I've written this review in multiple sections to make it easier finding specific details. Otherwise I've tried to put it into chronological order for the most part. Enjoy reading - it's only personal experience and opinion.
Delivery
To StarLabs credit they provided an overview of all different steps and delays during delivery of their batches. However there still were a lot of delays which threw multiple people off and I was quite happy once I could read about the first shipping confirmation other customers on social media received, as well as reviews once they received their ordered devices.
I can't really tell whether this has been something usual for StarLabs or not. But if I wouldn't have known of them carrying out previous products, I would probably have cancelled my order at some point during this whole process. So I understand why others did.
It's definitely something that can and should be improved.
Unboxing
Tablet and keyboard (which also acts as case/cover and kick-stand) come in separate boxes within the package. Looks very professional and the tablet is covered by a big cleaning cloth that comes with it.
The active pen comes within a smaller sealed plastic bag with one battery included but not yet inserted (you just need to screw the back off to insert it - no tool required). There's also a pair of replacement pen tips once you rub them off to much (pretty typical for input devices like that). At first the pen feels kind of short compared to others I've used but it's not an issue. Buttons for right- and middle-mouse click work too.
There's also a charging brick and USB-C cable within the box. The cable is at reasonable length (many times longer than my needs but I take it as bonus). The charging brick can be adapted for your outlet type (in my case to work with typical EU outlets). It just needs to be selected during order.
Setup
My device came with latest Ubuntu preinstalled which I selected out of their different options. I was able to fully setup everything through the initial setup process of GNOME only using the touchscreen. I didn't recognize any major issues on Ubuntu but I still ended up reflashing the device with a fresh install of Archlinux because I was missing the latest version of MyPaint on Ubuntu that didn't crash on me (I think this is an issue on application level with some older version).
I did test the pen for drawing in Xournal++ before that and it was performing reasonably. Maybe it's just me but I think latency was a bit lower on Archlinux later on. I didn't do any proper comparison though.
Installation
Installation of any Linux distribution wasn't a big deal. You select your installation
medium from BIOS to boot and go through the whole setup. In the end it's just an Intel x86 computer inside a tablet form factor. The original keyboard always worked through the whole process without me needing to go through any additional hoops. The same goes for the original pen.
So if you plan to install your own choice of Linux distribution on the device, you
should be good to go.
I always had an USB-C dock lying around with keyboard and mouse to be in the clear. The only thing I used the dock for to install Archlinux was the Ethernet port because I wasn't gonna try to use Wifi for that. Should be possible though.
Usage
So what do I use the device for? Multiple things actually.
Originally I planned to only use it for digital drawing and some development for mobile Linux devices (testing gestures and such on the big touchscreen). However I ended up replacing my 2-in-1 laptop with it when going anywhere.
The biggest downside so far was that it only offers four cores in the SoC without multi-threading. So if you want to compile software on regular basis like I do, you need to have a bit of patience.
Otherwise you can make your sketches using it as a drawing tablet, play lighter games (I mostly some of my own games developed with Godot) or simply use it as typical laptop. So browsing the web, editing/writing documents, watching videos, movies or series on the couch. Yeah, all that is possible.
For drawing I recommend having either a surface beneath or rest the tablet on your lap or legs. Technically you can hold the whole tablet with one hand, no problem. But for a longer period it gets heavy with its metal case. So pick what's most comfortable for you, I guess.
Also something I tried was using my mixed reality glasses with the tablet and found out that the USB-C port on this device not just supports video-out but even enough bandwidth to support full stereo mode of the glasses in 3840x1080 (1920x1080 for each eye) at 60Hz. So I know this is kind of specific but since I'm one of the people behind driver software to support such devices on Linux, I wanted to include this.
So if you install Monado on it, you can actually run OpenXR application while still having a 2K touchscreen in front of you. Just be aware that the internal GPU is not as powerful as your modern desktop computer. So similar as with games, the applications shouldn't be to heavy on resources.
I did also some playing around with an own Vulkan framework for computer graphics applications and most of it just worked (after debugging some software issues that I hadn't fixed yet of course). So even lighter 3D rendering is definitely possible. I didn't try a lot of sculpting in Blender yet (because I'm just not very experienced in sculpting even though I used Blender for a lot of other things already) but technically this should be doable using the pen.
Battery life
So much stuff you can do with it but how is battery life?
Well, I personally tend to always stick with power saving profiles. Still it can hold for around 4 hours at max brightness (and that isn't really very bright - so more like use it inside and avoid direct sunlight).
