@@JohnSmith-xq1pz Meanwhile, back in reality: Apple uses some of the highest-endurance SSDs with some of the fastest controllers in just about every device they make... M1/M2? On-die storage iPhone/iPad? NVME storage (vs *WAY* slower UFS on Android) Non-M1/M2: again, some of the fastest contemporary SSDs available were used. Even the Apple TV uses fast NVME storage. But, I mean... sure you don't like Apple so just make something up and people will agree with you.
@@eadweard. don't fool yourself, they could use normal SSD's, still them for the same price and still make profit. They don't because they are pinching the pennies
That's how I got my Maestro III Evolve... Well, at least it should last me through 2025. For $60 it was a Micro Center bargain for purely browsing and online videos with uBlock Origin and useless bloatware removed/ disabled.
The problem I find is that the average person just doesn't know how to read specs. And, there are no real "computer stores" in my area. For example, I have a client that refuses to get a desktop, only buys the cheapest laptop that she can find, and wants to run Statistical software on it like SPSS or SASS. She can't understand that a Celeron Laptop, with 4 GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD aren't enough to power such programs. Her repl is, "But, it is brand new!"
The major problem with those eMMC laptops with 32 or 64 gig storage is it's impossible to do a major build update to Windows. When Windows 8.x, 10, or 11 does such an update it needs about 2x as much empty space as the space Windows uses. It must have room to download the update files. Then it needs enough free space to create a duplicate install of the new build of Windows. When it's all done you have the update files, your previous build, and the new build all taking up space. After it's finished you can use disk cleanup to purge the update downloads and the old version of Windows. But with 32 gigs of storage, if you have anything other than Windows installed it won't have the space to download the update. With 64 gigs it can download the update but will fail while attempting to install. With 128 gig it *might* squeeze it in, if you only have Windows and a few small programs/apps. The TL;DR is *do not buy any Windows laptop with less than 256 gigabytes of storage*, unless you really like completely wiping it and doing a clean install every time there's a major build update to Windows.
Emmc has its place, and has improved over time. my latest business laptop with 128GB Emmc has transfer rates of 100MB/s according the diskmark. my 2015 tablet with 32GB EMMC has transfer rates of 10MB/s. While both of these speeds are slow compared to NVM, the latest EMMC rivals cheap or early SSD rates. the Early EMMC models like in the tablet are comparable to the old mechanical HDD. As far as longevity, Emmc is at least as reliable as multi-platter HDD of the early 2000s. 7 years on my tablet with routine usage and working fine.
If you see eMMC, run. No matter how much it saves it's not worth it. They die fast and can't be repaired without doing board level repair. You generally will not find an upgrade slot on a board like this either so once the eMMC dies, you may as well toss the laptop. Generally best you'll get for storage expansion is a micro sd slot.
I have that exact same blue Dell Inspiron 31xx. 32GB of eMMC storage, 2GB of ram with an Intel Celeron processor. Runs Windows 11 fine(custom built with most bloatware removed). I also have an AMD counterpart of it(Dell Inspiron 3180) with 32GB of emmc, 4GB of RAM with AMD A6 processor. Zorin OS Core runs smooth even with "Jelly Mode). Both of which are like 5 years old already. The mechanical drive in my ASUS i5 7th, croaked after 2 years. The cheap SATA SSD I replaced it with still works though.
Saw a laptop last week that didn't have any other connectors on the motherboard, with the eMMC defective, into the e-waste dumpster it went. Along with the data that wasn't recoverable. It's funny, the people who buy these laptops, are also the people who don't invest because of lack knowledge or money into backups.
an emmc is when they don't want to put in an ssd, but still want to advertise solid state storage. its great for my sub $100 single board computers. not so much a laptop
Quick summary from experience: Stay away from devices with Celeron/Entry Level Pentium + eMMC. Nowadays there are simply better options even on a budget. If you only have around 200-300 bucks to spend, get a used device or a tablet instead
@@lykoszero They are total garbage for most people unless you only want to do web browsing on it. Their build quality is terrible. OP is right that you get can a much better few years old laptop for the same price as a Chromebook, and you can do far more with it. Even better if it has a removable battery which are very rare these days.
@@lykoszero For lightweight browsing etc yes, but I would not recommend it. If you don't know anyone familiar with system administration it might be an option
The other flaw with eMMC is that the moment that storage gets unreliable (guaranteed to happen eventually due to wear, unless it is read-only), you basically lose all data on it unless you back it up. That basically renders the laptop into guaranteed e-waste because the chip can't (easily) be replaced. I would consider any laptop which relies on it to be a net negative for the environment. Edit: If you're about to reply to contradict me, I'd urge you to first read my reply to @Shayan's reply to this comment, below. Thanks! 😊👍
If it's a cheap budget laptop it's already a negative for the environment Odds are a laptop using eMMC is also using a very low end processor that will render the device unusable in a few years, and with Microsoft now only supporting windows 10 and 11 that laptop is bound for the landfill And yea yea yea "but linux" and the answer to that is if someone is buying a cheap laptop they don't know what the hell a linux is
@@matsv201 Whether or not the user writes to it is irrelevant (though they exacerbate the problem) because operating systems tend to do lots of writes under normal operation, one big example is page/swap file usage which does A LOT of writing *very* frequently. Pretty much the only good usage for emmc is for storing configuration files because they tend to change very rarely, or military applications such as in bombs or missiles because the computer is destroyed upon successful usage of the weapon anyway.
I have a Pinebook PRO that's based on an EMMC and it's very easy to replace... it's on a little carrier board that can be removed and replaced. And yeah, it runs Linux so it's not constantly barfing data to the emmc. Also using log2ram so logs only get written to the EMMC on shutdown.
@@dfs-comedy Pine are company that makes hacky devices, so it's no wonder their implementation is easy to service. On most cheap laptops the eMMC is soldered to the motherboard directly
Spinning HDDs could be replaced with SATA SSDs by the user for a cheap and effective upgrade. eMMC can't be user upgraded, and very few of those super cheap laptops include a sata or m.2 connector. The eMMC itself isn't really the problem, since it's still flash storage just like any other SSD. The slow down is the single data lane. There's no controller, so data can't be sent in parallel.
