COME SEE ME LIVE! The day after WWDC I'll be hosting Genius Bar Goes Drk with Noah Sam and Jon- think of it like an aftershow to discuss Apple's latest announcements and hang with other Apple fans. With Apple launching FCP and Logic on iPad ahead of time I can only imagine what's going to be announced in a few weeks... geniusbargoesdrk.com
The fact that that $50 Windows Celeron computer got a similar cinebench score to my 2020 i3 Macbook Air is honestly pretty surprising and disappointing at the same time
I bought a used Celeron n3060 laptop from 2016 and I rly regret it. I wanna sell it again to get my money back but honestly it’s hard to not just take it and throw it on the ground. And least she can play Lego games and GTA SA lol
@@mustasheolll2020celeron laptops nowadays are not that bad, but, you can get better things if you spend just a bit more, i got a windows surface laptop go (10th gen i5) for 250 brand new, the only bad thing is it has only 4gb of ram
I have found that most of the hardware you find like this is suited for "single task" type operations. I have a friend that uses a similar model as a base to monitor his IP cams around his property. I have heard another person talk about using one as a monitor for his boost settings in his car. For these, they are a much better fit than even a free macbook. It really boils down to the right tool for the job.
This model is pretty popular in the HAM community for portable setups because you can run it directly off a 12v power source. I wouldn't want one as a daily driver but for certain missions it's a good fit at a reasonable price.
I think for 50 Money that’s a very good deal. It’s about the same price as a Raspberry Pi, but has probably a bit more performance, a SSD, keyboard, mouse, display and speakers already included? That’s cheap as hell! Perfect for little home projects and if you installed some form of Linux on it it would also be faster than running on windows.
not to mention that for better or worse it's x86. so you could put an x86 linux distro on it and run basically anything that linux can run. not so on the Pi which is ARM, which in the Windows-Linux space hasn't really taken off yet.
This is exactly why I’ve turned my whole family onto buying computers from our local e-waste recycler instead of a big box store like Best Buy. My grandma will go there and get a “new” computer that’s a year or two old for a good deal, and she’ll turn in her old devices, and the people working are always willing to help her with any software or hardware issues. And if she has issues they’ll normally give her a better computer than the one she bought. I love that its a chance to support local & cut down on e-waste.
my family now exclusively buys dell latitude E-series off lease laptops from 3+ generations ago for next to nothing with everythign they could ever need....its lovely and theyre rock fucking solid
Ever since I got a decommissioned Old DELL which was in a Business setting. It had an Old 3rd gen I5 and I Never had issues. My GF gave me a LOCKED lenovo that someone BIOS unlocked on EBAy. Eitherway I only got 4gb more ram and a 7th GEN CPU if I WERE to look for a similar laptop with gateway.... it would have cost $350+ and Soldered crap vs upgradeability... But at this point my next laptop is a framework XD
We don't have such an option in my area but I buy HP off lease SFF desktop computers off of Amazon or eBay, they may be five or six years old but they still run circles around a new computer selling for a similar price. If I get 4-5 years out of them I am happy. I know how to reinstall OSes, install Linux, replace RAM and HDDs, etc. but most of the time if I am doing that it is for an upgrade and not to repair something.
I have one of these for my ham radio use. The wifi radio on mine is hot unreliable garbage but I can run it directly from my 12v lithium iron phosphate radio batteries.
To add ot this, the 12v charging is the primary reason a lot of us amateur radio operators bought these things, we don't need an inverter, we can cut the cord and crimp on some powerpole connectors and hook it right up to our batteries. You can't do that with most laptops. Also, sure we could buy a more expensive device, but with the frequent Macbook mention... sadly most amateur radio software just doesn't have any sort of Mac options.
@@RyanMercer I have zero experience with ham radio myself and I use a Mac, but I'm curious if you don't mind; what are some of the most commonly used/preferred software packages for amateur radio and what are they responsible for in particular?
As a ham, radio operator, I got interested in this laptop through Ham Radio crash course, UA-cam channel I haven’t found one other than Micro Center but they’re out of stock to deliver it to pick up on when the closest one to me is two hours away so if there’s anyone that has an Amazon link, let me know
I work a PT weekend job as a vendor in a Best Buy store (I don't work for Best Buy). I see stuff come through there for recycling all the time that is perfectly serviceable. I've spoken to customers who are not technically savvy that just buy a new laptop every 2 years because "my computer gets slow." Some of them can't believe that I am using a 2015 Macbook Pro as my primary machine and that I also have a laptop from 2013 that I use regularly.
I got sick to my stomach last weekend... Someone brought in an LG C1 OLED to recycle. It was a 48", and nothing was wrong with it. They were moving and didn't want to take it with them. Of course, once they paid that recycle fee (yes paid $40) it was Best Buy property. If I had known what he was brining in I would have bought it off of him!
Hi Luke. I have to agree that e-waste companies are overwhelmed with decommissioned business laptops and computers. All perfectly working fine with some work, they can easily be turned around to help the low to low-middle income families. I've been trying to do just that for years but the e-waste companies ends up trying to price gouge people like me. As for this hunk of plastic e-waste, maybe this can be used for alternative operating system deployment. Like Ubuntu, Linux Mint or even Android. I've also been exploring this type of alternative OS for older systems.
4K is overkill, I don't have any 4K monitors or televisions in my house. Even using the 32 inch TV that I use as a computer monitor I usually play video at 360 or 480p. Theoretically I have the bandwidth to play 4K no problem but it is so much overkill that I don't see the wisdom in wasting bandwidth to play at that resolution.
@@mharris50474K is now what I would consider industry standard. Phones have recorded it since 2016 and our living room tv from around 2017 is 4k. Plus every modern smartphones screen is beyond 1080p at this point.
The trick to getting a laptop like this to run smooth is either to install a lightweight Linux build like AntiX, or Tiny10 (a stripped-down version of Windows 10)...for educational and demonstration purposes of course. 😎
I got one of these sometime last year and the thing that makes it worth it to me is the out-of-the-box LTE connectivity! And if you export the current install's drivers to USB, format and install a debloated copy of Windows, and reinstall the drivers... it's actually a capable computer for basic tasks!
There's no distinction to be made between that and ANY modern macbook. Remember how the 64gb of flash storage is soldered on the board and can't be upgraded or replaced ? Yes just as the NAND flash chips are soldered to macbook logic boards. Any modern will apple device be e-waste as well once the storage hits its maximum write cycles. A few weeks ago the NVME SSD in my laptop suddenly died and refused to boot. It was a simple matter of replacing it and my laptop is back in working order. If I had a macbook it would have magically transformed into a paper weight...
That reminds me on my M1-Air that I bought like 2 years ago, and which broke down after about a year. Now sitting on a shelf collecting dust, because a repair (flickering screen) would cost almost as much as buying a new one. So, it's also just e-waste, but way more expensive e-waste.
I can't find it anywhere lower than $110. I would pay $47 for this as my son really really really wants a laptop. I would be okay with getting him something cheap like this.
@@leonidas14775 screw chromebooks, yeah they're cheap but they're cheap for a reason, I'd rather spend $20-30 more to not have chromeos, it is so extremely limited.
I have a $150 N4020 4GB chromebook. More or less the same piece of “e-waste”. I’ve used it for 2.5 years. I take it when I travel. I still have 4 more years of ChromeOS support. I also run Linux Mint XFCE on it. It gets the job done for a cheap travel laptop that I don’t mind breaking, losing, or getting stolen. For $50 an N3350 running lightweight Linux is usable for many simple things. Yeah my phone is more powerful but sometimes it’s nice to have a bigger screen and a keyboard and mouse. Even with a slower device, having proper inputs makes it more productive.
