Minisforum v3, 3-in-1 Tablet

[DiTBho]

It's here, it's happening, and they have an interesting sales plan
See here

What do you think about? 

[SiliconWizard]

It doesn't look too shabby, but it has a x86 CPU, I'm surprised this caught your attention.

[brucehoult]

A pretty decent latest generation 8 core x86 CPU. It'll be quick enough. But under load it's going to drain that battery in under 2 hours. I don't know what the idle power will be on that CPU -- AMD is not as good there as current Intel, I think? Maybe 3.5 hours under light load?

It's a similar price to a M4 iPad Pro, which will have far longer battery life, but is a bit too locked down for many uses. It's 2/3 the price of a same spec (8 core, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) MacBook Air which will again have far longer battery life, but doesn't have a tablet mode. How valuable is that, really?  Obviously much cheaper than buying a laptop AND a tablet...

[DiTBho]

AMD is not as good there as current Intel, I think? Maybe 3.5 hours under light load?

Actually it seems the opposite. That AMD CPU looks more power efficient than any Intel one.
I say this not just to say, but because a colleague bought it, this is how I found out about this tablet.

She said there are BIOS settings and a Windows 11 special application that block or unlock the turbo.
In conservative mode my colleague reaches 6 hours with Linux, and about 7 hours with Windows11.

She does Photoship and audio stuff with it. Nothing special, but the tablet has two NPUs for AI-based algorithms.
Nothing exceptional, but it helps to clean the audio.

[DiTBho]

It doesn't look too shabby, but it has a x86 CPU, I'm surprised this caught your attention.

I'm not sure if I will ever buy it.
Probably not.
I opened this topic to report the product.
It might be useful to someone.

Ideally I'd like something RISC_V with Haiku on top, but I can't develop it myself, and we're still a long way from having a similar product.
Furthermore, my work on Teres1 is also progressing very very slowly, so much so that if I were to leave for holidays tomorrow...
I wouldn't have anything really functional to bring with me.

The new Linux kernels are a disaster for many platforms.
Practically everything on HPPA is broken.
Even critical things like the sATA HBA ...

-

Anyway, for <1K euro, the Minisforum v3 tablet is probably the best supported by both Windows 11 and GNU/Linux

[DiTBho]

A very interesting feature that my colleague showed me: the tablet can work as a monitor!
 not through software like X11/RDP/etc, but actually by acquiring a video signal from a cable!

[brucehoult]

AMD is not as good there as current Intel, I think? Maybe 3.5 hours under light load?

Actually it seems the opposite. That AMD CPU looks more power efficient than any Intel one.

AMD is more efficient under load, yes. But I'm talking about at idle, which is what most computers spend most of their time doing.

She said there are BIOS settings and a Windows 11 special application that block or unlock the turbo.

"Turbo" is relevant to operation under load.

My 24 core i9-13900HX laptop has three settings, cycled by hitting Fn-Q on the keyboard, and altering the colour of the power-on LED:

- blue: clock limited to I think 2.4 GHz, whether 1 core or 24, idling at 1.6 GHz

- white: idling at 1.6 GHz, single core can use 5.3 GHz, all cores settles around 3.4 GHz

- red: idling at a higher speed which I don't recall, single core can use 5.3 GHz, all cores eventually settle at around 3.9 GHz with a lot of fan noise but can do around 4.25 GHz on all cores until it gets hot.

[DiTBho]

The MF-v3 seems limited to 25Watt.
Today I was able to try it in person, stressing it with Gimp, I must say that it doesn't heat up.
Great for a tablet!

[DiTBho]

A review on Youtube

[DiTBho]

no interest ummm, ok