything I love in the personal computing space... but I fear that like a drug, I will never be at home without this trackpad. What do you think?
Yuuuuup that's what I need to know also. Sad to hear it's not in this vid, I'm barely a few min in at the time of this comment
@@BlademanZX I pulled the trigger on a lemur pro! Ultimately, I think its worth it for me to downgrade trackpad and fantastic buttery scrolling and gestures in osx. I'll let you know just how much of a downgrade I feel it is after a few weeks.
@@BlademanZX been driving the lemur pro for a month now, and I can say with confidence that the downgrade in trackpad is barely noticeable now. I just tap to click (anywhere on the pad) rather than pressing the button all the way down (only can do this towards the bottom of the trackpad). I opened up my MBP recently to move some old files to the cloud, and pressing the "force touch" trackpad down already feels weird/foreign... That's how fast I got accustomed to my new laptop.
Lemur Pro is as close to perfect for me as I think is possible, and escaping Apple is a joy every single day. I'm in love.
~You seem really Genuine, I love that
he based af
Great review as always. In my humble opinion the audio of my mac book pro 16" is the best of the segment by far. You should try it!.
I have a 2015 MacBook (the super small/light/thin ones that they don't sell anymore), and it has super good sound out of its speakers (loud and good quality), so it is actually possible for a laptop to have good sound. For some reason, many don't though, not sure why.
For the “quietest laptop” you could review, have you tried out the Pinebook Pro? It’s ARM-based, and doesn’t have a fan!
you can set the cpu govener to performance to get the maximum performance boost...but it will indeed drain the battery quicker
(command=cpupower frequency-set --governor performance)(as root)
you can also add it to /etc/rc.local...check if the file exists. If it does not exists just google on how to create one for your distro
Well, the speakers on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15 inch that I have seems pretty good, they are not miraculous but are fast and very long with little distortion. The only downside is that there's still a bug with the drivers that sometimes makes audio desync for almost a second in browser playback.
Thanks to your review, I just purchased this laptop.. I will keep you posted.. My main need was battery life... When I'm rich again I will go for something like the SERVAL or a Thelio. Gave up on my MacBook Pro.. Looks like MAC may be dumping the Intel Chip too, or that is what the little birdies are saying.
I have nothing to do with system76 other than the fact that I am a huge fan. I had Mac laptops all my life. I even got the new M1 MAC. obviously the build on the M1 MAC is beautiful and nothing can compare to it blah blah blah. i ended up taking a class on binary exploitation and we were required to have a computer wtih an intel architecture so i was forced to buy a new computer. i got the lemur pro. I freakin love the thing. PopOS runs so much smoother than mac OS. I can find my files so much easier. I can see how you might think it has a slightly cheap feeling to it but not really. It is super light and fun to type on. It is the best computer I have ever owned. The only thing my MAC is better for is music and video editing and that is important to me. But nah, i love my lemur pro. So happy with everything. love POP. I didn't even know such a computing experience was possible I feel like I have a relationship with the thing now. Oh yeah and the speakers are not good. but see you can't go into it expecting that. People shouldn't be relying on laptop speakers anyway, buy proper speakers! They work fine if you are just watching videos but def not good enough for music . especcially if you care about good bass or whatever haha.
Great review! Thanks for being so detailed! I do have one question.
How many nits is the screen on max brightness? I've looked into this laptop quite a bit, but I can't find anyplace that tells me how many nits the screen is on max brightness. I like to work outside whenever possible. Is it easy to see the screen when you take this laptop outside?
I emailed System76 with this question. The answer: at its brightest the screen is 250 nits.
@@Don-yr8nu hmm, that means on a sunny day, no coding on the beach ... quite a dim screen that is. shame.
@@Don-yr8nu that's a shame. The MacBook Air has 400 nits.
Thank you for this interesting review, would it be possible for you to do the same review for the Starlabtop MK IV ?
Omg! I have the same lamp! SUBSCRIBED
I own 2 laptops, lenovo c930 great audio quality on speaker and macbook air best audio quality on speaker, laptop speakers are getting really better
9:13 he claims it doesn't have Thunderbolt, but it seems this has changed? Product page clearly list:
1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C / Thunderbolt™ 4
Am loving that t-shirt jay!
i believe the nec lavie zero was the lightest notebook at about 750 grams or something. i doubt it had the battery life like the lemur pro. this is impressive and great review
I'm sorry. What? The device doesn't support Thunderbolt? What version of the Lemur Pro is this? The lemp9 or the lemp10? The 10 lists Thunderbolt in it's spec sheet. Was this the 9? Did they only make the 9 for a few months and realized that they had made a huge mistake and did an upgrade to the lemp10?