Agree - avoid e-waste. Buy an old MacBook. For $100 you’ll get something 4X as good and it’ll last 14X Longer. I still have a 2008 Unibody 15” MacBook Pro and a 2011 11” MacBook Air that both work perfectly for web browsing and video watching! I’ve kept them all these years just for nostalgia or in case I want to loan them or gift them. I did put an SSD into the 2008 and have replaced the battery (it has the easy open latch on bottom). My current machines are 2015 15” MacBook Pro with 2TB SSD split 50/50 MacOS and Win10 via Bootcamp and a 13” M1 MacBook Pro that I bought over a year ago mint used for $900 with 500GB drive.
Hey I have a 13” 2015 MacBook Pro, what type of ssd did you install on your system could you tell me ur specs and if you had any problems? I am thinking about doing the storage upgrade
@@bobbob-gi1yp OWC AURA PRO x2 2TB. Works perfectly for MacOS AND BOOTCAMP Win10 except mine is several years old and firmware won’t upgrade for latest MacOS upgrade. Contact OWC as I think their newest versions do have the firmware upgrade. OWC are a class act and in my experience better than nvME adapters.
@@keithconner6495 no but thanks for the compliment. I work as a diagnostic radiologist (MD) and having a machine that’ll do what a Mac can do so well and also connect to the windows stuff I can’t escape for healthcare is invaluable to me. Why I built it this way and the 2015 was the best of the pre Apple Silicone Macs. M1, M2, etc. as you know won’t do BootCamp and for medical imaging (PACS and RIS and specialized MG and MRI viewers) parallels is unworkable.
@@Mvendrel sweet that’s cool, is there any annoying pop ups about the ssd being installed for macOS? I’m updated to the lasted version hopefully it will transfer perfectly to the other hard drive
Really good point about the recycling. So many good computers going to the landfill because they’re not worth selling and people not wanting used stuff.
Its where the value lies in machines like this for me. i have a chromebook i got for a whopping $32 shipped to my house with a battery that lasts almost 9 hours on a charge, and if the battery was new it would last over 12 hours
I have one very similar to this, the battery life is arround 14 hours, I play a very old game from 2006 called Silkroad Online, it runs smooth and I get 8 hours of battery life.
I just got $40 for a Dell E6420 that wasn’t turning on. Overheating but just the laptop bag and mouse I included cost me $50’so was a good deal. Thing was like 13 years old when I sold finally and got an m1 MacBook Air. I love it.
I fully agree. Exactly who or what regs in the UK stop us getting our hands on these rejected replace Macs? We should start a campaign to get this sorted out ! Who's with me ? - with Luke really, but he is in the US, I'm in the UK.
Honestly seeing it stream a full fat 4k video without a hitch, it’s not half bad. Power consumption should be waayy lower than an old 2009 MacBook Pro, with no fan noise and/or excessive heat. I’m not saying it’s a great buy but I can see the slightest bit of appeal it has.
There are two version of this laptop. This is the second version. The first version is LTE ready, in which you can swap the LTE card with SSD, which I did for my little sister. You can still find the m.2 tracing on the motherboard in version. Both of them are priced exactly same, which does not make sense lol.
I have the same problem, I buy and sell a lot of hardware as hobby, but some people tells me they do prefer to get a cheap plastic NEW laptop instead for example an old Gaming monster such as Alienware or Asus ROG, at the same price (I am from Mexico and live in Mexico) those kind of laptops here cost like $300 USD or so, so I put mine in those prices
El problema es que por lo menos el mercado de segunda mano en países de latinoamerica tienden a ser feo porque te venden laptops super jodidas a precio de seminuevo...
@@kevinsantos2894 si, en mi caso veo muchos así, evidentemente hay cosas malas y cosas buenas, pero por ejemplo una persona que no tiene mucho dinero ir a comprar una laptop de $300 USD de estas desechables en lugar de una workstarion Dell/HP o bien una laptop de gama alta de años atras (funcional todo) prefieren ir por esas fanless sin potencia por ser nuevas
I got a cheap little Coda netbook for £90. Came with windows 10 which struggled and took ages to run probably because of all the bloatware fitted. In the end I installed Lubuntu and it runs quite well in basic tasks such as web browsing and emails which is what I want it for - to take on holiday or away to events
@@floydlooney6837 I considered buying one of those netbooks but my computer guy at the time talked me out of it because they were pieces of shit with only esoteric use cases making them worth dealing with. My mother showed up one day in 2011 with an eMachines E525 with the Celeron 900 CPU that she bought on clearance from Wally World. She used it lightly and when she died I inherited it. I still have it today, I had to replace the RAM and put an SSD in it and I installed Xubuntu on it, it takes a few minutes to boot but for videos and web surfing it actually works OK. I prefer my newer laptop but this one works fine as a jukebox, watching a movie or basic web use.
I have a similar little dell laptop I got a couple of years ago for $57 open box. It’s a good value if you only want it to do one thing, but it’s absolutely useless as a daily driver. The idea of calling these machines “education notebooks” is honestly kinda scummy because some parent who doesn’t know better is gonna think this is a good deal on a genuine laptop.
Why would you run Cinebench on this laptop and then complain when it doesn’t work?! It’s not designed for that, of course it’s not going to work. This is designed to be a laptop that you can provide to children of low income poverty line families so that they can have a laptop and take notes in class and do their homework on it, nothing more nothing less.
The reason I can think of to consider for this is probably just low power draw and use, but that's it overall. They're pretty cute though, somewhat reminded about netbooks. My curiosity has me wonder sometimes how a take on a tiny modern Athlon GE laptop would fare as a very, very low power unit if such existed.
We hams loved these when they were discovered because you can input 12v and they not only charge but run, so we can hook them directly up to our 12v radio batteries in the field.
I'm with you. I work at a large school district and we recycle older good technology all the time. I manged to snag a 10 year old MacBook air for a $1 in an auction we had. The only issue it had was 6 of the corners were bent from it being dropped several times by a staff member. For some reason no one else bid on it. So I put in for a $1 and it was mine!. I used a microfiber towel and a few different sizes of pliers to bent all the corners back as good as I could get them. Then wiped the drive, used OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install MacOS 13 and soon to be 14 and had a completely usable, updated MacBook. I took it on vacation as our internet resource in our hotel room. It was a life saver to look at places to go, book stuff etc. I also backed all our pictures too took up to it and then the backed them up online. Now I used it on my kitchen for online recipes. All that for $1!!!!
@9:54 its obviously thermo throttling. Honestly, this computer was never meant to be used as intensively as you are trying to use it. That Cinebench test is a stress test for most computers, let alone one for $50. The fact that it even ran that 3d scene creation at all is wonder. A stress test of this kind will take CPU temps to their max, it may even test the thermal paste or the Mosfats regulating the maximum power draw. None of this should be a surprise for an experienced product reviewer. As for the CPU, its a 4-core, 4-thread CPU from 2016 - Celeron N3450 which can boost to 2.2 ghz with HD500 spec Graphics. eg better than the old Macs you compared it to on ebay. The key reason for this CPU is its extremely low TDW at 6w. It basically uses negligible power. By comparison, most laptops are 45- 65w. In other words not only is it cheap it also saves on energy. E = Eco. This would be perfect for someone on solar. Btw should you have run the tests before taking it apart?