@DFS-Comedy do you know of any that actually have 8 lanes available? I found an article for a controller design, published in 2016, but to my knowledge all the commercially available products (and especially those that are cheap enough to create a use case over a regular ssd) have 1 read and 1 write lane.
I came to write this very comment. Everything is true. Actually, I have a laptop with a Celeron N400 that was painfully slow to use, since aside being low-end, in this particular model is cooled pasively, so TDP is very limited. Long story short, when the machine was basically unusable from any standpoint, I replaced the HDD with a cheap Kingston A400 240GB SSD, and it made wonders to the machine. As you mentioned, way easier to replace the HDD with an SSD thanks to the remaining Sata port, thing that laptops with eMMC won't allow.
HDD: I'm known for being worse than an SSD SSD: I'm known for better than an HDD eMMC: I am worse than both HDDs and SSDs and only better than HDDs in a few cases because I am not mechanical
As EMMC storage wears it becomes slower and slower. Not a big deal for phones and tablets that aren't constantly writing to disk like windows does with it's background updates. I had a user come into the IT office a while back saying their computer was slow so I reformatted it and on fresh install it was still dog slow so I ran crystal disk mark and it came back with 35MB/s seq read speed which is basically dead. The computer was from 2018.
@@silvy7394 but phones today are getting more storage than 32gb, and a bigger storage means a bigger lifespan. My phone stills has 16gb of storage but without social media, it works flawless.
@@Anas7ergun Uh, so whats your point? Even eMMC in a laptop isnt THAT unreliable. I ran a 32GB for years on my HS laptop. I hit that thing with a decent load of writes everyday, and its still going strong. My argument was that a bloated Linux OS like Android IS going to write to the flash more than Windows. Especially because you're using it 5x more than a laptop.
For the last 10 years it has been considered a war crime to use an emmc as an OS drive, the punishment is life imprisonment. Time to put PC vendors on trial. As a fellow non-sportsball fan I nominate Anthony to be judge and a Foxconn factory to be executioner.
A budget laptop with emmc storage is the slowest shit Ive ever had the displeasure of using. I actively went out of my way to talk people out of buying them when I used to work at walmart electronics section. Even a freshly installed demo unit was barely usable
I had one end up on my desk for an OS wipe. I couldn't do built in because it needed free space... So I went old school and then found out Dell's own recovery image one of the only ways to install Windows on it doesn't seem to work lol
Ok hear me out instead of including storage they should just include an SD card slot for it instead since the lifespan of eMMC isn't great and it's not replaceable whereas a cheap SD card could be replaced and upgraded repeatedly.
Because people know what an SD card is and they wouldn't like that. But since they don't know what eMMC is, it sounds techlike and turns it into a "selling point". It's a trick straight out of the monitor manufacturers playbook.
I made a set top box for my dad using a cheap SBC with eMMC. Despite the total price(approx £50), it really outpaces the speed of his TVs built in smart functions. He was getting really pissed off at how laggy it was. Really useful for any kinda thin client machine.
LMG missing the salient point: emmc storage in low end laptops is often in low capacity, 64GB or even 32GB. 64GB is very hard to use in Windows for literally anything. 32GB is e-waste before you break the tape on the packaging. It is literally unusable. Windows will fail to update OOB. This is much more important than the speed concern. Linux users can be okay.
Well, the most common justification is that: "We're sorry that Windows Update is rendering your laptop useless for 30-60 minutes every month. Unfortunately, this model doesn't support storage extension, but we can offer you some really good USB storage at a convenient price. You can also store most of your useful data in the cloud and delete the applications you don't intend to use."
had the displeasure of using emmc laptop... it was painfully slow, basically unusable. Even simplest tasks like opening up windows setings app to change default browser was taking a solid minute.
It could also be because it uses the cheapest single channel bottom of the bargain barrel 4Gb of RAM and a tablet-level CPU... While most likely running a Win10 or Win8 depending on the time you had it
Sadly, in practice, that eMMC is barely 2 times faster than a cheap 2.5" HDD, except cheap 2.5" HDD has on average 500Gb capacity and can be upgraded to SSD should speed really become a problem (with 128 and 256Gb SSD being dirt cheap).... So by buying one with eMMC you're basically buying a piece of electronic waste with no upgrade path other than throwing it away and buying a new one in a year or two
Not true. Virtually every eMMC laptops I see, even from a few years ago, comes with both a Linux distro preinstalled (often the manufacturer's own custom distro, sometimes an off-the-shelf distro, and sometimes no OS whatsoever) on its eMMC, AND at least one upgrade option - either an M.2 slot, or SATA. So in practice, if you don't want to use the eMMC, you can simply pop a new SSD in there and use that instead. No Windows, so you can just switch to your favorite distro. A friend of mine bought one for his mother pre-pandemic. No OS, and had a SATA slot. He put Ubuntu on it, some additional codecs and it's good to go. His parents run a store, and used it to help with inventory management (and play some light games).
@@ts757arse They really don't. At that point you might as well just buy a tablet and an external keyboard - you're gonna get the same performance but with better battery life and an OS and software that are built to operate with those specs in mind
@@marioprawirosudiro7301 it would be nice to know which ones have those slots on the spec sheet and not have to dig around for the service manual to find out, tho. Got any recommendations for a unit that has at least those (upgradeable RAM is a plus if also available)?
@@ts757arse I think you are missing the point some of those laptops are essentially tablets without an SD card slot or a place for more storage running windows on 64gb of storage
I bought a second hand HP Stream 11 laptop a few years ago for next to nothing. A problem with this laptop is that Windows 10 occupies 20 Gb of the 32 Gb on its eMMC SSD. Up until a year ago this meant that it was almost impossible to update Windows 10 on its eMMC drive. You had to delete all none Windows 10 files from the eMMC drive before it was possible. It is now possible to update Windows 10 more easily because Microsoft will by default use an external removable drive to provide temporary storage for the update. In my case it used a plug in low profile 128 Gb USB 3 disk drive for temporary storage.
@@flyamericanair I was able to do a full system update on a retrofitted chromebook with 2GB of space left without external using Manjaro and Arch. Meanwhile my mid tier Windows system that had multiple terabyte drives to utilize yet still popped the not enough space error, an issue that required reinstalling from a recovery stick to fix. So no, this is not the same for Linux users.
