The One Netbook T1 is a 2-in-1 tablet with a 13 inch, 2160 x 1440 pixel display, support for touch and pen input, and an optional keyboard folio case. Basically it’s One Netbook’s answer to Microsoft’s Surface Pro line of tablets. But while Microsoft’s latest Surface models ship with 11th-gen Intel Core processors, the One Netbook T1 is one of the first tablets powered by 12th-gen Intel Core chips.

It goes up for pre-order today through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, with early bird pricing starting as low as $599… although you’ll need to pay considerably more for a model with top tier specs. One Netbook loaned me a pre-release prototype of the T1 tablet to test. I’ve only been using it for a few days so far, so I will update this article with more notes on performance after I’ve had time for more tests. But here are some initial observations.

This is the first Windows tablet to bear the One Netbook name. It’s a small Chinese company that’s been producing mini-laptops and handheld gaming PCs for the past few years. But One Netbook is a subsidiary of Chinese PC maker VOYO, a company that’s been making tablets for years. The first time we heard about this tablet, it was actually going to be called the VOYO VBook 2023.

While One Netbook has been promoting the tablet up until now as the first to ship with an Intel Core i7-1260P processor, the company is actually offering three different processor options. The $599 starting price will only get you a tablet with an Intel Pentium Gold 8505 processor, which is a 15-watt, 5-core, 6-thread chip with Intel UHD graphics.

The company is also offering Intel Core i5-1240P and Intel Core i7-1260P processor options, but prices for those models are much higher. During the first 48 hours of crowdfunding, you’ll be able to reserve a Core i5 tablet with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $899, but after that the price goes up to $969 during crowdfunding. And after the campaign ends, that model will have a retail price of $1,119.

Models with Intel Core i7-1260P chips are even more expensive, with prices starting at $1,139 during the 48-hour Super Early Bird sale, $1,199 for the rest of the Indiegogo campaign and $1,399 at retail.

Optional accessories cost extra, including a $39 stylus, $59 folio keyboard, and $29 carrying case.

One Netbook T1 pricing
Super Early Bird Early Bird Retail
Pentium Gold 8505 / 8GB + 256GB$599$599$719
Core i5-1240P / 16GB + 512GB)$899$969$1,119
Core i7-1260P (16GB + 1TB)$1,139$1,199$1,399
Core i7-1260P (16GB + 2TB)$1,239$1,299$1,499

One Netbook sent me a Core i5/16GB/512GB model for testing, and the unit featured in this article is a pre-release prototype. The company says the final hardware that ships to backers will have improved internal and external build quality and improved performance.

That said, the model I’m testing seems like a reasonably well-built device with a sturdy aluminum body, an adjustable kickstand that supports any angle up to 160 degrees, and a 350 nit display that’s bright, sharp, and offers good viewing angles and which responds well to touch and pen input.

The stylus included with my demo unit, by the way, is an active pen with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, two buttons, and a USB-C port that allows you to recharge the pen’s battery. Since the tablet complies with Microsoft’s Pen Protocol, it should also work with Surface tablets, and alternately you can use a Surface Pen or other MPP pen with the T1.

The built-in stereo speakers are nothing to write home about, and the 2MP/720p webcam is probably best described as better-than-nothing. But that’s pretty typical of most thin and light laptops and tablets.

Measuring about 12.8″ x 7.8″ x 0.4″ and weighing about 2.2 pounds, the T1 is a bit large and clunky to actually hold in your hands as a tablet, but if you’re sitting down and resting the bottom on your legs, you may not notice the weight as much and you may appreciate the size while watching videos or surfing the web.

But like most modern Windows tablets, the One Netbook T1 isn’t designed just to be used as a slate. It works with a folio keyboard cover that attaches magnetically to the bottom of the tablet and connects to a set of pogo pins, which means the keyboard doesn’t need its own battery and you don’t have to worry about an unreliable wireless connection between the computer and keyboard.

That’s about all the nice things I can say about the keyboard though. The felt/faux-suede finish on the folio is a dust magnet that looks pretty messy after just a day of carrying it around my house. Even worse, it’s a pain to type on.

The keyboard wobbles when I type and has fairly shallow key travel, both of which I could probably learn to live with. But the touchpad also offers little to no palm rejection, which means the cursor keeps moving unpredictably as a my palm brushes against it while I type.

This means that sometimes I’ll end up entering text in the wrong part of a document, deleting the wrong item, or even switching focus to another app altogether mid-sentence.

Fortunately you don’t have to use the official keyboard. I had no problem pairing a Bluetooth keyboard with the tablet and using that instead. You can also obviously plug in a wired keyboard.