This has a quadcore celeron chip, quite good really. My mum bought (for £150!!) an asus laptop with a dual core celeron processor in 2019. It's a lovely machine but almost all tasks make it 100% CPU usage. Web browsing is possible but a struggle. Its such a shame as the rest of the laptop is quite nice.. perhaps the quadcore intel version would be better.
Basically, if you can upgrade the logic board, toss out the crappy emmc card that runs slow as molasses and replace it with a solid state drive with a decent amount of storage, the Celeron 3450:is more than capable of running basic tasks well. Its the inferior hardware that’s saddled it that’s given it a bad reputation. I’m sure if Luke can find reasonably priced upgrade parts, he’ll find out its going to do all that he wants to do on it.
I bought a cheap Windows 11 laptop simply out of curiosity. It's not terribly efficient but I would surmise that some people can't afford a $1000+ MacBook, so this is their next best thing. They're probably not computer literate and don't understand the finer points of how processors work, they just want something that they can use for email and web browsing. It's a shame that this laptop isn't storage and RAM upgradable because I always found upgrading computers fun and if it makes it faster, all the better. You can also argue that Apple slows down their Macs with every OS upgrade, so you only get six years of use.
you didn't really speak about what was wrong with the laptop before you classified it ewaste, apart from the cinebench score, a keyboard with low travel and a trackpad that had a strange material. I don't really think that's fair. This seems fine as a laptop for students. You talk about the 14 year Macbook Pro having lived for 14 years. Fair enough. It also cost probably 20-40x as much. For a school supplying students, or a parent buying a cheap first laptop (with the knowledge that a child is likely to break a laptop anyway), something like this seems perfect. Yes, it's also a shame we can't all dumpster dive for old landfilled laptops, but that's not a mark against this laptop. The alternative to this laptop is not all of these good but old laptops going back into supply. It's no laptops at this price point at all.
Fully agree with your conclusion. That said, if they had made it 99 bucks and gave it a 128gb ssd and 8gb of ram it would actually age much more gracefully when used for a light workload. This is just a cheap tablet with a keyboard and trackpad running windows.
14:14 If you are not techsavy enough to be able to upgrade or repair a laptop buying a cheap new one gives you at least a time limited guarantee. That’s worth something.
UR right we have to consider Ewaste and how we can correct and recycle and make a resale market that has well service refurbished machine to use for the sale to people whom don't have the skill or time to do it but want to be a buyer....
the HAM radio community have embraced this laptop for digital portable operations with the help of channels like Ham Radio Crash Course because its cheap. light, charges off 12v (just like ham radio gear) and has USB output for radio control and external sound card options.
If you are of extreme limited means but needed a computer for basic Google Docs work, email and web browsing, this sounds like a great option. Or if you needed something for your kid (knowing they’re going to trash it). Would I personally buy one? No. But then again, I’m not the target market.
I just recently snagged a dell latitude 7490 used for $56 & it just had a bad stick of ram & the seller just didn't care to fix so i slapped 16gb of ram & a 500gb m.2 that i had laying around with a fresh linux install & this thing is crazy value with a 8th gen core i7 so if you look around enough you can find a crazy deal.
if anyone wants a similar, but capable machine, the ASUS VivoBook L203MA is solid. ive used one for 2+ years for writing code on the fly while traveling in visual studio. not fast but totally useable. battery life is insane, 12+ hours. super light. $180.
I got a MacBook Air 11 inch 2013 with 8 GB and 500 GB SSD for 50 used. It ran OS X Mountain Lion, could not open HTTPS pages (mostly it was sold because of not being able to open such pages) and I installed Big Sur using the internet recovery and then installed MacOS Ventura 13.7 using Open Core Legacy Patcher. It runs very well on Ventura and for 50 it was a steal.
The big problem with that device is basically its EMMC storage. That Celeron N3450 is capable of surfing the web, loading and playing UA-cam videos, using Office suites without any issues. I have a mini PC with the Celeron N3160 which is almost the same as the one in the video, but my device has a Sandisk Ultra II 480GB Sata 3 storage unit, and its performance is completely diferent to EMMC.
I'm from Germany and like your videos But in Germany, we don't even have enough laptops for everyone in school. And still have laptops from the last century We sie thins like ( polilux) or Overhead projector
The mainboard, and inside layout and specifications is likely similar to Axioo Mybook laptops in Indonesia. And they sell it for minimum price of US$ 133 here in Indonesia, and made quite high number of buyers here. But then lots of trouble afterwards. It's amazing how it continue sold up until now here, with minimum price of almost 300% of US$47.
I have one of these exact machines that was new ($80 at Microcenter after a discount from $99 new). Windows was worthless as an OS on the machine. It ran in S mode (or whatever MS is calling it this week) but is was slow. I have used it as a Linux platform to test distros and work on my Linux admin skills. I have loaded and run several different Linux distros on it (Ubuntu, Kali, Vanilla Debian, Pop_OS!, AlmaLinux, Rocky, and Proxmox). All of them ran better than Windows. I have Kali running on it now to use as a learning platform for the Kali tools. Is it the best possible choice? Probably not. Is it a great laptop? Nope. Is a cheap "modern" machine that if I brick it playing in Linux I'll be mad about? Absolutely. Could it be an alternative to a cheap Chromebook for kids to destroy if you need a cheap laptop? Absolutely. Just be aware of what it might do and what it definitely won't do. Yes, it's future e-waste. So are most of the laptops available. Will it still work in 10 years? Nope, just like most laptops available. Macs are an exception and hopefully M-series Macs will last even longer. However, people who just need a stop-gap machine that works, then this isn't the worst choice. Good review of something that most people don't know exists. Thanks Luke!
13:45 The issue with this is that not all eWaste places will give these away(even without a HD) or even sell them. They "recycle" them i.e. give them to a vendor who will just 1. throw them away 2. send them to Africa to be dumped there 3. send them to China to be dumped there. It's a MAJOR issue here and it's literally a WASTE and it needs to change. I was able to go to a eWaste place and get some computers there...once. I took them home, refurbished, cleaned them and was able to give them(free) to people who needed them. Went back 4 months later and they were all no no no no nope nope get out, we don't do that , our vendors pay us to recycle to them, you'll get in trouble if we give/sell you one. Yeah it's bad
The storage kills these laptops. 64 gb of storage is not enough for Windows 10 and you'll run into issues with updates. You do get variants of these with hdd in that empty space, but I've never seen one with an m.2 slot. The strange noises are normal...
Honestly, I'm typing this reply on a silver keys early 2008 MacBook Pro I hotrodded with SSD, max ram, and did some trickery to get a close to modern Mac OS working on it; I watch videos on it all day long in 1080, the battery works so I carry it about and use it. I paid 20 for it on eBay. It looked like a clean unit in the listing pics, no ram or hard drive, so I bought it and it works flawlessly. Crap like this is just landfill right out of the box. It's more of that egregiously cheap Chinese junk they keep endlessly importing and tossing in our landfills. In no world is going out and paying 50 bucks for trash like this acceptable.
OpenCore Legacy Patcher? That's the oldest MBP model it supports, but it looks like it should be able to do at least Monterey, probably Ventura? Can you share a detail or two? I'm looking at buying one too because I love that old design! I had a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 back in college, and being able to run a modern macOS on something that looks almost the same would just be killer!
Celeron (actually Atom) is known to be actually crap, but I've heard N100 thing is far better and cheap. Maybe you should try. It's not under $100 though.
