Les Pounder finds a fun, if flawed, tiny laptop that caters to RISC-V fans.
L ooking like a ThinkPad that has been shrunk [a ShrinkPad? – ed], this little laptop isn’t a netbook but a RISC-V development platform. Inside is a RISC-V-powered SoM (system on module) SO-DIMM board connected to a carrier board. The SoM is a LicheePi 4A, similar to earlier Raspberry Pi Compute Modules. The SoM has the RISC-V CPU, RAM and eMMC storage baked in. Accessing the GPIO, HDMI and Ethernet ports requires a carrier board, in this case the laptop’s mainboard. Under the hood is a 1.5GHz quad-core RISC-V CPU and our review unit came with 16GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage.
The red pointing stick is clearly aping the TrackPoint found on many ThinkPad machines. The Lichee is small, 180x140x20mm, but it feels tough enough to throw in a bag as we move around the world. There is a USB port on the right side, next to a headphone jack.
The screen is a pleasant 7-inch LCD touchscreen, with a 2MP camera on the left bezel. The screen looks like a Google Nexus 7 2013 has been grafted on to a keyboard, and on boot we can see the boot sequence rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise. When we get to the desktop, though, normal orientation is resumed. The aluminium alloy back is strong but we advise you to open the screen at the centre and not on a corner.
Watch this space
It all feels a little cramped and while the pointer works, it’s stiff and no amount of tweaking fixed its slow vertical tracking. The keyboard is a compromise, with just 72 keys and a split spacebar. How many times did we hit the pointer when we wanted the spacebar? Lots. Our unit came with Debian 12 and after setting up Wi-Fi and connecting to our router, we updated the OS to the latest packages. The 16GB of RAM and 1.5GHz quad-core RISC-V CPU provided a smooth experience.
To write a new OS image to the SoM, we need to set up our machine running Linux and prepare the Lichee for flashing. Problem is, we can’t access the internal hardware and the carrier board has a button we need to hold in order to enter boot mode. Pesky soft metal screws prevented us from taking the case off.
Booting in 46.9 seconds isn’t great but this isn’t a device built for blistering boot speed, rather for RISC