Simple..emmc = shitty grade nand storage...the end. There's a reason why some laptop makers put it in their lowest priced laptops for many years straight
@@defnotatroll yes but for most phones these days it's a FAR better grade of it...not the same crap quality found in your 200.00 or less today's crappy netbooks
Installing linux on those is pretty much mandatory. Windows 10 and up just love to keep constantly accessing the drive for all it's services like update processing, anti viruses, search indexing..so you end up with extra wear and just having to wait the system decide to load the stuff you asked it to.
let's just always assume that every video about computers is going to have a comment saying 'just install linux' and leave it at that without anyone actually making the comment. the world would be a better place.
This isn't necessarily needed. Linux does use I/O constantly but not "directly" instead partially. Some Linux programs like SystemD (most distros init system) does use I/O constantly for logging. While it isn't like what Windows does, it's not that much effective in anyway. A user never just stick with laptop just yo browse social media, UA-cam; most of these are bring done on phone nowadays, and 64 GB isn't a good storage size either. Unless an extreme usecase, recommended to buy a laptop which have a replaceable SSD else I feel like eMMC just doesn't make sense to use, it'll just cost more to fix than buying a better one.
Linux is a pain for the average user to install on eMMC. The installer thinks the drive is external storage by default so you need to boot it from the flash drive and run some commands to mount the eMMC storage.
@Manny Morales I haven't tried many distros, but so far the Debian and Fedora-based installs worked flawlessly on my eMMC laptop. However, I did have issues installing Endeavour, which is Arch based btw. And even trying to use the standard Arch ISO both manually and through Archinstall, I couldn't get it to work. Maybe a limitation of Arch?. I've not tried OpenSUSE or Gentoo, so IDK about those
The problem is the longevity. I've got plenty of laptops that are slower than hard drives because the eMMC storage has worn out. And of course they wear out faster because they are typically full, because they aren't really big enough for a copy of windows in the first place. You'd think formatting and reinstalling should provide some form of wear levelling that would improve the performance but I haven't found that to be the case.
As someone who neither owns a Steam Deck nor researched it, I've gotta admit I was surprised when rewatching the video. eMMC not being attached via solder just doesn't compute, to me. The only experience I'd ever had with it was as being soldered into a product.
I’ve seen eMMC laptops with decent(ish) (256GB) amounts of storage and low to mid-tier processors for sale when I was shopping for my laptop. I absolutely REFUSED to even consider anything with soldered storage or RAM. Picked up one with a Ryzen 5700u, a 512GB NVMe, and 16GB 3200Mhz removable RAM. It’s been a pretty good portable productivity machine.
@Zaydan Alfariz My point is - search around. Don’t buy eMMC just because. My laptop, IIRC, was in a similar price range as those with eMMC (other specs being similar).
@Zaydan Alfariz Probably lucky, TBH. It took some searching around to find the one I did get, as other models were a bit more expensive. It took me several days of searching and comparing specs and prices before settling on the machine that I bought. My point is, unless you’re in a situation where you absolutely need a new laptop right now, and you don’t have much to spend, it could be worth it to shop around a bit. I’ll admit, though, that I don’t know how electronics prices are in Indonesia. Where I live, electronics are ridiculously expensive. I actually bought mine while my wife and I were abroad on vacation and it was literally half the cost of what I would have paid at home.
@Zaydan Alfariz I’m actually from the US, but I’ve lived in Iceland for the last 5 and a half years. My wife, who is the reason I moved to Iceland, is from Romania. She’s lived here for about 11 years.
My problem is that eMMC usually tops out at 64Gb, but usually even less on retail hardware like HP's Stream notebooks. Once once windows or linux is on there, you get essentially no space for user files.
Windows hogs up space; Linux doesn't have to. Debian and Lubuntu are two distros that I've used with my 64 GB HP Stream 14. Debian only took up 2GB of storage, while Lubuntu took up about 12 GB. It's more than enough to browse sites, watch UA-cam, touch up pics on GIMP, and get some C++ coding done among other things. It handles lightweight Linux distros a LOT better than it handled Windows 10.
Agree, i put sata ssd on external hdd enclosure ,even though the ssd is slow because it dont have dram it stil way faster than my external hdd. just make sure i use high quality external hdd cable
Offering laptops with only 32/64gb of non-upgradeable storage is incredibly wasteful... Those drives will fill up and become unusable pretty fast. That's just not enough space for a device to last very long.
I would say yes, eMMC should be avoided like the plauge, I don't know if things have improved but really when I tried it on an old windows tablet, it was just barely any faster than a 2.5mm hdd, the atom processor wasn't actually completely terrible, the storage was still the main bottleneck.
At least the cheap laptops with eMMC usually have a free m2 slot. Bought my gf a Jumper Ezbook Pro 3 in 2018 and after adding an SSD it ended up being a snappy and reliable machine that lasted her through nursing school. It’s still going strong today.
I got one cracked from a liquidation auction and resold it. Had an m.2 in it already. Wish I would've seen your comment sooner as I would've set the m.2 as the boot drive for the older gentleman who bought it from me.
Yea but it can still be annoying since all the windows related stuff and some other programs will use the cd drive only and if its full it will cause issues even if your other drives have plenty of space.
Yes, it's a cost cutting and planned obsolescence measure that you need to avoid like the plague. It's bad for consumers, doesn't give any benefit and makes your machine obsolete and not upgradeable way sooner than you'd want. Just like soldered on RAM modules, which aren't even mentioned in spec sheets. Avoid avoid
Having that little amount of non-upgradeable storage means you are gauranteed to run out of space one day when performing an update. It happened to a friend of mine and the laptop was basically useless for it's intended purpose (for school, required Windows and some base programs).
Soldered onto the motherboard and shorter lifespan should be more than enough to scream NO at anyone wanting to buy one of these types of "laptops" At least with a SSD and even a normal HDD, when the drive dies you can easily replace it. Not with eMMC! A less tech-minded person would either end up taking to a repair centre who's probably solder a new chip in, or buy a full new laptop! Both would be more than the cost of simply replacing a SSD/HDD. This just contributes more to e-waste
In my experience eMMC is even slower than a decent mechanical drive. Although the newer eMMC standards have upped the bandwidth a bit, bottom of the barrel computers do not opt for the faster chips, and go for the same old eMMC 1.0 junk.