Luke, I too am disheartened by all the e-waste this country produces. Piles of perfectly good MacBooks get shredded every year mostly because they are iCloud locked. It would be easy for Apple to provide certified recycling centers the tools necessary to wipe the computer and put it back in service. The reason this doesn’t happen comes down to one thing…. Money. There is no profit in it for Apple (for example) and it may actually decrease their potential new product sales. It would get way more Macs into the hands of potential lifetime users, but at a cost no manufacturer is willing to make.
The HAM radio people like them for their mobile radio setups because they are cheap to replace if they are lost or damaged, so basically because they are e-waste. Though I honestly think the bigger e-waste problem is all the T2 and newer Macs that schools and corporations are retiring that are absolutely useless due to them being account locked.
I like low cost laptops likes these for emulating old systems like C65, Apple IIgs and etc. Install Linux on them and have them open up the desired emulator on boot. Then can paint symbols on keys and etc for each system. If ambitious will sand and paint exterior to make it resemble vintage system……
The micro-laptop even has a working 4K-video-decoder. With a wireless kb and mouse this thing can easily replace a set-top-box. Perhaps you are too critically! For $47 Apple sells you a single key.
I still have a 2009 mb - don’t use it but when i get it out to see if it still works I am always surprised how well it still works. Definately a better buy
I have the 17" 2009 Macbook Pro and it works really well, if you wanted you could upgrade the RAM to 8GB and put an SSD in it, it will run quite well especially if you use Open Core Legacy Patcher to install Monterey on it and you can dual boot Windows 10 on it but it needs a little help with Tuxera to create the NFTS partition for microsoft to function but once installed Windows 10 will function at a much faster pace than some of these native Windows 10 laptops
I bought a similar "device" with Intel Atom in 2018. I needed a small and light windows machine to carry with me to the university. It worked for that. Slow, but useful. I had a 10 or 11 inch screen version. The battery life was SUPERB, but I'm gonna tell you, please, don't buy anything like this! In the long run these things just die. Mine stopped charging and turning on after 4 years. Randomly. All the data was lost. Hopefully I was already out of university and it was reflashed with new OS without any important data. If you dare to buy it, always store your data on an SD card. Never on the internal EMMC. Have a great day!
Ahoy, I have 2 Evolve III Maestro Laptops. The first is the 11A N3450 4c Apollo Lake like yours. Mine is a V.1 which came with the LTE card you can remove to add an M.2 MSATA drive. The V.2 and later don't have that slot soldered on the board so no SSD space. I also have the Maestro 11G which has a Celeron N4120 4c Gemini Lake SOC which is faster with a better GPU and can run Win11. I use both like Chromebooks as a basic Internet Cruiser and media machine. The battery life is 8+ hours so perfect for sitting on my porch wasting time on UA-cam vids. My total cost for both was $175, cheaper than most Chromebooks. Cheers, daveyb
If it was $5 more and they actually populated the M.2 slot it would be interesting. I wonder if those PCIe lanes are actually connected and it just needs the port soldering on...
About 6 months ago i decided to buy a 10" tablet for media consumption in the kitchen, i was tired of using my phone for it, in the budget of 100€. After searching for a while, none of the options were appealing because they were either some noname brands, but i found a Teclast F15S for 110€, open box. The specs are very similar, but it has a decent IPS 1080p panel, a Celeron J3455, 6GB of RAM and has slot for a SATA3 M.2. Sure, its slow, but can play 4K on UA-cam and movies no problem. Imo there is still some demand for these low power and cheap laptops, for sure i wouldn't spend over 150€ for a media consumption device in a kitchen.
go in to bios and disable power limit C states and crank the power up. it doubled the benchmarks for me on mine and turned it in to a pretty usable little windows 10 machine.
There are two versions of the laptop. One with LTE enabled, other not. Both were available at Microcenter at the same time The LTE enabled one had the LTE card on the M.2 slot that you could swap with an SSD. The non-LTE version (which you got) still have the connectors on the motherboard, but you need to solder the m.2 slot yourself lol. It is pretty straighforward if you know soldering.
i would put more money into its longjavity than chrome books or maybe even newer macs. The bottom end of the spectrum is pretty much required the same compute power for years now and it probably continue to be that way. you can install a linux distro on it and it will be a beast (i have a Hp laptop with Pentium from 2015 (Board only) or so and it is running Ubuntu server with a Tv optimised GUI and it is great as a TV box with no smart TV/TV box Bs) for these tasks unlike Apple and google this unnamed brand don't lock down software or have weird software locks for hardware. this laptop is a better raspberry pi with the GPIO swapped for a laptop shell and many people are fine with that.
COME SEE ME LIVE! The day after WWDC I'll be hosting Genius Bar Goes Drk with Noah Sam and Jon- think of it like an aftershow to discuss Apple's latest announcements and hang with other Apple fans. With Apple launching FCP and Logic on iPad ahead of time I can only imagine what's going to be announced in a few weeks... geniusbargoesdrk.com
Why are you swearing? That’s disrespectful!!!
But will it run Mac OS X?
It seems like it’s a 3rd Gen celron inside due the name of the processor and the numbers
The fact that that $50 Windows Celeron computer got a similar cinebench score to my 2020 i3 Macbook Air is honestly pretty surprising and disappointing at the same time
I bought a used Celeron n3060 laptop from 2016 and I rly regret it. I wanna sell it again to get my money back but honestly it’s hard to not just take it and throw it on the ground. And least she can play Lego games and GTA SA lol
@@mustasheolll2020celeron laptops nowadays are not that bad, but, you can get better things if you spend just a bit more, i got a windows surface laptop go (10th gen i5) for 250 brand new, the only bad thing is it has only 4gb of ram
@@mennymanuel28 4gb? RIP 😣
@@mennymanuel28always try to get a laptops that have 2 ram slots is the best
@@mennymanuel28 New Celerons can have 4 cores, 4 threads
I have found that most of the hardware you find like this is suited for "single task" type operations. I have a friend that uses a similar model as a base to monitor his IP cams around his property. I have heard another person talk about using one as a monitor for his boost settings in his car. For these, they are a much better fit than even a free macbook. It really boils down to the right tool for the job.
This model is pretty popular in the HAM community for portable setups because you can run it directly off a 12v power source. I wouldn't want one as a daily driver but for certain missions it's a good fit at a reasonable price.
This laptop would be a great way to run your home server
I think for 50 Money that’s a very good deal. It’s about the same price as a Raspberry Pi, but has probably a bit more performance, a SSD, keyboard, mouse, display and speakers already included? That’s cheap as hell! Perfect for little home projects and if you installed some form of Linux on it it would also be faster than running on windows.
Yes but where to get it
I paid 60 money for my used windows laptop. Such a steal since it performs surprisingly smooth, again, for only 60 money!
not to mention that for better or worse it's x86. so you could put an x86 linux distro on it and run basically anything that linux can run. not so on the Pi which is ARM, which in the Windows-Linux space hasn't really taken off yet.
Yep. 4GB of RAM is a lot with Linux. My only concern is that he machine almost killl itself by running a benchmark.
Yeah for 50 money that would be a good word processor machine, or email machine
Maybe even a chat top while gaming.
This is exactly why I’ve turned my whole family onto buying computers from our local e-waste recycler instead of a big box store like Best Buy. My grandma will go there and get a “new” computer that’s a year or two old for a good deal, and she’ll turn in her old devices, and the people working are always willing to help her with any software or hardware issues. And if she has issues they’ll normally give her a better computer than the one she bought. I love that its a chance to support local & cut down on e-waste.
my family now exclusively buys dell latitude E-series off lease laptops from 3+ generations ago for next to nothing with everythign they could ever need....its lovely and theyre rock fucking solid
@@OsX86H3AvY i got one of those when i was learning to program on windows and it got me through college for $100, no regrets!
