HP Dev One Laptop Review

[MurphCID]

https://hpdevone.com/
For those who have not heard about this device. I purchased this device last Sunday, and it arrived Tuesday. As soon as I got home from work, I installed the proper stickers on it (makes it faster....), booted and BOOM! I was in POP!_OS and everything worked. I mean everything. So what does this laptop have: well it comes with a Ryzen Pro 5850U 8 core 16 thread processor, 16 gigabytes of ram (upgradeable to 64 gb), and a 1 terabyte NVME drive (replaceable with a 2 or 4 tb drive). It has two USB-C ports (non-Thunderbolt), two USB-A ports, and an HDMI port. Screen is a 1080p panel at 1000 nits of brightness (almost too bright). 53 W/Hr battery (less than the 73 w/hr of the Lemur Pro, but more than the 49 w/hr of the Galago Pro). Body is all metal, and somewhat heavy, with excellent build quality. Keyboard is nice with the little trackpoint device on the keyboard (I am less than fond of this). It is absolutely an HP product, and I think it is based on their elitebook laptops. Price was excellent at $1099.00, pricing a similar elitebook on the HP website, ran around $2,800.00 for the same specifications. Wifi is a REALTEK RTL8822CE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® 5 combo.

In use: Keyboard is wonderful, nice clean tactile feel. Trackpad is smooth glass, with two keys for right and left click above the track pad. I am not sure about this placement. Pop OS booted and ran just great. It was still GNOME, but it ran. Wifi connected right off the bat, with no issues. WiFi 6 and BT 5 out of the box. I attached a Logitech M-317 mouse and it works fine. Very responsive, and lots of power. At resting state with just a terminal and HTOP open, it used 1.78 gb out of 15 shown, a bit bloated. All 16 threads were shown as cores in HTOP. Web cam is a typical laptop potato webcam, nothing special. But it works with Zoom.

I got a wild hair up as I was waiting for the plumber and water remediation people to get to the house to dry up the flood from the water leak, so I decided to try Mint 20.3 on the device. During boot there were some error messages passed on the screen. However Mint 20.3 booted into live mode, and things went well from there. Wifi worked, screen resolution was good, and I did not find anything that was not working. So I went ahead and installed Mint 20.3 in place of POP!_OS. Installation went smoothly, no issues. Still get some odd error messages before boot, but there does not seem to be any problems at this time. Booted into Mint 20.3 and in less than 30 minutes had all my software installed, my theme activated, icons placed, Chrome, HTOP VLC, TLP, Libreoffice 7.3, Microsoft fonts, Abiword, and other software installed, configured, and ready to go.

HTOP shows 875/900 mb of RAM out of 15 showing, less than half of GNOME at a resting state with just terminal and HTOP open. Battery life with TLP enabled is bouncing between 5-6 hours. So far battery life seems reasonable for a non Lemur Pro type device. Keyboard after using it to type emails to people and google reviews of the plumber is better than that on the Lemur Pro. It is certainly heavier than the Lemur, with a much stronger build quality. I DO NOT do the one fingered lid opening thing because I do not care. Hinges are stiff, and solid. This is absolutely a premium laptop, of a build class that normally I could not even thing of affording. Weight is closer to my 15.6" Darter Pro unit, it is fairly solid at 3.24 lbs.

Software comes up quickly as one might expect from a 8 core monster. I have not experienced any software issues yet, and I have been playing with various packages which are installed. I have been dropping Flatpak software over some of the regular repository offerings due to it being a newer machine, and I want new Office suites. I installed the OEM kernel using sudo apt install ubuntu-oem-20.04d. It did, and then it showed that the 5.15 kernel was available, so I immediately updated to this kernel. The slow shutdown issues seems to have gone away with this kernel. Rock solid and stable. So I updated all my laptops to this kernel yesterday evening. So Neofetch shows kernel 5.15-33 as the running kernel.

I used it a lot yesterday while the remediation company was cutting holes in the ceiling and walls to remove soaked insulation, and get the fans and dehumidifiers running. The thing is comfortable to use, no glitches, Zoom works under Mint 20.3, audio is good, not MacBook Pro level of good, but not terrible. I found that the USB-A ports are hard to insert a drive they appear "stiff" and it takes some force to insert a USB drive into the device. The USB C ports take my Samsung T7 external drive with no issue. I have not tried the HDMI port as of this moment. One USB-A port has the dongle for the Logitech mouse installed in it. This leaves me one USB-A port. I have become much more happy with USB-C lately and approve of that standard.