In fact, I spent a day using the One Netbook T1 as a desktop replacement by plugging it into an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

It was more than able to keep up with my daily workload involving researching and writing articles for Liliputing with up to two dozen Google Chrome browser tabs open at a time while streaming music and doing some lightweight image editing.

That said, this is the first device I’ve tested to feature a 12th-gen Intel Core processor and quite honestly I found performance to be adequate, but somewhat underwhelming. With a 28-watt, 12-core, 16-thead processor based on Intel’s latest architecture, the One Netbook T1 should run circles around some of the other recent devices I’ve tested with synthetic benchmarks. It doesn’t.

There’s a chance that may be different in the final version of the tablet that ships to backers of the crowdfunding campaign and retail customers. One Netbook is promising to deliver better performance in the final version.

But the unit I tested doesn’t seem significantly faster than computers with 11th-gen Intel Core processors in my tests.

If I had to guess, I’d say that’s because the One Netbook T1 is designed to be a thin and light device. It has a single fan for active cooling, but the fan never gets particularly loud. And while that’s generally a good thing for a mobile computer, it also means that the processor doesn’t really have a lot of headroom to run at full blast before it gets hot and throttles the speed to keep the system from overheating.

At that rate, I have to wonder why One Netbook didn’t just opt for a more energy-efficient processor. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano I reviewed last year has an Intel Core i5-1130G7 processor designed to run at 7-15 watts, although it can hit up to 40 watts for brief periods. The One Netbook T1 I tested has a 28-watt Core i5-1240P chip with an upper power limit of 64 watts.

Guess which one scored higher in the Cinebench multi-core test when using the default power settings?

The One Netbook T1 did notch a higher single-core score, and it also came out ahead in some other tests including GeekBench and PassMark, but the scores were closer than I would have expected and the ThinkPad X1 with the Core i5-1130G7 processor came out ahead in PCMark.

It is possible to achieve higher scores by increasing the default TDP of the tablet’s processor. While the Intel Core i5-1240P processor is a 28-watt chip, One Netbook tells me that by default it’s configured to run at 15 watts to conserve power in this tablet. The BIOS that was pre-installed on the prototype unit I’m testing did not offer any options for changing the TDP, but One Netbook sent me an alternate BIOS that does allow you to manually configure the power limits, and suggested I set the PL1 and PL2 power limit settings to 22 watts and 40 watts, respectively.

The company says customers who purchase the tablet will receive devices configured to run at 15 watts, but folks who want to increase the TDP will be able to download the alternate BIOS from the One Netbook website or request the file from the company.

After boosting the power limit on the prototype tablet, I did indeed see higher scores in benchmarks. For example, the GeekBench multi-core score jumped by 25% with the TDP set to 22 watts.

In the case of GeekBench, I saw the greatest performance boost when the tablet was plugged in, which isn’t surprising. What is a little surprising is that while I saw a 35% improvement in Cinebench performance while running on battery power, the One Netbook T1 saw a much more modest 17% performance gain while plugged.

My best guess for why this could have happened is that Cinebench takes longer to run, putting more strain on the processor and generating more heat. So I wonder if there’s something a little funky with the charging and/or cooling setup in the unit I’m testing, but again, this is a prototype and doesn’t necessarily reflect the full performance of the retail version that will ship to customers.

Of course, keep in mind that increasing the TDP will most likely take a toll on battery life. And it’s not clear to me just how easy it will be for customers to get their hands on a BIOS that allows for altering the chip power settings in the first place.

I saw similar results with PassMark – while the highest overall score came when I ran the benchmark at 22 watts while plugged in, the highest score in the CPU-specific portion of the test came at 22 watts while running on battery power.

One Netbook, which has been focusing rather heavily on mobile gaming over the past year or so, also suggests that the T1 tablet can be used for gaming on the go. But in my initial tests, it might not be the best choice for gaming.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 with a lower-power, previous-gen Core i5 processor scored higher in 3DMark’s Time Spy, Fire Strike, and Night Raid benchmarks. So did an HP Pavilion Aero 13 laptop with a Ryzen 7 5800U processor, and the GPD Win 3 handheld gaming PC with an Intel Core i7-1195G7 chip.

In fact, One Netbook even sells devices with better gaming performance. Last year I reviewed the first ONEXPLAYER handheld gaming PC. It has an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics and managed to outperform the One Netbook T1 in all of those 3DMark benchmarks… and that’s the least powerful member of the ONEXPLAYER lineup. These days the company offers models with Core i7-1195G7 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processors which should perform even better.

3DMark scores did improve by up to 15% when I increased the TDP from 15 watts to 22 watts, but that’s still not quite enough to even go neck-and-neck with the Lenovo Thinkpad X1, which is among the lowest-power computers in the chart above.