Excellent advice! When you remove the desire for the newest or most trendy machine, you'll get infinitely more bang for your buck
Ever since I got a decommissioned Old DELL which was in a Business setting. It had an Old 3rd gen I5 and I Never had issues. My GF gave me a LOCKED lenovo that someone BIOS unlocked on EBAy. Eitherway I only got 4gb more ram and a 7th GEN CPU if I WERE to look for a similar laptop with gateway.... it would have cost $350+ and Soldered crap vs upgradeability...
But at this point my next laptop is a framework XD
We don't have such an option in my area but I buy HP off lease SFF desktop computers off of Amazon or eBay, they may be five or six years old but they still run circles around a new computer selling for a similar price. If I get 4-5 years out of them I am happy. I know how to reinstall OSes, install Linux, replace RAM and HDDs, etc. but most of the time if I am doing that it is for an upgrade and not to repair something.
I have one of these for my ham radio use. The wifi radio on mine is hot unreliable garbage but I can run it directly from my 12v lithium iron phosphate radio batteries.
To add ot this, the 12v charging is the primary reason a lot of us amateur radio operators bought these things, we don't need an inverter, we can cut the cord and crimp on some powerpole connectors and hook it right up to our batteries. You can't do that with most laptops.
Also, sure we could buy a more expensive device, but with the frequent Macbook mention... sadly most amateur radio software just doesn't have any sort of Mac options.
@@RyanMercer I have zero experience with ham radio myself and I use a Mac, but I'm curious if you don't mind; what are some of the most commonly used/preferred software packages for amateur radio and what are they responsible for in particular?
I always see someone talking about ham radio with these computers. Maybe it's just the same person on multiple outlets 😂
@@JBrinx18 HRCC did a video on them last July which got everyone interested in them.
As a ham, radio operator, I got interested in this laptop through Ham Radio crash course, UA-cam channel I haven’t found one other than Micro Center but they’re out of stock to deliver it to pick up on when the closest one to me is two hours away so if there’s anyone that has an Amazon link, let me know
I work a PT weekend job as a vendor in a Best Buy store (I don't work for Best Buy). I see stuff come through there for recycling all the time that is perfectly serviceable. I've spoken to customers who are not technically savvy that just buy a new laptop every 2 years because "my computer gets slow." Some of them can't believe that I am using a 2015 Macbook Pro as my primary machine and that I also have a laptop from 2013 that I use regularly.
I got sick to my stomach last weekend... Someone brought in an LG C1 OLED to recycle. It was a 48", and nothing was wrong with it. They were moving and didn't want to take it with them. Of course, once they paid that recycle fee (yes paid $40) it was Best Buy property. If I had known what he was brining in I would have bought it off of him!
2:23 that transition to a sponsor is cleaner than LTT
Yeah I know, can't figure out why no one is talking about that.
Great sponsor 😭 hah
LTT is so nonchalant about sponsors that I skip through that part as soon as I sense it
Hi Luke. I have to agree that e-waste companies are overwhelmed with decommissioned business laptops and computers. All perfectly working fine with some work, they can easily be turned around to help the low to low-middle income families.
I've been trying to do just that for years but the e-waste companies ends up trying to price gouge people like me.
As for this hunk of plastic e-waste, maybe this can be used for alternative operating system deployment. Like Ubuntu, Linux Mint or even Android. I've also been exploring this type of alternative OS for older systems.
The thing that's impressive about these newer low power computers is the video decoders in the iGPU. It played 4k video just fine!
4K is overkill, I don't have any 4K monitors or televisions in my house. Even using the 32 inch TV that I use as a computer monitor I usually play video at 360 or 480p. Theoretically I have the bandwidth to play 4K no problem but it is so much overkill that I don't see the wisdom in wasting bandwidth to play at that resolution.
@@mharris50474K is now what I would consider industry standard. Phones have recorded it since 2016 and our living room tv from around 2017 is 4k. Plus every modern smartphones screen is beyond 1080p at this point.
@@mharris5047smart guy, the max I use is 720p60 nothing more.
The trick to getting a laptop like this to run smooth is either to install a lightweight Linux build like AntiX, or Tiny10 (a stripped-down version of Windows 10)...for educational and demonstration purposes of course. 😎
I got one of these sometime last year and the thing that makes it worth it to me is the out-of-the-box LTE connectivity! And if you export the current install's drivers to USB, format and install a debloated copy of Windows, and reinstall the drivers... it's actually a capable computer for basic tasks!
Sweet, now I don't have to buy the MacBook Pro M3 Max Ultra. Thanks Luke!
😂😂😂
There's no distinction to be made between that and ANY modern macbook. Remember how the 64gb of flash storage is soldered on the board and can't be upgraded or replaced ? Yes just as the NAND flash chips are soldered to macbook logic boards. Any modern will apple device be e-waste as well once the storage hits its maximum write cycles. A few weeks ago the NVME SSD in my laptop suddenly died and refused to boot. It was a simple matter of replacing it and my laptop is back in working order. If I had a macbook it would have magically transformed into a paper weight...
That reminds me on my M1-Air that I bought like 2 years ago, and which broke down after about a year. Now sitting on a shelf collecting dust, because a repair (flickering screen) would cost almost as much as buying a new one. So, it's also just e-waste, but way more expensive e-waste.
You may be able to use it as a desktop pc plug a monitor keyboard and a mouse then it will have most of its functionality back
i’m surprised it came with Windows tbh. $47 for a screen, motherboard, cpu, ram etc etc AND windows? how the hell did that company manage that
I can't find it anywhere lower than $110. I would pay $47 for this as my son really really really wants a laptop. I would be okay with getting him something cheap like this.
Open box?
@@randallsmith2521 Used working chromebooks are dirt cheap.
Aliexpress
@@leonidas14775 screw chromebooks, yeah they're cheap but they're cheap for a reason, I'd rather spend $20-30 more to not have chromeos, it is so extremely limited.
I have a $150 N4020 4GB chromebook. More or less the same piece of “e-waste”. I’ve used it for 2.5 years. I take it when I travel. I still have 4 more years of ChromeOS support. I also run Linux Mint XFCE on it. It gets the job done for a cheap travel laptop that I don’t mind breaking, losing, or getting stolen.
For $50 an N3350 running lightweight Linux is usable for many simple things. Yeah my phone is more powerful but sometimes it’s nice to have a bigger screen and a keyboard and mouse. Even with a slower device, having proper inputs makes it more productive.
It looks like that was designed to be a chromebook that they installed windows on. With chromeOS Flex it would be soooo much better.
In most countries around the world a Windows device would be more useful.
@@apo.7898Windows runs terribly on less powerful hardware compared to ChromeOS and most other Linux based operating systems
Agree - avoid e-waste. Buy an old MacBook. For $100 you’ll get something 4X as good and it’ll last 14X Longer. I still have a 2008 Unibody 15” MacBook Pro and a 2011 11” MacBook Air that both work perfectly for web browsing and video watching! I’ve kept them all these years just for nostalgia or in case I want to loan them or gift them. I did put an SSD into the 2008 and have replaced the battery (it has the easy open latch on bottom). My current machines are 2015 15” MacBook Pro with 2TB SSD split 50/50 MacOS and Win10 via Bootcamp and a 13” M1 MacBook Pro that I bought over a year ago mint used for $900 with 500GB drive.