Every time someone brings me a cheaper note/netbook with an EMMC, It's almost always unfixable because the main thing that goes is the built in flash storage. Either I install windows on a usb external drive and tape it to the machine (or use a usb flash device that must stay plugged in) or I tell them it's a paper weight. Once it goes then most the system aside from the ram and perhaps screen is useless and cannot be replaced.
I'm not sure how it is today, but when these became common in 2017-2018 a lot of retailers would advertise these cheaper laptops having SSD's when infact they had much inferior eMMC, quite infuriating.
eMMC computers are literally just dirt cheap laptops manufacturers to try and get consumers to just buy, use for maybe a year or two, then toss away and buy another when they fail. More to the point the Windows versions were made specifically to try and compete with Chromebooks when the later became so popular with consumers who only really needed just a browsing machine with a few extra features. The problem is, Windows eMMC systems are running the same hardware as Chromebooks (Celeron or maybe Pentium processors if you're willing to pay an extra $100-$200), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, but they're also running an OS that is monstrous in size compared to Chromebooks. Yes, they come preloaded with Windows S Mode, but that's still fundamentally a full version of windows in terms of OS functionality. The only difference is S Mode will only allow you to run MS Store apps, but the core of the OS itself is the same, and eMMC combined with the extremely weak processors and RAM simply aren't good enough. It's basically a con run by PC manufacturers to get consumers to buy cheap laptops knowing they have no longevity and the consumer will be spending even more money on a different PC MUCH sooner than if they just spent a little more to get a decent PC to begin with. Honestly, Celeron and Pentium processors shouldn't even be used in Windows computers at all anymore, nor should 4GB of RAM. They only make for extremely slow computers right from the moment you turn them on for the very first time and only get worse as time goes on. Really the only good use for any of these cheap Windows computers with this kind of hardware in it is to convert them either into a Chromebook (which isn't ideal since you don't get the Play Store option) or just make them Linux machines which are far more usable as an actual computer.
One important thing to note with eMMC storage is that 32 GB and 64 GB is nowhere nearly enough for modern (Windows) usage. Microsoft's OS will never let you miss an update and if you happen to use the 32 GB model, that space is gone in a matter of seconds. If you reduce the amount of BloatOS by deleting Microsoft Office and various components you never intended to use, the next update will install them right back up and 5 minutes later (because Windows update will throttle everything so hard, it will take at least 5 minutes to download your regular BloatOS) it will ask you if you have some spare USB device to download more BloatOS for update. And Windows updates regularly so be prepared for the same shit to happen next month. If you plan on using the cheap laptop in the long run, consider replacing the Windows it usually comes with, with any light Linux distro.
@@mrbobgamingmemes9558 Yeah, that's another thing. The advertised 32 GB is actually less, as per ThioJoe explanation. (ua-cam.com/video/M04JlWTRQEA/v-deo.html)
@@mac1991seth i know about that byte nonsense, i dont understand why would you(laptop brand) built a product that unusable out of the box, it is like buying car that use scooter engine
@@mac1991seth i think they buy it without knowing how terrible it is , they expect it to be atleast usable when in reality it is not becaus ethey are soo noob in tech
i have one that was given to me by a friend, a lil DellI Inspiron with an a6 9220e and a 32gb Emmc and has 4gb ram. i managed to make it tolerable by using a script to shave down the Win10 install image, cutting out things like telemetry etc, and adding a 64gb MicroSD. It's tolerable and can even play games like Untitled Goose Game and older stuff like Prince Of Persia Two Thrones, but i mainly use it as an 'Edgebook', adding sites as an app. But it's great on vacation, had it up to the cabin for Thanksgiving and was not bored, to say the least.
You missed out one of the biggest issues of onboard embedded storage. If ONE other chip pops on that laptop or it gets a power surge and the laptop doesnt turn on anymore. Your data is toast. Because you cannot simply remove the drive, and plug it into a USB adapter on another machine and rescue the information of it. Now yes, in the sense of chromebooks where all your data streams to the cloud. And on windows we can have onedrive, dropbox etc.. Users will be users, and will frequently not do this or backup their stuff. I have saved countless amount of peoples information when laptops have failed by removing the drive. So for me, embedded is a big no no no no.
I had experience with one of this laptops it was the 32gb model and after windows updated you had like 4 gigs left i used an usb stick as another storage drive that enabeled more ram and file storage and an external 100gb ssd for games and stuff it had a celeron with integrated graphics and ran sims 4 at 20ish fps civ 4 was better and nfsu1 was quite nice too so in fairness for older or indie games not a bad pc just need to reinstal windows each time instead of updating oh also died in 2 years
At least mechanical HDD has capacity of 256/512 GB.... I would avoid this as new plague (recommendation for other ppl). IMHO, booting live Linux distro from the USB is much better option than eMMC.
A eMMC is just a SD card or usb stick pretending to be a SSD. This is a deciding point for Windows because it is not willing to install on either. It is also not a thing you want to expect to last a while: No SMART or spare sectors whatsoever. If it breaks you can kiss the whole mainboard goodbye, unless manufacturers who actually care, employ a slot for a M.2 SSD. Cheers for the upload!
Its not "random read", random read is as fast as sequencial read, because thats how NAND flash works. What makes SSD/eMMC fast - is not sequencial blocks access speed, its PARALLELISM. or queue depth. If you can parallel your nand access, you will get full speed. eMMC has bad latency, which often mistaken with random read speed. 4KQD1 is slow not because of random, its because of QD1. old eMMC write latency can be a lot worse than HDD seek time(10-20ms).
Meanwhile, back in reality, contiguous read always has and always will be faster than random read on any form of NAND or Optane device. Also, I'm laughing really hard at you pretending to be smart and spelling it 'sequencial' and 'you can parallel'.
@@tim3172 many times real SSD speed is slow because application wait one chunk of data from ssd to request another. SSD queue is almost empty most of the time, and full only on large file read/write.