Answer is at 12:01 in the video. This is a lemp9. Crazy that they thought shipping a laptop without thunderbolt was acceptable.
I'd like to use this laptop with an Arch-based distro. Is it possible? Does System76 publish their packages to be able to do things like firmware updates or those custom Gnome menus (basically, the extensions they ship with)?
you can find them in the aur :)
The firmware updater isn't using anything specific to System76, so it should work. I haven't tested it, but I don't see why not.
Nice review! I am so sorry about the lack of thunderbolt. I was hoping to connect it to an apple display. The terrible speakers do not bother me, because I would use Bluetooth headset. Do you know whether the Bluetooth part would work smoothly with headsets, in particular the microphone ? I had trouble with it under Ubuntu 18 on some other machine. Also, the question of fan noise specifically while using zoom video conferencing would be important for me to know.
I really don't think fan noise on zoom would be a problem. It was a problem for me on the Gazelle, I literally had to suspend it to avoid noise getting into zoom (I was using a different PC for the meeting, the Gazelle was in the same room). The Lemur fan noise is the best of any laptop I've ever used. I haven't tested Bluetooth, because I have serious Bluetooth issues in my house, and I haven't figured it out yet. Something is disrupting Bluetooth in my office and interfering with it, to the point it's barely usable. So until that is figured out, it's hard to test. This has nothing to do with the Lemur, it's like that on other devices in my house. I think my IoT devices are interfering with Bluetooth, but I haven't proven that yet.
Here's a question. Is there a docking station that works flawlessly with the Lemur Pro, including to drive 2 external 1080p monitors, or even 3?
I have the Dell WD19. It has one issue, at least with my monitors.
One external monitor is fine, but the second one is iffy. It worked for awhile from the docking station, but now it doesn't. So now I plug both the usb-c and an HDI cable into the laptop when at my desk. I haven't tried powering everything down and then back up. I figured if it happened once it will just happen again.
Is that a dock with DisplayLink technology? If so, that's why. Avoid DisplayLink. Non-DisplayLink should work just fine. In my experience, all docks I've tried work flawlessly unless it's using DisplayLink. The majority nowadays don't seem to use DisplayLink anymore.
@@LearnLinuxTV thanks for the info. It doesn't look like the WD19 uses DisplayLink.
Can you tell us more about the screen? Display type, PPI? It's very hard to find any specs from System 76 regarding screens, other than resolution.
Doing the math, a 1920*1080 screen with a 14.1” diagonal has 156 pixels/inch.
Can you comment on the touchpad? I just recently bought a Galago Pro, and cannot get used with the touchpad and buttons
Hi everyone. Thank you for the informative video. Can anyone let me know how the microphone quality is? Unfortunately it has become quite important over the last year.
On a laptop that has good audio quality: I think the latest macbook air and 16" macbook pro are machines that are definitely the best laptop speakers ever.
the other I think would come in a very very close second is that pixelbook go from google which also is fantastic.
However I'm not sure how much that matters to most users?
About a laptop with good sound: dell precsion 5550. I use it for work.
I've heard that the pixelbook go and macbook pro 16 have great speakers, but I've never owned / tested either before. In my experience though, most laptop speakers aren't that good for things like movies and music, but are usable for vocals only (just not at max volume, In my experience, the lower the volume the better). A good example of that would be your videos, were it's most, if not all talking.
Have you had any problem with the spacebar? I bought a Lemur in 2016. The spacebar failed to work about every third word. System 76 sent two replacement keyboards but both had the same problem. They would not take the laptop back. I need to type a lot, so I eventually got rid of the Lemur.
About Thunderbolt: It’s not included because it’s proprietary Intel Tech.
But it honestly doesn’t bother me as I only see the Usecase to attach a GPU für Gaming but the CPU is really not up for that anyways :-/
Can you test this with dual 27inch 4k monitors connected via usb-c running a couple of docker containers and IntelliJ at the same time? maybe importing a database and running tests at the same time. A typical web developer set up. You said you wanted people to ask you questions :D I want to know if that tiny laptop can handle that much work (and is not that much, my 15inch mbp does it with out stress). BTW, this is the most comprehensive review for the lemur, was watching a ton of them and they were very basic.Thanks!
great review for a very tempting laptop. thx
For Libre to open faster you should uncheck Java runtime environment in Advanced Settings
I have the Lemur Pro. When I launch Libre Office Calc, the splash screen lasts at most a tenth of a second. it's ludicrous fast.