Hey I have a 13” 2015 MacBook Pro, what type of ssd did you install on your system could you tell me ur specs and if you had any problems? I am thinking about doing the storage upgrade
@@bobbob-gi1yp OWC AURA PRO x2 2TB. Works perfectly for MacOS AND BOOTCAMP Win10 except mine is several years old and firmware won’t upgrade for latest MacOS upgrade. Contact OWC as I think their newest versions do have the firmware upgrade. OWC are a class act and in my experience better than nvME adapters.
Would you be interested in selling the 2015 dual boot
@@keithconner6495 no but thanks for the compliment. I work as a diagnostic radiologist (MD) and having a machine that’ll do what a Mac can do so well and also connect to the windows stuff I can’t escape for healthcare is invaluable to me. Why I built it this way and the 2015 was the best of the pre Apple Silicone Macs. M1, M2, etc. as you know won’t do BootCamp and for medical imaging (PACS and RIS and specialized MG and MRI viewers) parallels is unworkable.
@@Mvendrel sweet that’s cool, is there any annoying pop ups about the ssd being installed for macOS? I’m updated to the lasted version hopefully it will transfer perfectly to the other hard drive
Really good point about the recycling. So many good computers going to the landfill because they’re not worth selling and people not wanting used stuff.
Is buying used laptops risking security? Like can people install viruses to stalk your info?
@@loveyalotz As long as you can run an updated version of the OS you're fine generally.
@@loveyalotzMost likely no but I still recommend reinstalling windows when you get smth second hand
@@kevkevv_ it’s fine I decided to buy a whole new laptop
I would of liked hearing more about battery life on that, since the battery takes all the space.
Its where the value lies in machines like this for me. i have a chromebook i got for a whopping $32 shipped to my house with a battery that lasts almost 9 hours on a charge, and if the battery was new it would last over 12 hours
I have one very similar to this, the battery life is arround 14 hours, I play a very old game from 2006 called Silkroad Online, it runs smooth and I get 8 hours of battery life.
I just got $40 for a Dell E6420 that wasn’t turning on. Overheating but just the laptop bag and mouse I included cost me $50’so was a good deal. Thing was like 13 years old when I sold finally and got an m1 MacBook Air. I love it.
I fully agree. Exactly who or what regs in the UK stop us getting our hands on these rejected replace Macs? We should start a campaign to get this sorted out ! Who's with me ? - with Luke really, but he is in the US, I'm in the UK.
Honestly seeing it stream a full fat 4k video without a hitch, it’s not half bad. Power consumption should be waayy lower than an old 2009 MacBook Pro, with no fan noise and/or excessive heat. I’m not saying it’s a great buy but I can see the slightest bit of appeal it has.
That Celeron is a discontinued 2016 CPU btw. It was like the most popular low-end CPU for quite a while
Could a 14 year old Macbook play 720p UA-cam video? Those cheap window machines are the Netbooks of the 2020's. They are fine for light users.
Thing is the Google has ChromeOS Flex - that is what I would run on it.
I love how every so often, one sponsor goes hard for every creator in the space. Looks like casekoo is having theirs with Apple creators as of late
There are two version of this laptop. This is the second version. The first version is LTE ready, in which you can swap the LTE card with SSD, which I did for my little sister. You can still find the m.2 tracing on the motherboard in version. Both of them are priced exactly same, which does not make sense lol.
What is the name and model of this laptop?
@@alexandrecouture2462 Evolve III maestro
@@shayanshahriar7882 Thank you!
I have the same problem, I buy and sell a lot of hardware as hobby, but some people tells me they do prefer to get a cheap plastic NEW laptop instead for example an old Gaming monster such as Alienware or Asus ROG, at the same price (I am from Mexico and live in Mexico) those kind of laptops here cost like $300 USD or so, so I put mine in those prices
El problema es que por lo menos el mercado de segunda mano en países de latinoamerica tienden a ser feo porque te venden laptops super jodidas a precio de seminuevo...
@@kevinsantos2894 si, en mi caso veo muchos así, evidentemente hay cosas malas y cosas buenas, pero por ejemplo una persona que no tiene mucho dinero ir a comprar una laptop de $300 USD de estas desechables en lugar de una workstarion Dell/HP o bien una laptop de gama alta de años atras (funcional todo) prefieren ir por esas fanless sin potencia por ser nuevas
A cheap product not performing at optimal standards? Shocking.
I got a cheap little Coda netbook for £90. Came with windows 10 which struggled and took ages to run probably because of all the bloatware fitted. In the end I installed Lubuntu and it runs quite well in basic tasks such as web browsing and emails which is what I want it for - to take on holiday or away to events
I remember those tiny netbooks with barely enough CPU/RAM to run Windows.... crazy
@@floydlooney6837 I considered buying one of those netbooks but my computer guy at the time talked me out of it because they were pieces of shit with only esoteric use cases making them worth dealing with. My mother showed up one day in 2011 with an eMachines E525 with the Celeron 900 CPU that she bought on clearance from Wally World. She used it lightly and when she died I inherited it. I still have it today, I had to replace the RAM and put an SSD in it and I installed Xubuntu on it, it takes a few minutes to boot but for videos and web surfing it actually works OK. I prefer my newer laptop but this one works fine as a jukebox, watching a movie or basic web use.
I have a similar little dell laptop I got a couple of years ago for $57 open box. It’s a good value if you only want it to do one thing, but it’s absolutely useless as a daily driver. The idea of calling these machines “education notebooks” is honestly kinda scummy because some parent who doesn’t know better is gonna think this is a good deal on a genuine laptop.
Lol try using that Core 2 Duo Macbook today, see if it’s any better.
It’s a disposable laptop. Perfect for kids if it lasts a month.
10:03
That sound is normal for a fanless laptop. It’s coil whine, and you normally don’t hear it because of fans.
Why would you run Cinebench on this laptop and then complain when it doesn’t work?! It’s not designed for that, of course it’s not going to work. This is designed to be a laptop that you can provide to children of low income poverty line families so that they can have a laptop and take notes in class and do their homework on it, nothing more nothing less.
The reason I can think of to consider for this is probably just low power draw and use, but that's it overall.
They're pretty cute though, somewhat reminded about netbooks. My curiosity has me wonder sometimes how a take on a tiny modern Athlon GE laptop would fare as a very, very low power unit if such existed.
We hams loved these when they were discovered because you can input 12v and they not only charge but run, so we can hook them directly up to our 12v radio batteries in the field.
I'm with you. I work at a large school district and we recycle older good technology all the time. I manged to snag a 10 year old MacBook air for a $1 in an auction we had. The only issue it had was 6 of the corners were bent from it being dropped several times by a staff member. For some reason no one else bid on it. So I put in for a $1 and it was mine!. I used a microfiber towel and a few different sizes of pliers to bent all the corners back as good as I could get them. Then wiped the drive, used OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install MacOS 13 and soon to be 14 and had a completely usable, updated MacBook. I took it on vacation as our internet resource in our hotel room. It was a life saver to look at places to go, book stuff etc. I also backed all our pictures too took up to it and then the backed them up online. Now I used it on my kitchen for online recipes. All that for $1!!!!
That exact same keyboard was on my awful 2011 netbook - times haven’t changed clearly
@9:54 its obviously thermo throttling. Honestly, this computer was never meant to be used as intensively as you are trying to use it. That Cinebench test is a stress test for most computers, let alone one for $50. The fact that it even ran that 3d scene creation at all is wonder. A stress test of this kind will take CPU temps to their max, it may even test the thermal paste or the Mosfats regulating the maximum power draw. None of this should be a surprise for an experienced product reviewer.