The only point of these laptops to format its storage to F2FS, developed with eMMC flaws in mind, thus stretching its longevity, which requires Linux-based OS.
I find this interesting because the smartphones we all know and love use eMMC for much of their storage… in fact, some versions of eMMC would put perform the competing UFS standard that was also available in both read and write times…
finally tossed an ssd into my netbook (the hdd fonally started failing) and OH MY GOD IS IT FAST! who knew an atom n455 was actually capable of being a snappy processor.
I fix and refurbish laptops and PCs as a hobby and I have a laptop with a dead eMMC. I'm in limbo with regards to refurbishing it as the eMMC chip itself is uneconomical to replace (No special equipment, would need to source and configure the correct chip) and because Acer never bothered to solder in circuitry/ports for the absent HDD space I can't just plop one in either (would be a PITA to source the tiny components for that too). I fully support user replaceable parts and repairability as these things are practically e-waste waiting to happen.
Capacity is way too small if you're doing anything more than web browsing. And even then, it's not really enough over time. IMO the minimum storage capacity is 256GB
When review channels don't even know what they're talking about. I, too, thought EMMC is soldered to the mobo, but sometimes it ISNT. Like with the 64gb steam deck, the "emmc" isn't soldered in WHATSOEVER because it still uses the pcie m.2 interface.
Yeah but the eMMC chip is soldered onto a breakaway board that converts its pinout to m.2, just like the Switch has a separate board to its eMMC chip that converts it to a proprietary pinout
I bought a cheap ASUS E410-MA Celeron N4020 laptop which has a 64GB eMMC drive. I installed a cheap PCI-E NVME SSD and cloned the eMMC drive to it. Then, I made the SSD the boot drive. I left the eMMC drive intact as a backup boot drive in case the SSD fails prematurely. Plus, I took off the eMMC drive's letter in Disk Manager so that it's invisible to other users.
😊 I don't watch sports either, except for F1 NHRA, etc but it's surprising I might be able to on one of these . But the TV is my choice. Thanks for the info 👍 😀
I'd rather it all be on a removable SD card. It might be even slower, but at least I can swap it out when it reaches it's lifespan limit, upgrade it, etc. Permanently soldered components sucks.
I called b******* on the fact that the steam deck uses EMMC because it's been reported that you can remove the 64 GB module and put a different SSD in there if you want to so therefore if it's removable it can't be embedded.
Having moved from a laptop with a HDD to one with a SSD and a laptop with eMMC, I am much happier with both options since startup is just that much faster, as well as most programs opening.
When it comes to laptops, specially the cheaper ones, I'd rather get one with one of those old small hard drives rather than soldered components that don't need to be and are easy to replace, I can live with a soldered CPU or GPU, but soldered ram or system storage just cuts down the system's life expectancy with no real upsides in my economy, maybe in a country where hardware is easy to replace and a cheap laptop is not worth more than double the minimum wage I could justify buying something like that purely as a web browsing/remote access tool.
Just noo... they're horriable for the every day customer. I tell people to stay away from it like rat trying to bite you. The fact is if it fails its done... there is no upgrading or fixing that issue once its done and dead. The other fact is that it does die faster ! Like that isnt a good design at all for something that is design to be "cheap" when you have to replace it every other year. The issues it that it is small in size. I've seen windows have issues just doing update on the smaller versions. Sorry, I have to disagree with this video with my thumbs down... this should've never went up man.
I didn't even know eMMC was used in anything but Raspberry pis and other SBCs until this video. It is great for limited space that you want to or need to remove the SD card slot used for the boot media to fit into
eMMC laptops are fine for a console machine, streaming media, or a basic emulator box if the processor is decent enough, but outside that I can't see much use for them
it doesn't seem too bad as it allows people to cheaply get a modern laptop, however im concerned that creating such "disposable" devices will just create a ton of e-waste
It would literally be better if they just soldered an sd card adapter on the motherboard and gave the ability of changing the sd card out when it dies. These are just landfill e-waste
you also forgot that the longer you use it the slower it becomes. i have a few old laptops at work that have these 32gb emmc chips and they are now beaten in terms of speed by a 5200rpm hard drive
What is an eMMC laptop? Manufacturers Penny pinching.
Apple Jot that down!!
💯
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz Meanwhile, back in reality: Apple uses some of the highest-endurance SSDs with some of the fastest controllers in just about every device they make...
M1/M2? On-die storage
iPhone/iPad? NVME storage (vs *WAY* slower UFS on Android)
Non-M1/M2: again, some of the fastest contemporary SSDs available were used.
Even the Apple TV uses fast NVME storage.
But, I mean... sure you don't like Apple so just make something up and people will agree with you.
Making low-end systems isn't "penny pinching".
@@eadweard. don't fool yourself, they could use normal SSD's, still them for the same price and still make profit. They don't because they are pinching the pennies
I always thought that those eMMC Laptops were just the perfect opportunity for companies to get rid of all their Celeron crap.
That's how I got my Maestro III Evolve...
Well, at least it should last me through 2025. For $60 it was a Micro Center bargain for purely browsing and online videos with uBlock Origin and useless bloatware removed/ disabled.
The problem I find is that the average person just doesn't know how to read specs. And, there are no real "computer stores" in my area.
For example, I have a client that refuses to get a desktop, only buys the cheapest laptop that she can find, and wants to run Statistical software on it like SPSS or SASS. She can't understand that a Celeron Laptop, with 4 GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD aren't enough to power such programs. Her repl is, "But, it is brand new!"
The major problem with those eMMC laptops with 32 or 64 gig storage is it's impossible to do a major build update to Windows. When Windows 8.x, 10, or 11 does such an update it needs about 2x as much empty space as the space Windows uses. It must have room to download the update files. Then it needs enough free space to create a duplicate install of the new build of Windows. When it's all done you have the update files, your previous build, and the new build all taking up space. After it's finished you can use disk cleanup to purge the update downloads and the old version of Windows.
But with 32 gigs of storage, if you have anything other than Windows installed it won't have the space to download the update. With 64 gigs it can download the update but will fail while attempting to install. With 128 gig it *might* squeeze it in, if you only have Windows and a few small programs/apps.