Monitor is bright, really bright, I have had to drop the brightness to 21% to make it workable at the house. This has the added benefit of increasing battery life. I also was able to easily connect to my external JBL speaker with the bluetooth, and it works fine. The Realtek Wifi works fine under MInt 20.3 with no known issues as of right now. So things are pretty nice with this unit. All in all I am pleased with the purchase, and suspect I will like this one more than the Galago Pro that I was going to purchase. The Galago would have had an i5 processor, 16 gb of ram, and a 500 gb NVME for more money than the HP Dev One cost me. It would have also had a 49 w/hr battery, but it would have had an ethernet port. But since this laptop will reside out of reach of any possible ethernet connection (downstairs), the lack of an ethernet port is moot.

So that is my review of the HP Dev One laptop. In my opinion a worthy Linux road warrior laptop that is well worth the price. Truthfully more powerful than I am likely to use.

Mods, if this transgressed, feel free to delete.

[BwingBob]

I got a wild hair up as I was waiting for the plumber and water remediation people to get to the house to dry up the flood from the water leak, so I decided to try Mint 20.3 on the device.

I personally like seeing reviews of machines that function properly with Linux Mint. When I am considering a new machine, one of the first things I do is search the internet for reviews of the hardware with Linux installed, so thanks.

I feel your pain on the water remediation, we had a hot water heater bust while we were on vacation a few years back. I am not really sure who's bright idea it was to put hot water heaters in the attic, but they should be flogged.

Bob

[kc1di]

Thanks for the review MurphCID, enjoyed it and it's helpful when considering new machine here.

[SMG]

Trackpad is smooth glass, with two keys for right and left click above the track pad. I am not sure about this placement.

That is the normal location of those keys for use with the trackpoint.

[Marie SWE]

Hi
It sounds as a really nice laptop and powerful, and thanks for the review. I like metal casings as they feels more like high quality lapops.
Sad to hear about the water leak, I hope it resolves quickly and as painlessly as possible.

[MurphCID]

First real internet review on this laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF63-jT9_ZQ

[antikythera]

Did you use the Edge ISO or the normal 20.3? Anyway nice system

[Lady Fitzgerald]

First real internet review on this laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF63-jT9_ZQ

You beat me to it.

[farkas]

No ethernet port! That would almost put it out consideration for me. How do you fix wifi problems if it doesn't work OOTB or develops problems later on?

[BwingBob]

First real internet review on this laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF63-jT9_ZQ

Looks like a great machine, I think he likes it.

[MurphCID]

No ethernet port! That would almost put it out consideration for me. How do you fix wifi problems if it doesn't work OOTB or develops problems later on?

USB-C to ethernet dongle. It works I tried it. i keep a USB-C to ethernet dongle in my messenger bag just in case. As for the WiFi it worked OOTB with NO issues at all. Solid, just solid. As Jay at Learn Linux TV said, this is the best keyboard I have ever used on a laptop. It has just superb tactile feel, and makes typing much better than many keyboards. It feels better than either the System 76 or the old MacBook Pro keyboard.

This laptop is good enough that it will most likely replace the Lemur Pro as my "road warrior" machine, and I thought that would never happen.

[MurphCID]

Did you use the Edge ISO or the normal 20.3? Anyway nice system

I use the regular, then sudo apt install Ubuntu-OEM-20.04d kernel. This updated the kernel to 5.14 and then 5.15 showed up and I installed that. Works beautifully.

[antikythera]

Oh nice, I have a laptop with a Ryzen 5800h in which shares a lot of die components with your 5850U but haven't tried Linux on it yet, that is why I asked what you managed to boot yours with to proceed with the install. Mine is a 2021 Legion 7 16ACHg6 to which I have recently added 32GB dual rank DDR4-3200 and 2x1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme drives. It's got switchable graphics which potentially may be the only stumbling block, the integrated radeon of course and an RTX3060 (but with signed modules coming that will help). The wireless and bluetooth 5.1 adapter is a Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (Intel AX200) which I know will work fine as I have one in a desktop and have tested that with live ISO.

So now I'm tempted to try my laptop out with kernel 5.15 minimum too so I'll wait for Mint 21/21 Edge. I'd expect a beta for that to be out shortly

[MurphCID]

If I was going to keep GNOME and POP!_OS on this laptop, I would user update this laptop to at least 32 gb since GNOME is so bloated and is such a memory hog. 16 gb (15 usable) is not enough for GNOME. I am loving this thing, and do not regret the purchase at all. I do not get the 12 hour battery life that has been claimed, I am not sure how they do that. I get 5-6 hours. Which is a pretty decent amount. I have been using this thing a lot since I have gotten it. It does charge to 50% fast (30 minutes or so). I agree with Jay, if you want a powerful 14" notebook, there is really no other choice at this point, the price is astonishing for what you get.

