Chinese PC maker TopJoy produces a range of laptops, tablets, and mini PCs. Now the company is getting into the same mini-laptop space occupied by the GPD Pocket/Pocket 2 and the One Mix Yoga.
In fact, at first glance, the new TopJoy Falcon looks an awful lot like those products. But this convertible mini laptop has a larger screen and a keyboard with a bit more space between the keys. That might make it slightly less pocket-sized, but with an 8 inch display the TopJoy Falcon convertible laptop is still smaller than most modern notebook computers.
It should go up for pre-order in October through a Kickstarter campaign, and early backers might be able to reserve one for as littler as $399. The full retail price is expected to be closer to $699.
The little computer has an 8 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel IPS touchscreen display with a 360-degree hinge, allowing you to use the Falcon as a notebook or a laptop. The hinge mechanism looks similar to the one on the One Mix Yoga.
The keyboard also looks similar to the One Mix Yoga/original GPD Pocket, with an optical touch sensor in the middle of a split space bar, and with left and right click buttons below it. There are also a bunch of half-width keys including the punctuation keys and Alt and Ctrl keys on the right side of the keyboard, but there’s a bit more space between these keys on the Falcon than on other mini-laptops, which might help reduce the risk of typos.
Other features are expected to include an Intel Pentium Silver 5000 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of solid state storage, USB Type-A and USB Type-C ports, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It weighs 1.2 pounds, has a full metal chassis. TopJoy says the computer’s 6,000 mAh battery should provide up to 8 hours of battery life (I’m a little skeptical), and that a 30 minute charge using a USB Type-C adapter will get you 3 hours of battery life (that seems more plausible).
One thing to keep in mind: the pictures posted on the Falcon website seem to be pretty heavily Photoshopped, so it’s not entirely clear at this point whether the company has working prototypes or not.
That said, I was a little skeptical that the One Mix Yoga was a real thing when I first saw it pop up online, but it turned out to be very real.
Update: It’s real, and I’ve got a prototype. More details coming soon.
For me an 8 inch screen is the minimum size I can use. 7 inches is too small to read the screen, yet it’s still too big to fit in my pocket.
One Mix Yoga fits in some of my pockets, but not in others. GPD Win 2 fits in most of my pockets, but it looks to much like a game machine for me to take to work or to meetings.
So I have noticed many other mini PC also have a micro sd slot. This does not? Is that a good thing or not
not
pgup and pgdown and altgr is on this keyboard?
Now we have 2 Pocket clones. Makes me wonder if we’ll ever get any Win clones.
Wow! According to UserBenchmark, this chip is about 8% faster than the M3-7Y30 in the Pocket 2 and it has the flip. This will likely be my next machine!
Seriously? I didn’t expect that when I read “Pentium”. Brad, I hope you can get your hands on one and do a shootout!
The Gemini Lake cpus are the first atom class that I feel are good enough for everyday use (of course I realize that this is subjective).
Im excited every time we see new competition in this segment, but I’m still trying to decide if I should buy any of these yet. Im strongly considering the GPD Pocket 2.
The main thing that attracts me to these devices is the keyboard. So far they all have very poorly thought-out layouts. They have included too many keys, and that has compromised the layout.
Those specs look like an upgrade on the One Mix Yoga but a step down from the GPD, as you’d expect from the price I suppose. But I’d still like to have a machine with the GPD’s specs in this form factor. Getting closer…
Looks like those vents are for a fan. Can someone confirm this isn’t fanless?
It’s unlikely that it is fanless. None of the other devices in this category are currently fanless.
It’d be nice if they make a version with LTE. Currently, I’m looking at the Surface Go LTE since it seems to the smallest portable PC with LTE.
Thanks, Brad… despite having a history with these pocket-type PCs going all the way back to the days of the DOS-based HP 95LX (I worked on the ‘Jaguar’ PC glue-logic ASIC project), I just haven’t been able to pull the trigger on the GPD Pockets or the One Mix Yoga… but this TopJoy unit looks a bit more interesting (so far) for what I’d like.