How does this laptop compare with Thinkpad X1 Extreme?
Watched both reviews, and like both equally.
This one for battery life and lenovo for reliable build quality.
I need laptop that will last me a long time and one with great battery.
Great review!!! :)
How is the webcam quality of Lemur Pro? I'm planning to buy this laptop but on Reddit I saw people complaining about its webcam video being grainy, noisy, poor quality, orange/red.
H, thx for the videos. Could you tell us what the terminal theme in the video ?
Pretty late comment, but regarding to laptop sound... I have a Lenovo Y700. I'm not going to say the sound is high-end, but it's enjoyable.
Lol, you have a laptop purchase addiction. I can't blame you though; I'd do the same too if I didn't have competing priorities.
i was thinking about this one or the Novacustom NV41 Series 14 inch, i went with the Novacustom one
I bought one of these based on this and other reviews. While I have been using highest end Apple laptops for about a decade, I found this product to lack audio quality to a degree that was not communicated as strong as I've experienced.
Sorry to hear that. I understand though, if a particular aspect is critical for you it's hard to disregard it.
I know it's months later, but in terms of "best sound" I can honestly say that the MSI GT75 Titan has very impressive sound for a laptop. Does it beat a set of bluetooth headphones or speaker system? No. But I haven't heard anything that comes close to the Titan (yes, that includes you Apple MacBook). :-)
To be honest, if I had money to buy a 64GB RAM, I wouldn't buy Core i7, I would prefer Xeon or even better Ryzen 9. So max 40GB is ok for me, I probably go with 32GB single stick anyway.
How do you see system76 compare to thinkpad P or E series and Dell XPS
I only don't like going back to a FHD display... does anybody have more info on the display quality?
25:24 Deja vu
I love the weight, the dual M.2 slot, 40 GB, but the 1920x1080 resolution and half-sized cursor keys give me pause.
Legit concerns. The screen can't compare to a Mac retina display or other hidpi screen, but interestingly, gnome hasn't quite got scaling on point, and running non-gtk apps won't respect scaling settings anyway. I'm sure it's possible to get perfect scaling set up in all your apps, but I found it too troublesome running Pop on a 2015 MBP. Things were too large or too small, and inconsistent. The standard 1080p screen on the lemur doesn't need scaling, and therefore is no issue. I find I'm not missing hidpi, but ymmv.
For the tiny arrow keys, accidentally hitting pgup and pgdown is an annoyance, but those buttons can be easily disabled or mapped to function+button to get around this. Cheers.
This or dell xps?
Did you encounter missing letters when typing quickly? I read some were missing key strokes if you type too fast.
it looks very similar to the lg gram. Any connection?
My Dell XPS13 2 in one running POP_OS actualy has good sound (not amazing) a lot better than my Lemur
Linus Torvalds also runs the XPS 13.
What's the difference between Systems76 laptops and every other company?
What about heat problems?
what is the battery drain on sleep?
i'm experiencing minor stuttering on video playback. Always on any gnome shell os including pop! Does anyone know how to fix this? thanks
Some manufactures are not including thunderbolt because it is considered a security risk. Microsoft for example does not include it on their laptops for this reason. Not saying that is why System76 is leaving it out, but it may be one reason. www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/tech/intel-thunderbolt-security-vulnerability/
Note that System76 already includes TB in 15 inch models
Did the machine you order have any different specs from the review machine they sent you? Otherwise, you could’ve just paid to keep the review machine!
is this too slow and small if I need to do virtural machines for pentesting and set up a test lab? and perhaps have two distros, like Pop_OS for daily stuff and Kali Linux for python programming and pen testing in school!?
I'm running three virtual machines on mine for a project I'm working on. Three Ubuntu Server VMs with no GUI, and they're just as fast as I need them to be. Actually, the CPU is faster than the servers some people run in their home labs, so I would suspect it would be just fine for you. It's fine for me.
LearnLinuxTV thanks! what kind of projects would you say need the Thelio desktop? At what point does their desktop becomes clearly necessary?
I am trying to understand where the level goes between a laptop like this or Oryx Pro and when, as in what peojects the Thelio actually is the correct choice.
Can you from a tech perspective give me examples so that I who is a student beginning computer science now can easily understand when Thelio is best to use... I really love its' design and concept... but when do I need it!? 😂🎉
22:18 a laptop with excellent sound is the MacBook Pro.
Agree with that one. But on the other hand do you personally ever use laptop speakers for anything? (be it a macbook pro or other)
btw a the google picelbook go I reckon matches(ish) the sound quality of the mac... yet I still doubt I want that to be my audio source ever ;)
Is there miracast screen mirror?