For ethernet use, do not forget your USB-C dongle!

[MurphCID]

A little update to the review. Placement of the power button; The power on button is placed on the top rank of keys between the print screen and delete key on the function key row. My spouse-Unit has issues with hitting the power button as she attempts to use delete. I have not had that sort of an issue, but it IS an awkward HP decision to place the key there. As is common with most small notebook computers of this size the up-down-left-right keys are small, but over all well designed and easy to use. Trackpad is amazing, good feel, and good click both right and left. I did have to place a sticker on the lower left side of the keyboard deck since my watchband keeps scraping the edge and deck as I type. It is a function of how I type on the keyboard.

Power usage is not the 12 hours claimed, please let me know if you have any methods of increasing beyond the actual 5-6 hours of use I get. I have brightness turned down to about 15% at this point which works well at the house. TLP is enabled. Memory usage is good, although I have found after I close Chrome, sometimes I have ram that seems still being used by Chrome (or some other program). I am really pleased over all and have a hard time finding anything to complain about. I have been using this laptop pretty much since it arrived and I will give it a couple of more weeks of work. I had to use the Lemur Pro yesterday at a coffee shop, it was feeling lonely since I had been cheating on it....

That is all for now.

[Marie SWE]

Hi
I think this one is better than TLP. I use it on my old laptop, but as that battery is 8years old the time doesn't say much, but I get just under 4hour on a 8year old Asus battery

https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq

Quote from the Github page:

Why do I need auto-cpufreq?

One of the problems with Linux today on laptops is that CPU will run in unoptimized manner which will negatively reflect on battery life. For example, CPU will run using "performance" governor with turbo boost enabled regardless if it's plugged in to power or not.

Issue can be mitigated by using tools like indicator-cpufreq or cpufreq, but these still require manual action from your side which can be daunting and cumbersome.

Using tools like TLP can help in this situation with extending battery life (which is something I used to do for numerous years), but it also might come with its own set of problems, like losing turbo boost.

With that said, I needed a simple tool which would automatically make "cpufreq" related changes, save battery like TLP, but let Linux kernel do most of the heavy lifting. That's how auto-cpufreq was born.

Please note: auto-cpufreq aims to replace TLP in terms of functionality and after you install auto-cpufreq it's recommended to remove TLP. If both are used for same functionality, i.e: to set CPU frequencies it'll lead to unwanted results like overheating. Hence, only use both tools in tandem if you know what you're doing.

Tool/daemon that does not conflict with auto-cpufreq in any way and is even recommended to have running alongside is thermald.

[Portreve]

I feel your pain on the water remediation, we had a hot water heater bust while we were on vacation a few years back. I am not really sure who's bright idea it was to put hot water heaters in the attic, but they should be flogged.

The high school I went to opened its doors in 1981. It had been thought about since the mid-to-late 1970s, which is when it had been designed, with groundbreaking in 1979. And, for those here who don't get the significance, that means my high school had been designed during the height of the "70s Energy Crisis" thing.

In the gym and a couple other areas, they ran the hot water plumbing directly above the various light fixtures, the idea being to reclaim some of the heat being generated (and lost) by them.

Then one day while I was attending that school (ca. 1989) one of the pipes had given way in the gym, and promptly turned the entire area into a death trap.

And you know d***ed well they never bothered to mitigate this potential hazard in the original design.

Oh, and btw, all the schools down here where I live had to be gutted about 10 years ago or so and have their air handling systems redesigned because of severe problems with mold issues. Now, periodically the airflow system gets opened up to the outside environment and draws in fresh air.

[MurphCID]

So far reviews have been really impressive. In actual use this thing really is nice. Battery life could be longer, but it is not terrible. I have just charged it for the second time. Mint is amazing on this device, and the 5.15 kernel makes shutdowns very fast. I think part of the slower shutdowns on the System 76 systems could be and seems to be linked to the Coreboot firmware. The laptop is rapidly becoming my favorite device. I have now added some LINUX stickers to it which adds a small quantum increase of speed. Gardiner Bryant apparently has a review of this device out and like the other two is raving about how good this laptop actually is in practice.

If you can afford one, and need a Linux laptop, this is the device for you, and you should get one as soon as you can.

I RETIRE IN A WEEK! I have four and a half days of work left before I am gone. I have to be in court in another county next week, but then I am GONE, GONE, GONE!!!! Then I might learn more Linux things, or Python, or something.

[MurphCID]

Holy mackerel! The speakers are the best outside of a Mac I have ever heard! This thing has amazing sound. Webcam is a potato, but it is what it is. Could this be my new road warrior laptop?

[SMG]

Webcam is a potato

What does this mean?