GPD’s last few products have been handheld gaming PCs including the GPD Win 4 and GPD Win Max 2. But the company also makes handhelds and mini-laptops designed for general purpose usage rather than just gaming, and it looks like there could be several new models on the way.
Details about the company’s plans for the next year have been leaking for a while. We already know that a “Win Mini” is in the works, offering many of the features of the Win Max series in a more compact body. Now it looks like that mini-laptop will be joined by a GPD Pocket 4 and GPD P4 Max, both of which could launch toward the end of 2023. GPD is also working on a compact GPD G1 GPU dock that could bring a serious boost in graphics performance to many of its little computer.
We already knew that the Win Mini will have a 7 inch FHD display, built-in game controllers, and a keyboard designed for touch typing. More details should be available this summer – GPD is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign in June and begin shipping the Win Mini to backers this fall.
Now The Phawx reports the Win Mini display will also have a 120 Hz refresh rate and will come with a choice of two processor options: Top-tier models will have an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor with Radeon 780M graphics based on RDNA 3 architecture, while entry-level configurations will have a Ryzen 5 7440U chip (I’m not sure what GPU this version will have).
GPD is said to be planning to offer the entry-level model for around $700 during the upcoming Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, which could make the Win Mini competitive with the upcoming Asus ROG Ally (at least during crowdfunding… if you value compact size over performance, since all ROG Ally models are expected to have a custom AMD Ryzen Z1 chip based on the 7840U processor).
Details on GPD’s other new mini-laptops are scarce at the moment. As for the GPD Pocket 4, it’s expected to be a follow-up to the company’s earlier Pocket series, which have included models with 7 or 8 inch screens. Designed to function as tiny laptops for productivity rather than gaming, these systems tend to feature an emphasis on portability and useability over graphics horsepower.
But according to a report from DroiX, the 4th-gen model could be powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor with Radeon 780M integrated graphics, and that could mean it will be able to handle many modern games… assuming you want to play them on a mini-laptop that’s not much bigger than the game controller you’ll probably want to plug in.
Meanwhile the upcoming GPD P4 Max is expected to be a follow-up to the P2 Max, which means it will be a little-less pocket-sized, but have a larger screen and keyboard that could make it more comfortable to use. Expect a 9 to 11 inch display and the same Ryzen 7 7840U/Radeon 780M chip as the Pocket 4.
But if you are looking for extra graphics performance from a mini-laptop, the GPD P4 Max and GPD Win Mini will have a secret weapon: a PCIe OcuLink-2 port with support for data transfer speeds up to 16GB/s.
This will allow you to plug in GPD’s other upcoming product, the GPD G1 graphics dock. The G1 features an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT discrete GPU card with 32 RDNA 3 compute units, 8GB of GDDR6 memory, support for speeds up to 2.3 GHz and a 120W TGP.
The G1 dock measures 205 x 110 x 29 (8.1″ x 4.3″ x 1.14″), which should make it pretty easy to pack up and carry around. But with a 240W GaN power supply, it’s designed to be plugged in during use rather than run from battery power.
The dock also has three USB Type-A ports, an SD card reader and three video out ports: two DisplayPort and one HDMI.
GPD’s dock also has a USB4/Thunderbolt 4 port so you can plug it into devices that don’t have an Oculink-2 port. But data transfer speeds will be capped at 5 GB/s if you use a Thunderbolt 4 connection, so you’ll get the best performance when using it with a device like the GPD P4 Max or Win Mini.
According to DroiX, GPD will begin sending demo units of the G1 dock to reviewers in the next few months and it could go on sale this summer for around $700, but I’d take that price with a grain of salt until the dock is officially announced.
While the G1 also has a USB4/Thunderbolt port that will let you connect it to a wide variety of devices
I wonder what percentage of GPD users actually use an eGPU. I don’t.
Unless this eGPU is discounted with some sort of bundling, I doubt it’d sell many.
I bet only a few existing users use eGPUs today.
Well that’s partly because eGPUs over Thunderbolt are buggy and lose a significant part of their performance.
Most of that is fixed with OCuLink.
So just because you don’t use it, didn’t mean others don’t it don’t want to.
But hey, me, me, me.