Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> writes:

On 20/10/2025 00:13, Daniel wrote:

Has anyone here looked at, or purchased, a one up rpi laptop? I've
read a few reviews of it and, while it appears to be a solid product,
I'm a bit turned off by the cooling fan next to the heat sync. Is that
fan absolutely necessary for users never intending on overclocking the
cpu?

I have now received my Argon One Up and had the chance to play with it
a bit.

The CM5 has a thermal pad to connect it to the metal cover that acts
as a heatsink, but the cover doesn't get more than slightly warm in operation. The fan does not come on in normal use, but I should stress
that I haven't exactly thrashed the CPU -- I'm not overclocking and I
haven't tried any heavily compute-intensive tasks.

Is the fan removable?

The CM5 does not support a power-saving mode, so closing the lid can't
put it into a sleep state. When the lid is closed the display is
blanked and there is an option to power down after a few minutes
(default 5). That's not idea if you're used to carrying a laptop
around in sleep state for rapid restart (I'm not: I always power down
for security reasons, so it doesn't bother me).

All in all it's a well-made unit. The screen is nice (and bright) and
the keyboard is not awful. The touchpad is also not awful, I've used
better but I've also used much worse.

One gripe is that the SSD bay has screw holes for retaining an 2280,
2260, or 2242 M.2 SSD, but not 2230 (so guess which size I wanted to
fit). 2230 will work, but without a retaining screw it could work
loose.

I thought, at first, that my webcam was broken, but I discovered that
there is a (tiny) slider that puts it into "privacy mode"; with that
in the correct position it works nicely.

My previously new laptop (now my wife's) has that slider built in. On
previous laptops I would use the self adhesive plastic slider cam covers
that vendors give out at symposiums. Got a pile of them. I was delighted
to see laptops including them by design.

One quirk I haven't solved yet is that a USB mouse is recognized and
works correctly if plugged in after booting, but if it is connected
before startup it is not recognized. I have also not yet managed to
boot from an SD card (USB stick is fine) but I have only tried one
card and there may be an issue with its contents. Reading/writing the
SD card after booting from SSD works fine.

I'm not sure that the One Up is very good value with the current crazy
prices for Raspberry Pi kit with high RAM capacity and for SSDs (it
was good at the kickstarter price) ... but I suppose other laptops
will suffer similar price-hikes, too.

Pi500+ is $260 now. I don't dare look at what the one-up cost is.

Daniel
sysop | air & wave bbs
finger | calcmandan@bbs.erb.pw

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 17/02/2026 23:02, Daniel wrote:

Is the fan removable?

Probably ... Jeff Geerling has done a fairly good review that includes a
photo of the One Up with the bottom half of the case removed. It looks
as though the fan should be removable ... or at least you could cut the
wires.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/the-first-good-raspberry-pi-laptop/

He doesn't specifically mention removing the fan.

I thought, at first, that my webcam was broken, but I discovered that
there is a (tiny) slider that puts it into "privacy mode"; with that
in the correct position it works nicely.

My previously new laptop (now my wife's) has that slider built in. On previous laptops I would use the self adhesive plastic slider cam covers
that vendors give out at symposiums. Got a pile of them. I was delighted
to see laptops including them by design.

There is a small white LED to the right of the camera that warns you
that it is on. The LED comes on even when the shutter is closed, which
led me to think the camera ought to be working, even though the shutter
meant there was no image.

It would be really nice if that LED changed colour -- say red when the
shutter is closed and green when it is open (and off when the camera is
off, of course).

Pi500+ is $260 now. I don't dare look at what the one-up cost is.

The 500+ is œ228 (including 20% VAT) here. The CM5 (no flash, 8GB RAM,
With WiFi, as in my One Up) is œ108.

The cost of the One Up shell (without the CM5 or SSD) should not be
affected much by the current silly memory prices. It isn't in stock
anywhere that I can see, though.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)