Does anyone know if the i7 cpu runs in the 15W or 28W configuration?
Is that a SpaceX background?
Hi, is possible install Hackintosh in this laptop?
a bit disappointed that you dont actually record the fan noise when running a cpu test or something
Sorry about that. I have audio issues in the studio, so it's kind of hard right now to measure something like fan noise when the audio itself needs editing to even sound normal. The studio is still a work in progress, there are a lot of flaws in the recording, audio quality, and editing I'm trying to figure out.
I don't like the arrow keys with the PgUp and PgDown Keys like that. I have a Dell XPS with same config and it just sucks. It would stop me from getting one of theses.
Use emacs key bindings
Looking good as always. Also the laptop looks good 😋
i have a ideapad L340 "gamer", the sound is very good.
I didn't even know about that laptop. Good to know a laptop with decent sound actually exists.
i have the l340 gamer as well. have had difficulty finding a modern distro that would run stable on it. ubuntu would keep hanging when swapping to disk. found that clearlinux has been stable.
Why Intel and not the new AMD gen processor?
I love the review! On my HP Envy x360 the sound really sucks. On my previous HP laptop the sound was perfect. I love everything else about my new one, except Ubuntu doesn't seem to understand when I use the 360 feature or the fingerprint reader. Aside from that, I love it. Maybe someday I'll have more money and buy one of these.
Jay, I absolutely agree that laptops GENERALLY sound awful. I've seen some beautiful looking machines with good to great performance that would make anyone drool with desire to own one of them ....right up until you hear what comes out of their speakers. They sound AWFUL. I'm no audiophile either, but I know awful sound when I hear it, and when it comes to laptops, 99.9% of the time, I hear awful sound. Okay, that's the disclaimer over and done with.
Back in 2014, I was in the market for a new laptop with decent specs that would have no, or as few problems as possible, installing and running Linux. I settled on the HP Envy TS-15 ...with Beats Audio - four surround speakers and two sub-woofers (TS in the model name = Touch Screen). Even under Windows 8 (upgraded to Windows 10) that it came pre-installed with, it sounded good, but under Linux, especially in conjunction with pulseaudio-equalizer installed, this thing sounds like it's going to shatter and blow the double-glazed windows in whatever room I'm in, out of their frames. The bass is deep and rich, the mid-range clear, and the highs crisp. Vibration, none, except if you crank up the volume, and the bass in the equalizer, and overdrive the sub-woofer ...which is normal and expected. The only "downside" is that on installing Linux, it initially sounds as awful as, if not worse, than most laptops. That's because the Beats Audio system isn't configured properly out of the box, until you install alsa-tools-gui, and use HDAJackRetask to re-configure the sound card pins. Once done, you just would not believe that such sounds could possibly come out of a laptop. It'll easily drown out a conversation, and blows any other laptop I've ever come across out of the arena. I mentioned about installing pulseaudio-equalizeer previously. I hope no one thinks or says I've given it an added boost, because it came from HP pre-installed with a audio equalizer specifically made for the Beats Audio system, so under Linux, I've simply given it the same advantage. As mentioned, it sounded excellent right out of the box under Windows, but sounds like a completely different beast under Linux ...even without pulseaudio-equalizer installed, let alone with it.
I don't think HP make laptops with Beats Audio any more, and even among their current Envy range of laptops, I think they now use Bang & Olufsen. I've never heard one of those ones, but I honestly can't imagine that they sound as awesome as the previous ones with Beats Audio, and would be extremely surprised (and glad) if they do. If you can get your hands on a HP Envy with Beats Audio even for a few hours to try out, I'd highly recommend grabbing a flash drive with a Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint (which I use) on it, and booting it up, and then installing alsa-tools-gui and then re-configuring the sound card pins with HDAJackRetask. You can find diagrams online as to how to set the pins, and then test out the sound for yourself.
32 Gigs of ram is a pretty high minimum. Is there any particular reason why you need so much ram?
Editing video. A single complex rendering task can saturate 12GB or more, and if I'm running a lot of other things, it will make the system crawl to the point I'd have to force restart it. I've installed earlyoom to avoid that going forward, but 32GB is a happy medium, avoids that issue, and is more future-proof.
@@LearnLinuxTV Fair enough. I didn't realize you use your personal laptop to edit video. I assumed you had a dedicated workstation for that task. Thanks.
Why use a linux specific machine and when you can install it over to any new machine and donate to the linux foundation?
As long as it's a supported device, there's nothing wrong with installing Linux on it.
Unfortunately, with no Ryzen 4800U...