So while the One Netbook T1 may be one of the first tablets to ship with a 12th-gen Intel Core processor, I highly doubt it will be one of the fastest. It’s possible that models with Core i7-1260P chips might score higher in synthetic benchmarks than the Core i5 model I’ve tested, but if the issue really is thermal constraints, I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it.

Look, I’m not saying the One Netbook T1 is by any means sluggish. It’s a reasonably powerful computer with a compact design. It’s just that a key selling point is that this is one of the first tablets powered by a 12th-gen Intel Core processor and, at least for the prototype I’m testing, it doesn’t look like that actually offers much of an advantage over devices with 11th-gen Intel Core or AMD Ryzen 5000U processors.

Of course, there’s only so much that synthetic benchmarks can tell you. In terms of real-world performance, the One Netbook T1 handled most of the day-to-day tasks I could throw at it when using it either as a standalone tablet, a pseudo-laptop (with a lousy keyboard), or a pseudo-desktop (when connected to an external keyboard, mouse, and display).

Battery life isn’t stellar though. The tablet has a 46.2 Wh battery that only lasts for around 5 hours when streaming videos from YouTube over WiFi using the Microsoft Edge web browser. Expect somewhat shorter battery life for more resource-intensive activities like gaming or productivity jobs that involve a lot of multitasking.

One Netbook ships the tablet with a compact 65W USB-C charger that looks more like a phone charger than a laptop power brick. It can fully charge the battery in about 2.5 hours.

A few other notes about the One Netbook T1’s physical design:

  • It has a decent set of ports including two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port (for power or data), a mini HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card reader.
  • There’s an Intel AX201 wireless card with support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
  • RAM is soldered to the mainboard, but storage is user replaceable thanks to an M.2 2280 slot.

It’s surprisingly easy to open up the tablet and get at the SSD. Just lift the kickstand, remove the six screws holding the bottom of the case in place, and a portion of the display will pop open.

Use a plastic prying tool to carefully work your way around the rest of the edges and you can remove the screen and get access to all of the tablet’s internal components. Just make sure not to pry too hard or you might break some of the plastic latches that hold the screen in place.

The SSD that came with my demo unit is a PCIe NVMe drive that offers pretty decent read and write speeds, but it’s nice to know that there’s an option to upgrade to a higher capacity drive if you need it.

While the tablet ships with Windows 11 Home software pre-installed, it can also boot other operating systems. Just press Esc or Del during startup to get into the UEFI/BIOS settings screen and you can choose your boot device, among other things.

When I took Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for a spin, I noticed that some sort of graphical glitch prevented the operating system from fully loading when using the default settings. But I rebooted and tried again with the “safe graphics” mode and almost everything worked out of the box.

I was able to easily connect to the internet over WiFi, stream audio and video from the internet, use the keyboard to type, navigate, and adjust audio levels. The touchscreen was responsive to finger input, and I could even use the pressure-sensitive pen to draw some horribly amateur pictures in Krita.

There were a few things that didn’t work in Ubuntu though, at least in safe graphics mode. I couldn’t find any way to adjust the screen brightness either through system settings or by using keyboard shortcuts. And not only does automatic screen rotation not work, but I couldn’t find any way to rotate the display, which was stuck in landscape mode.

In other words, if you shift the tablet so you’re holding it in portrait mode, Ubuntu will still be displayed in landscape. Open the Ubuntu display settings and choose the options to rotate 90 degrees to the left or right manually, and nothing happens. Fire up a terminal window and try typing xrandr -o right and… nothing happens.

While I suspect folks with a bit more Linux know-how than I have might be able to find a way to rotate the screen, that was one of the most noticeable features that failed to work out of the box in safe graphics mode.

Since I only booted Ubuntu from a USB flash drive and did not install the operating system, I didn’t investigate whether it’s possible to fix the graphics issues and boot without using the Safe Graphics option. I also did not extensively test battery life or run performance benchmarks, but overall Ubuntu seemed reasonably snappy and the battery level indicator suggested that the tablet should get around 4-5 hours of battery life.

Overall, the One Netbook T1 seems like a decent little tablet with a good display, decent build quality, a nice set of ports, and performance that may not be quite as amazing as I’d hoped, but which is certainly acceptable.

With prices starting as low as $599 during crowdfunding, it’s also competitively priced with Microsoft’s Surface tablets… in theory. But at that price you’re only getting a model with a Pentium chip and 8GB of RAM. Prices are much higher for models with Intel Core processors and 16GB of RAM.