The TL;DR is *do not buy any Windows laptop with less than 256 gigabytes of storage*, unless you really like completely wiping it and doing a clean install every time there's a major build update to Windows.
Emmc has its place, and has improved over time. my latest business laptop with 128GB Emmc has transfer rates of 100MB/s according the diskmark. my 2015 tablet with 32GB EMMC has transfer rates of 10MB/s. While both of these speeds are slow compared to NVM, the latest EMMC rivals cheap or early SSD rates. the Early EMMC models like in the tablet are comparable to the old mechanical HDD. As far as longevity, Emmc is at least as reliable as multi-platter HDD of the early 2000s. 7 years on my tablet with routine usage and working fine.
Some of those devices actually have NVMe drives so you can always grab one later on.
No, you need that extra drives as soon you buy that because it is unusable out of the box because running out of space,
If you see eMMC, run. No matter how much it saves it's not worth it. They die fast and can't be repaired without doing board level repair. You generally will not find an upgrade slot on a board like this either so once the eMMC dies, you may as well toss the laptop. Generally best you'll get for storage expansion is a micro sd slot.
I don't watch sports either. The Superbowl is a great time to good decent deals on semi fast food though.
Going to put this on at the next house party and do a shot every time Anthony says eMMC 👀
I have that exact same blue Dell Inspiron 31xx. 32GB of eMMC storage, 2GB of ram with an Intel Celeron processor. Runs Windows 11 fine(custom built with most bloatware removed).
I also have an AMD counterpart of it(Dell Inspiron 3180) with 32GB of emmc, 4GB of RAM with AMD A6 processor. Zorin OS Core runs smooth even with "Jelly Mode).
Both of which are like 5 years old already. The mechanical drive in my ASUS i5 7th, croaked after 2 years. The cheap SATA SSD I replaced it with still works though.
I run kubuntu on my 32gb tablet.
Saw a laptop last week that didn't have any other connectors on the motherboard, with the eMMC defective, into the e-waste dumpster it went. Along with the data that wasn't recoverable. It's funny, the people who buy these laptops, are also the people who don't invest because of lack knowledge or money into backups.
The current prices of SSD's will still outweigh the prices of eMMC. After all, eMMC is yester-year's tech
an emmc is when they don't want to put in an ssd, but still want to advertise solid state storage. its great for my sub $100 single board computers. not so much a laptop
my emmc windows tablet is still barely working after 6 years, although it wasn't used for like 2 years
Quick summary from experience: Stay away from devices with Celeron/Entry Level Pentium + eMMC. Nowadays there are simply better options even on a budget. If you only have around 200-300 bucks to spend, get a used device or a tablet instead
What about chromebooks? OS isn’t as heavy as Windows
@@lykoszero but they're chromebooks
@@lykoszero They are total garbage for most people unless you only want to do web browsing on it. Their build quality is terrible. OP is right that you get can a much better few years old laptop for the same price as a Chromebook, and you can do far more with it. Even better if it has a removable battery which are very rare these days.
Used thinkpad
@@lykoszero For lightweight browsing etc yes, but I would not recommend it. If you don't know anyone familiar with system administration it might be an option
The other flaw with eMMC is that the moment that storage gets unreliable (guaranteed to happen eventually due to wear, unless it is read-only), you basically lose all data on it unless you back it up. That basically renders the laptop into guaranteed e-waste because the chip can't (easily) be replaced.
I would consider any laptop which relies on it to be a net negative for the environment.
Edit: If you're about to reply to contradict me, I'd urge you to first read my reply to @Shayan's reply to this comment, below. Thanks! 😊👍
Well. For a normal casual user.. they probobly sont write very much to there ssd... and.. well reading isn't really an issue
If it's a cheap budget laptop it's already a negative for the environment
Odds are a laptop using eMMC is also using a very low end processor that will render the device unusable in a few years, and with Microsoft now only supporting windows 10 and 11 that laptop is bound for the landfill
And yea yea yea "but linux" and the answer to that is if someone is buying a cheap laptop they don't know what the hell a linux is
@@matsv201 Whether or not the user writes to it is irrelevant (though they exacerbate the problem) because operating systems tend to do lots of writes under normal operation, one big example is page/swap file usage which does A LOT of writing *very* frequently.
Pretty much the only good usage for emmc is for storing configuration files because they tend to change very rarely, or military applications such as in bombs or missiles because the computer is destroyed upon successful usage of the weapon anyway.
I have a Pinebook PRO that's based on an EMMC and it's very easy to replace... it's on a little carrier board that can be removed and replaced.
And yeah, it runs Linux so it's not constantly barfing data to the emmc. Also using log2ram so logs only get written to the EMMC on shutdown.
@@dfs-comedy Pine are company that makes hacky devices, so it's no wonder their implementation is easy to service. On most cheap laptops the eMMC is soldered to the motherboard directly
extra Mediocre Media Card
Now I know what emmc means
😂 👍
As somebody that owns an emmc laptop I agree with this message.
*wheeeeeze*
Yeah. Like 64gb? That’s lime windows and a browser and storage is full…
Spinning HDDs could be replaced with SATA SSDs by the user for a cheap and effective upgrade. eMMC can't be user upgraded, and very few of those super cheap laptops include a sata or m.2 connector. The eMMC itself isn't really the problem, since it's still flash storage just like any other SSD. The slow down is the single data lane. There's no controller, so data can't be sent in parallel.
Huh? EMMCs have 8 data lanes.
@DFS-Comedy do you know of any that actually have 8 lanes available? I found an article for a controller design, published in 2016, but to my knowledge all the commercially available products (and especially those that are cheap enough to create a use case over a regular ssd) have 1 read and 1 write lane.
Essentially just another way to create e-waste.
I came to write this very comment. Everything is true. Actually, I have a laptop with a Celeron N400 that was painfully slow to use, since aside being low-end, in this particular model is cooled pasively, so TDP is very limited.
Long story short, when the machine was basically unusable from any standpoint, I replaced the HDD with a cheap Kingston A400 240GB SSD, and it made wonders to the machine. As you mentioned, way easier to replace the HDD with an SSD thanks to the remaining Sata port, thing that laptops with eMMC won't allow.