Depending on the workload this will obviously be shorter. For example compiling takes a lot of CPU load and playing games will typically hug the GPU. Most lighter tasks and even watching videos is not really a problem since you have full hardware accelerated decoding.
If you go lower with screen brightness you can potentially reach about 6 hours. But I recommend having the charger around instead. I would say one charge is usually enough for the trains tracks I tend to travel more often. That means for my personal needs it's a good option to digitally draw in a train while listening to music.
I assume you can achieve the advertised 12 hours while in deep suspension. But I haven't tried to verify that. I don't know about you but I personally just shutdown the device when not using it actively. Booting is pretty fast. So I don't need to suspend and resume to gain a lot of convenience.
Features
- A big multi-touch screen with 2K resolution (2160x1440) at 3:2 ratio (Very clear in terms of resolution but not particular bright).
- Detachable keyboard with regional key layout (I personally use their German QWERTZ-layout) and rather big touch pad (which is about one third of the resting area in front of the keys and in the center, supporting multi-touch gestures). It also works as a cover for the tablet with potential kick-stand to use it at a desk (on a coach, bed or else you probably want to use it as tablet though from my experience).
- Two separate cameras (front and back) which work via V4L2 (a bit sluggish via Pipewire) and resolution as well as refresh rate is not bad (won't take amazing pictures but works for a video conference).
- There's an internal microphone which records a bit of background noise out of the box. But you can easily fix this with EasyEffects (if your Linux desktop is using Pipewire for audio - which it probably does by default). Just add the Noise Removal filter for your microphone and it's close to perfect in my opinion.
- The stereo speakers of the device are on bottom of the sides. They are okay for the most part (I wouldn't say good but keep in mind it's a rather thin device). Caveat I noticed is that I naturally cover the speakers with my hands when holding it using both hands.
- In case the speakers don't convince anyone... there's a headphone jack. Very nice!
- Active pen for digital drawing and taking notes (supports different pressure levels, no tilt detection - but you can replace the battery since it's using the AAAA standard).
- Suspension to save battery life during inactivity (or while put into your bag).
- Wifi and Bluetooth for wireless connection to network or other devices (you might run into some error/warning messages but it generally works - update firmware just to be sure).
- Coreboot BIOS support and officially provided firmware updates by the vendor (since many people are used to installing Linux on regular Windows machines, being cut off from a reliable firmware update cycle, I count this as feature).
- Also there is a micro-HDMI port and two USB-C ports. First of all it's awesome to have two fully usable ports (even supporting video-out). For micro-HDMI I don't have a cable yet (because none is included).
Support
- If you are using older kernels, you might need to apply a fix for the screen orientation to work as expected. StarLabs provides the required patch in their FAQ.
- In case you didn't order a keyboard or just don't have it around at times. There's a guide to navigate the BIOS without keyboard with volume and power buttons. So even if you need to access BIOS or you want to install some other distro, there's official support to do so which is great.
- If you recognice any issues with your device or its components behave weird, you can find an official Github repository for StarLabs ongoing work on its firmware. You can open issues over there or contribute to the discussion around potential workarounds (of course you can also just lurk through the issues to find potential workarounds or solutions to your issues).
- If you need to configure the coreboot BIOS, StarLabs provides a graphical user interface for that which can be installed on most Linux distributions following their guide.
- In case you want to switch or simply upgrade firmware, StarLabs supports using fwupd for that which can be utilized via a front-end like GNOME Firmware for example.
Issues
- In newer kernels there can be graphical glitches during rendering (it seems this has been caused by the simpledrm driver) while using a Wayland session. It's either possible to use an X11 session (which does not have gesture support usually - for example in GNOME) or to use an older kernel (I personally use the latest LTS kernel which works fine).
- Sometimes the touch pad from the keyboard registers the amount of contacts wrong and sticks with it. Detaching the keyboard once and reconnecting it, fixes it for the most part. (I assume this is an issue which needs to be fixed in firmware.)
- As far as I can tell both cameras are not one device with multiple sensors but two separate devices. However Pipewire can have trouble recognizing them properly which means applications relying on libportal might not have access to them. Older apps which utilize v4l2 directly can access both of them though. It seems like the issue is related to Wireplumber running on user level while my user wasn't added to the 'video' group that has access to the media and video devices (let's call this user error on my end).
- In some cases a graphical application failed to handle the HiDPI properly (I just use the 200% scaling from GNOME) and fonts were kind of blurry. I could workaround this by launching the same application through XWayland. (So maybe this is some weird Wayland issue for specific UI toolkits.) But most of my applications didn't have this issue.