As for the CPU, its a 4-core, 4-thread CPU from 2016 - Celeron N3450 which can boost to 2.2 ghz with HD500 spec Graphics. eg better than the old Macs you compared it to on ebay. The key reason for this CPU is its extremely low TDW at 6w. It basically uses negligible power. By comparison, most laptops are 45- 65w.
In other words not only is it cheap it also saves on energy. E = Eco. This would be perfect for someone on solar. Btw should you have run the tests before taking it apart?
This has a quadcore celeron chip, quite good really.
My mum bought (for £150!!) an asus laptop with a dual core celeron processor in 2019. It's a lovely machine but almost all tasks make it 100% CPU usage. Web browsing is possible but a struggle. Its such a shame as the rest of the laptop is quite nice.. perhaps the quadcore intel version would be better.
It would be a decent linux machine considering how lightweight some linux distros can be
Basically, if you can upgrade the logic board, toss out the crappy emmc card that runs slow as molasses and replace it with a solid state drive with a decent amount of storage, the Celeron 3450:is more than capable of running basic tasks well. Its the inferior hardware that’s saddled it that’s given it a bad reputation. I’m sure if Luke can find reasonably priced upgrade parts, he’ll find out its going to do all that he wants to do on it.
@@NormanF62 Maybe it can run windows 10 potato edition
For $50 you could get some used Lenovo ThinkPad, Dell Latitude or HP Pro/EliteBook
I bought a cheap Windows 11 laptop simply out of curiosity. It's not terribly efficient but I would surmise that some people can't afford a $1000+ MacBook, so this is their next best thing. They're probably not computer literate and don't understand the finer points of how processors work, they just want something that they can use for email and web browsing. It's a shame that this laptop isn't storage and RAM upgradable because I always found upgrading computers fun and if it makes it faster, all the better. You can also argue that Apple slows down their Macs with every OS upgrade, so you only get six years of use.
Where can I get one? Would absolutely get one if pointed in the right direction.
Maybe it's coil whine that you hear during benchmarking?
you didn't really speak about what was wrong with the laptop before you classified it ewaste, apart from the cinebench score, a keyboard with low travel and a trackpad that had a strange material. I don't really think that's fair. This seems fine as a laptop for students.
You talk about the 14 year Macbook Pro having lived for 14 years. Fair enough. It also cost probably 20-40x as much. For a school supplying students, or a parent buying a cheap first laptop (with the knowledge that a child is likely to break a laptop anyway), something like this seems perfect.
Yes, it's also a shame we can't all dumpster dive for old landfilled laptops, but that's not a mark against this laptop. The alternative to this laptop is not all of these good but old laptops going back into supply. It's no laptops at this price point at all.
i think you plugged in the screen cable wrong because after you put the craptop back together the screen looks too blue
That was the cleanest fucking segue into a sponsor I'd ever seen. +Respect
Fully agree with your conclusion. That said, if they had made it 99 bucks and gave it a 128gb ssd and 8gb of ram it would actually age much more gracefully when used for a light workload. This is just a cheap tablet with a keyboard and trackpad running windows.
14:14 If you are not techsavy enough to be able to upgrade or repair a laptop buying a cheap new one gives you at least a time limited guarantee. That’s worth something.
UR right we have to consider Ewaste and how we can correct and recycle and make a resale market that has well service refurbished machine to use for the sale to people whom don't have the skill or time to do it but want to be a buyer....
Actually Celeron N3450 was launched in 2016, which is 7 year old already.
the HAM radio community have embraced this laptop for digital portable operations with the help of channels like Ham Radio Crash Course because its cheap. light, charges off 12v (just like ham radio gear) and has USB output for radio control and external sound card options.
If you are of extreme limited means but needed a computer for basic Google Docs work, email and web browsing, this sounds like a great option. Or if you needed something for your kid (knowing they’re going to trash it). Would I personally buy one? No. But then again, I’m not the target market.
I think it's too weak for internet usage, I'd install window XP on it and use it for retro gaming or something.
I just recently snagged a dell latitude 7490 used for $56 & it just had a bad stick of ram & the seller just didn't care to fix so i slapped 16gb of ram & a 500gb m.2 that i had laying around with a fresh linux install & this thing is crazy value with a 8th gen core i7 so if you look around enough you can find a crazy deal.
You ruined a perfectly good computer with Linux? Why????? ;-)
if anyone wants a similar, but capable machine, the ASUS VivoBook L203MA is solid. ive used one for 2+ years for writing code on the fly while traveling in visual studio. not fast but totally useable. battery life is insane, 12+ hours. super light. $180.
I got a MacBook Air 11 inch 2013 with 8 GB and 500 GB SSD for 50 used. It ran OS X Mountain Lion, could not open HTTPS pages (mostly it was sold because of not being able to open such pages) and I installed Big Sur using the internet recovery and then installed MacOS Ventura 13.7 using Open Core Legacy Patcher. It runs very well on Ventura and for 50 it was a steal.
The big problem with that device is basically its EMMC storage. That Celeron N3450 is capable of surfing the web, loading and playing UA-cam videos, using Office suites without any issues. I have a mini PC with the Celeron N3160 which is almost the same as the one in the video, but my device has a Sandisk Ultra II 480GB Sata 3 storage unit, and its performance is completely diferent to EMMC.
have you tried putting a linux distro on it just to see if it performs better?
I'm from Germany and like your videos But in Germany, we don't even have enough laptops for everyone in school. And still have laptops from the last century We sie thins like ( polilux) or Overhead projector
The mainboard, and inside layout and specifications is likely similar to Axioo Mybook laptops in Indonesia. And they sell it for minimum price of US$ 133 here in Indonesia, and made quite high number of buyers here. But then lots of trouble afterwards. It's amazing how it continue sold up until now here, with minimum price of almost 300% of US$47.
You just need to slap a nice light Linux distro on this thing and it should become much more usable(for web browsing etc).
I have one of these exact machines that was new ($80 at Microcenter after a discount from $99 new). Windows was worthless as an OS on the machine. It ran in S mode (or whatever MS is calling it this week) but is was slow. I have used it as a Linux platform to test distros and work on my Linux admin skills. I have loaded and run several different Linux distros on it (Ubuntu, Kali, Vanilla Debian, Pop_OS!, AlmaLinux, Rocky, and Proxmox). All of them ran better than Windows. I have Kali running on it now to use as a learning platform for the Kali tools.
Is it the best possible choice? Probably not. Is it a great laptop? Nope. Is a cheap "modern" machine that if I brick it playing in Linux I'll be mad about? Absolutely. Could it be an alternative to a cheap Chromebook for kids to destroy if you need a cheap laptop? Absolutely.
Just be aware of what it might do and what it definitely won't do. Yes, it's future e-waste. So are most of the laptops available. Will it still work in 10 years? Nope, just like most laptops available. Macs are an exception and hopefully M-series Macs will last even longer. However, people who just need a stop-gap machine that works, then this isn't the worst choice. Good review of something that most people don't know exists. Thanks Luke!
I would imagine that most people who buy that don't even know what Cinebench is...
13:45 The issue with this is that not all eWaste places will give these away(even without a HD) or even sell them. They "recycle" them i.e. give them to a vendor who will just 1. throw them away 2. send them to Africa to be dumped there 3. send them to China to be dumped there. It's a MAJOR issue here and it's literally a WASTE and it needs to change. I was able to go to a eWaste place and get some computers there...once. I took them home, refurbished, cleaned them and was able to give them(free) to people who needed them. Went back 4 months later and they were all no no no no nope nope get out, we don't do that , our vendors pay us to recycle to them, you'll get in trouble if we give/sell you one. Yeah it's bad
The storage kills these laptops. 64 gb of storage is not enough for Windows 10 and you'll run into issues with updates.