@@chrism6880 AFAIK, the EMMC standard specifies 8 data lines. So all EMMC chips should have 8 data lines.
HDD: I'm known for being worse than an SSD
SSD: I'm known for better than an HDD
eMMC: I am worse than both HDDs and SSDs and only better than HDDs in a few cases because I am not mechanical
As EMMC storage wears it becomes slower and slower. Not a big deal for phones and tablets that aren't constantly writing to disk like windows does with it's background updates. I had a user come into the IT office a while back saying their computer was slow so I reformatted it and on fresh install it was still dog slow so I ran crystal disk mark and it came back with 35MB/s seq read speed which is basically dead. The computer was from 2018.
Uh...phones also are writing constantly to disk. Android probably does it more than Windows given how bloated Android is
@@silvy7394 but phones today are getting more storage than 32gb, and a bigger storage means a bigger lifespan. My phone stills has 16gb of storage but without social media, it works flawless.
@@Anas7ergun Uh, so whats your point? Even eMMC in a laptop isnt THAT unreliable. I ran a 32GB for years on my HS laptop. I hit that thing with a decent load of writes everyday, and its still going strong.
My argument was that a bloated Linux OS like Android IS going to write to the flash more than Windows. Especially because you're using it 5x more than a laptop.
@@silvy7394 yep, emmc phones are hot garbage. Nexus 6 was emmc
@@SharkWithADrill wym? all Androids / iphones are using Emmc storage
For the last 10 years it has been considered a war crime to use an emmc as an OS drive, the punishment is life imprisonment. Time to put PC vendors on trial. As a fellow non-sportsball fan I nominate Anthony to be judge and a Foxconn factory to be executioner.
So being worked to death ? Probably the worst death sentence.
A budget laptop with emmc storage is the slowest shit Ive ever had the displeasure of using.
I actively went out of my way to talk people out of buying them when I used to work at walmart electronics section. Even a freshly installed demo unit was barely usable
We should also send the CEOs of both Microsoft and Apple to the GNU/lag for their crimes against FOSS.
I had one end up on my desk for an OS wipe. I couldn't do built in because it needed free space... So I went old school and then found out Dell's own recovery image one of the only ways to install Windows on it doesn't seem to work lol
Oh god, death by overwork and poor work conditions. Brutal! 😳
Ok hear me out instead of including storage they should just include an SD card slot for it instead since the lifespan of eMMC isn't great and it's not replaceable whereas a cheap SD card could be replaced and upgraded repeatedly.
The Steam Deck has been showing that SD cards can be viable for more than just storing thousands of photos too.
Because people know what an SD card is and they wouldn't like that. But since they don't know what eMMC is, it sounds techlike and turns it into a "selling point".
It's a trick straight out of the monitor manufacturers playbook.
@paulelderson934 true but there's plenty of linux enthusiasts that would love a laptop with no on-board memory or a swappable SD card slot for the OS
@@paulelderson934 And even better; it's not upgradeable and when it breaks the whole thing is a brick!
Or that UFS memory card samsung was making
I made a set top box for my dad using a cheap SBC with eMMC. Despite the total price(approx £50), it really outpaces the speed of his TVs built in smart functions. He was getting really pissed off at how laggy it was.
Really useful for any kinda thin client machine.
it runs android? or it's x86?
@@namesurname4666 It's a second hand thin client x86 box. Can find 'em on Ebay for like £25($30 or so American).
LMG missing the salient point: emmc storage in low end laptops is often in low capacity, 64GB or even 32GB. 64GB is very hard to use in Windows for literally anything. 32GB is e-waste before you break the tape on the packaging. It is literally unusable. Windows will fail to update OOB. This is much more important than the speed concern.
Linux users can be okay.
I can confirm Linux is just fine. I have a decently-functional Linux installation on my Pinebook PRO and it's using 5.4GB out of my 64GB EMMC.
indeed. You can use a full fledged distro on just 16 GB if you want
Yea even my 85 gb ssd gets full with windows system files.
@@YounesLayachi No, you really don't want to.
@@qwertykeyboard5901 i did already, can't stop me now :D
Crap, that's what eMMC is
eMMC, a proud partner of mobile celerons and 4gb of ram
Like the atrocious GMA 9XX integrated graphics + first gen Atom
How can they justify only including 32gb when that isn't even enough to update Windows?
Exactly what I come to write. Linux may be an option but on these cheap craps secure boot can`t be always disabled. These craos are totally useless
Well, the most common justification is that:
"We're sorry that Windows Update is rendering your laptop useless for 30-60 minutes every month. Unfortunately, this model doesn't support storage extension, but we can offer you some really good USB storage at a convenient price. You can also store most of your useful data in the cloud and delete the applications you don't intend to use."
how can people put up with an operating system so bad it needs more than 32 GB just to update ?
@@YounesLayachi One drive compatibility, Google Drive compatibility, video games compatibility, third party software compatibility.
@@mac1991seth lol*4
had the displeasure of using emmc laptop... it was painfully slow, basically unusable. Even simplest tasks like opening up windows setings app to change default browser was taking a solid minute.
It could also be because it uses the cheapest single channel bottom of the bargain barrel 4Gb of RAM and a tablet-level CPU... While most likely running a Win10 or Win8 depending on the time you had it
@@NekoiNemo it is was win10.
It was reporting 100% disk usage all the time.
Sadly, in practice, that eMMC is barely 2 times faster than a cheap 2.5" HDD, except cheap 2.5" HDD has on average 500Gb capacity and can be upgraded to SSD should speed really become a problem (with 128 and 256Gb SSD being dirt cheap).... So by buying one with eMMC you're basically buying a piece of electronic waste with no upgrade path other than throwing it away and buying a new one in a year or two
Not true. Virtually every eMMC laptops I see, even from a few years ago, comes with both a Linux distro preinstalled (often the manufacturer's own custom distro, sometimes an off-the-shelf distro, and sometimes no OS whatsoever) on its eMMC, AND at least one upgrade option - either an M.2 slot, or SATA.
So in practice, if you don't want to use the eMMC, you can simply pop a new SSD in there and use that instead. No Windows, so you can just switch to your favorite distro.