Personally, if I was going to spend that kind of money on a computer, I’d probably opt for a laptop rather than a tablet. But that’s because I’m much more productive with a keyboard than I am with a stylus. And I’ve never found folio-style detachable keyboards to be quite as useful as a good solid laptop keyboard. That’s especially true of the One Netbook T1 keyboard, which I’ve found to be practically unusable.

One Netbook T1 specs
Display13 inches
2160 x 1440 pixels
IPS LCD
350 nits
25 ms response time
72% NTSC color gamut
Pen support
ProcessorIntel Pentium Gold 8505 (5 cores, 6 threads, up to 4.4 GHz, 15-55 watts)
Intel Core i5-1240P (12 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.4 GHz, 28-64 watts)
Intel Core i7-1260P (12 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.7 GHz, 28-64 watts)
Graphics1.1 GHz Intel UHD with 48 eu (Pentium 8505)
1.3 GHz Intel Iris Xe with 80 eu (Core i5-1240P)
1.4 GHz Intel Iris Xe with 96 eu (Core i7-1260P)
RAM8GB or 16GB
LPDDR5-5200
Storage256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB
M.2 2280
PCIe 3.0 x4
Ports1 x USB 3.2 Type-C
2 x USB 3.2 Type-A
1 x mini HDMI
1 x microSD card reader
1 x 3.5mm audio jack
Pogo pins (for keyboard)
WirelessIntel AX201
WiFi 6
Bluetooth 5.2
Webcam2MP / 720p
Battery46.2 Wh (12,000 mAh / 3.85V)
Charging65W USB-C GaN charger
MaterialsAluminum
Dimensions326 x 198 x 10.7mm
12.83″ x 7.8″ x 0.42″
Weight980 grams
2.16 pounds
PriceTablet

  • $599 – $1,299 (crowdfunding)
  • $719 – $1,499 (retail)

Accessories

  • $59 – Magnetic Keyboard (crowdfunding)
  • $39 – Stylus (crowdfunding)
  • $29 – Carrying case (crowdfunding)

You can reserve a One Netbook T1 by backing the company’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and One Netbook says it will begin shipping tablets to backers in August.

This article was first published June 9, 2022 and most recently updated June 15, 2022 with notes on battery life, Linux usage, and the performance increase that comes from configuring the processor to run at 22 watts instead of the default 15W. 

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11 replies on “One Netbook T1 preview: Windows tablet with Intel Alder Lake (crowdfunding)”

  1. Thought about backing it. But lack of thunderbolt, tax for EU and suspicious cooling solution(like where is air intake) is a deal breaker.
    Also noticed top left screw is missing from your heat sink.

  2. To all readers, if you’ve finished reading this article.

    At first, I backed i7-1260P/2TB. Then, I found this article from the opinions on the campaign page.

    I read it all; then, I requested a refund without thinking instantly. I’m not sure about myself. 50% of me want it, and 50% think it’s not worth it; Too expensive, low-quality components and keyboard.

    In my opinion about this tablet, it might suit me, and also, it might be trash too.

    What would your guy’s suggestion be?
    Should I back i7-1260P/2TB again with a free keyboard or a case? Or buy something else?

    I’m not good at computer/spec/details.
    I really appreciate any help you can provide.

    1. I think you should just look into competing options and compare CPU performance on a benchmark site, keeping in mind the thermal limitations imposed by cramming them in a tablet which you can approximate from data on this page. Also consider laptops with 360 degree hinges. Then buy whatever makes sense given what you’re planning to do with it.

  3. Terrible CPU for the low end model, and overall it just looks cheap, especially the keyboard.

    Aslo MPP… EMR next time please.

  4. CPU is really bad. While on paper it is 28W you can expect 60W. It is impossible in the tablet formfactor.
    So one buying something that can never be used.
    Hope Intel’s next gen can compete with AMD and Apple.

  5. Anyone know if One Netbook plans on iterating on OneGx1 Pro LTE? That’s what I’m interested in. Especially if they make it smaller if they can remove the large back and/or make it a swivel screen.

    1. I occasionally look up One Netbook to see if they come up with a Gx sequel. Haven’t heard anything.

      While there are several flaws in the execution of the current one, I think the underlying form factor is good. Prefer it over the Win Max which got more awkwardly large for the Max 2.

    2. I have the OneGx1 Pro LTE. While it certainly has some bad design/implementation choices, I do hope they create a successor. Maybe they will under the OneXPlayer brand.

  6. Nice and tidy sized gallium nitride charger. Bezel looks a bit thick, but that’s probably so you can grip the tablet with one hand and not palm the live area of the touch screen.

  7. how long does it last from 100% to 0% while watching youtube videos?

Comments are closed.