You do get variants of these with hdd in that empty space, but I've never seen one with an m.2 slot. The strange noises are normal...
Honestly, I'm typing this reply on a silver keys early 2008 MacBook Pro I hotrodded with SSD, max ram, and did some trickery to get a close to modern Mac OS working on it; I watch videos on it all day long in 1080, the battery works so I carry it about and use it.
I paid 20 for it on eBay. It looked like a clean unit in the listing pics, no ram or hard drive, so I bought it and it works flawlessly.
Crap like this is just landfill right out of the box. It's more of that egregiously cheap Chinese junk they keep endlessly importing and tossing in our landfills.
In no world is going out and paying 50 bucks for trash like this acceptable.
OpenCore Legacy Patcher? That's the oldest MBP model it supports, but it looks like it should be able to do at least Monterey, probably Ventura? Can you share a detail or two? I'm looking at buying one too because I love that old design! I had a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 back in college, and being able to run a modern macOS on something that looks almost the same would just be killer!
At that price it would open up opportunities for people with limited cash. $50 for a few years of use isn't that bad. It would do social media fine.
I wish there were 47$ computers where I live.
The point about so many usable laptops in recycling centers is powerful. Those should be free to access for anyone!
4 years? I thought he was gonna say like 6 months!
Celeron (actually Atom) is known to be actually crap, but I've heard N100 thing is far better and cheap. Maybe you should try. It's not under $100 though.
Luke, I too am disheartened by all the e-waste this country produces. Piles of perfectly good MacBooks get shredded every year mostly because they are iCloud locked. It would be easy for Apple to provide certified recycling centers the tools necessary to wipe the computer and put it back in service. The reason this doesn’t happen comes down to one thing…. Money.
There is no profit in it for Apple (for example) and it may actually decrease their potential new product sales. It would get way more Macs into the hands of potential lifetime users, but at a cost no manufacturer is willing to make.
compare it to a used AMD E1-2100 laptop with Win10
Well, to be fair, you'd have a heckuva nice scientific graphing calculator!
The HAM radio people like them for their mobile radio setups because they are cheap to replace if they are lost or damaged, so basically because they are e-waste. Though I honestly think the bigger e-waste problem is all the T2 and newer Macs that schools and corporations are retiring that are absolutely useless due to them being account locked.
Man that was a smooth transition into that sponsor!
I can't believe I used to use a laptop not even half as powerful as this thing until 2 years ago
I like low cost laptops likes these for emulating old systems like C65, Apple IIgs and etc. Install Linux on them and have them open up the desired emulator on boot. Then can paint symbols on keys and etc for each system. If ambitious will sand and paint exterior to make it resemble vintage system……
your point about recycling centers is absolutely on point. too much stuff scrapped.
I think the hissing comes from the speaker wires picking up signals from some of the traces in this laptop
The micro-laptop even has a working 4K-video-decoder. With a wireless kb and mouse this thing can easily replace a set-top-box. Perhaps you are too critically! For $47 Apple sells you a single key.
I still have a 2009 mb - don’t use it but when i get it out to see if it still works I am always surprised how well it still works. Definately a better buy
I have the 17" 2009 Macbook Pro and it works really well, if you wanted you could upgrade the RAM to 8GB and put an SSD in it, it will run quite well especially if you use Open Core Legacy Patcher to install Monterey on it and you can dual boot Windows 10 on it but it needs a little help with Tuxera to create the NFTS partition for microsoft to function but once installed Windows 10 will function at a much faster pace than some of these native Windows 10 laptops
Amazon link?
I bought a similar "device" with Intel Atom in 2018. I needed a small and light windows machine to carry with me to the university. It worked for that. Slow, but useful.
I had a 10 or 11 inch screen version. The battery life was SUPERB, but I'm gonna tell you, please, don't buy anything like this! In the long run these things just die. Mine stopped charging and turning on after 4 years. Randomly. All the data was lost. Hopefully I was already out of university and it was reflashed with new OS without any important data.
If you dare to buy it, always store your data on an SD card. Never on the internal EMMC.
Have a great day!
When testing UA-cam playback, enable Stats for Nerds! It'll show you if there are any dropped frames
Bro never compares used laptop to a MacBook it'd be WAY BETTER like you can get a Dell XPS 2018 for about the price of a 2015 model macbook
Ahoy, I have 2 Evolve III Maestro Laptops. The first is the 11A N3450 4c Apollo Lake like yours. Mine is a V.1 which came with the LTE card you can remove to add an M.2 MSATA drive. The V.2 and later don't have that slot soldered on the board so no SSD space. I also have the Maestro 11G which has a Celeron N4120 4c Gemini Lake SOC which is faster with a better GPU and can run Win11. I use both like Chromebooks as a basic Internet Cruiser and media machine. The battery life is 8+ hours so perfect for sitting on my porch wasting time on UA-cam vids. My total cost for both was $175, cheaper than most Chromebooks. Cheers, daveyb
Thanks Luke ❤💻
If it was $5 more and they actually populated the M.2 slot it would be interesting. I wonder if those PCIe lanes are actually connected and it just needs the port soldering on...
I doubt the M.2 slot would have PCIe lanes, most likely it would be SATA / USB only.
@@Pasi123 mSATA would be a marked improvement over eMMC storage.
@@mos6581com Anything is an improvement from eMMC.
M.2 SATA SSD would definitely be a huge upgrade
I need that laptop I can’t afford one right now and I need that to upgrade firmware for my devices
I mean if it manage to run the latest version of windows 10 it should run a lot better on older version of windows 10
About 6 months ago i decided to buy a 10" tablet for media consumption in the kitchen, i was tired of using my phone for it, in the budget of 100€. After searching for a while, none of the options were appealing because they were either some noname brands, but i found a Teclast F15S for 110€, open box. The specs are very similar, but it has a decent IPS 1080p panel, a Celeron J3455, 6GB of RAM and has slot for a SATA3 M.2. Sure, its slow, but can play 4K on UA-cam and movies no problem.
Imo there is still some demand for these low power and cheap laptops, for sure i wouldn't spend over 150€ for a media consumption device in a kitchen.
go in to bios and disable power limit C states and crank the power up. it doubled the benchmarks for me on mine and turned it in to a pretty usable little windows 10 machine.
There are two versions of the laptop. One with LTE enabled, other not. Both were available at Microcenter at the same time The LTE enabled one had the LTE card on the M.2 slot that you could swap with an SSD. The non-LTE version (which you got) still have the connectors on the motherboard, but you need to solder the m.2 slot yourself lol. It is pretty straighforward if you know soldering.
how is this laptop faster than my old one?? 😭👌
Couldn't agree more, people should be fined every time they throw away perfectly good products just because they don't have a need for them.
i would put more money into its longjavity than chrome books or maybe even newer macs. The bottom end of the spectrum is pretty much required the same compute power for years now and it probably continue to be that way. you can install a linux distro on it and it will be a beast (i have a Hp laptop with Pentium from 2015 (Board only) or so and it is running Ubuntu server with a Tv optimised GUI and it is great as a TV box with no smart TV/TV box Bs) for these tasks unlike Apple and google this unnamed brand don't lock down software or have weird software locks for hardware. this laptop is a better raspberry pi with the GPIO swapped for a laptop shell and many people are fine with that.