A friend of mine bought one for his mother pre-pandemic. No OS, and had a SATA slot. He put Ubuntu on it, some additional codecs and it's good to go. His parents run a store, and used it to help with inventory management (and play some light games).
@@ts757arse They really don't. At that point you might as well just buy a tablet and an external keyboard - you're gonna get the same performance but with better battery life and an OS and software that are built to operate with those specs in mind
@@marioprawirosudiro7301 it would be nice to know which ones have those slots on the spec sheet and not have to dig around for the service manual to find out, tho.
Got any recommendations for a unit that has at least those (upgradeable RAM is a plus if also available)?
Lol, seq speed, yes its barely 2x faster, but random speed is much faster than 2x, boot os speed from emmc is closer to ssd than to hdd
@@ts757arse I think you are missing the point some of those laptops are essentially tablets without an SD card slot or a place for more storage running windows on 64gb of storage
I bought a second hand HP Stream 11 laptop a few years ago for next to nothing. A problem with this laptop is that Windows 10 occupies 20 Gb of the 32 Gb on its eMMC SSD. Up until a year ago this meant that it was almost impossible to update Windows 10 on its eMMC drive. You had to delete all none Windows 10 files from the eMMC drive before it was possible. It is now possible to update Windows 10 more easily because Microsoft will by default use an external removable drive to provide temporary storage for the update. In my case it used a plug in low profile 128 Gb USB 3 disk drive for temporary storage.
boohoo windows user suffering
@@YounesLayachi You know the same thing could be said to linux users
@@flyamericanair who knows maybe he is a Mac user, in which case how does it feel to run games on a Mac
@@flyamericanair I was able to do a full system update on a retrofitted chromebook with 2GB of space left without external using Manjaro and Arch. Meanwhile my mid tier Windows system that had multiple terabyte drives to utilize yet still popped the not enough space error, an issue that required reinstalling from a recovery stick to fix. So no, this is not the same for Linux users.
@@YounesLayachi However, that doesn't excuse you from being an unhelpful twat.
Simple..emmc = shitty grade nand storage...the end.
There's a reason why some laptop makers put it in their lowest priced laptops for many years straight
eMMC is the storage you find in majority of phones though, so it's not necessarily shitty
@@defnotatroll yes but for most phones these days it's a FAR better grade of it...not the same crap quality found in your 200.00 or less today's crappy netbooks
Installing linux on those is pretty much mandatory.
Windows 10 and up just love to keep constantly accessing the drive for all it's services like update processing, anti viruses, search indexing..so you end up with extra wear and just having to wait the system decide to load the stuff you asked it to.
let's just always assume that every video about computers is going to have a comment saying 'just install linux' and leave it at that without anyone actually making the comment. the world would be a better place.
This isn't necessarily needed. Linux does use I/O constantly but not "directly" instead partially. Some Linux programs like SystemD (most distros init system) does use I/O constantly for logging. While it isn't like what Windows does, it's not that much effective in anyway. A user never just stick with laptop just yo browse social media, UA-cam; most of these are bring done on phone nowadays, and 64 GB isn't a good storage size either.
Unless an extreme usecase, recommended to buy a laptop which have a replaceable SSD else I feel like eMMC just doesn't make sense to use, it'll just cost more to fix than buying a better one.
@@zaphenath6756 well people keep buying Windows for some reason, so clearly some people haven't gotten the message yet.
Linux is a pain for the average user to install on eMMC. The installer thinks the drive is external storage by default so you need to boot it from the flash drive and run some commands to mount the eMMC storage.
@Manny Morales I haven't tried many distros, but so far the Debian and Fedora-based installs worked flawlessly on my eMMC laptop. However, I did have issues installing Endeavour, which is Arch based btw. And even trying to use the standard Arch ISO both manually and through Archinstall, I couldn't get it to work. Maybe a limitation of Arch?.
I've not tried OpenSUSE or Gentoo, so IDK about those
I have a permanent emmc laptop. I'm here to tell you STAY THE FUCK AWAY from these laptops. I'm suffering so you don't have to..
Try Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu. I have a HP Stream type laptop & it even runs Linux Mint Cinnamon about 100% better than Windows 10.
@@brentsummers7377
The thing is I need windows 10
A crime.
eMMC Laptop, yes...run away
The problem is the longevity.
I've got plenty of laptops that are slower than hard drives because the eMMC storage has worn out.
And of course they wear out faster because they are typically full, because they aren't really big enough for a copy of windows in the first place.
You'd think formatting and reinstalling should provide some form of wear levelling that would improve the performance but I haven't found that to be the case.
The Steam Deck coming out showed how little people knew about eMMC. The amount of people who couldn't fathom an M.2 eMMC drive was astounding lol.
That's not just on people's lack of knowledge on eMMC, but also on people not understanding that M.2 is simply a connection standard, not an SSD type.
@@paulelderson934 True, for sure.
@@paulelderson934 Yeah. M.2 is just standard connectivity, not a SSD type. We only have Sata and NVME, nothing more than that
There is also mSATA but it's only a connector - still operates same as SATA
As someone who neither owns a Steam Deck nor researched it, I've gotta admit I was surprised when rewatching the video. eMMC not being attached via solder just doesn't compute, to me. The only experience I'd ever had with it was as being soldered into a product.
I’ve seen eMMC laptops with decent(ish) (256GB) amounts of storage and low to mid-tier processors for sale when I was shopping for my laptop. I absolutely REFUSED to even consider anything with soldered storage or RAM.
Picked up one with a Ryzen 5700u, a 512GB NVMe, and 16GB 3200Mhz removable RAM. It’s been a pretty good portable productivity machine.
@Zaydan Alfariz My point is - search around. Don’t buy eMMC just because. My laptop, IIRC, was in a similar price range as those with eMMC (other specs being similar).
@Zaydan Alfariz Probably lucky, TBH. It took some searching around to find the one I did get, as other models were a bit more expensive. It took me several days of searching and comparing specs and prices before settling on the machine that I bought.
My point is, unless you’re in a situation where you absolutely need a new laptop right now, and you don’t have much to spend, it could be worth it to shop around a bit. I’ll admit, though, that I don’t know how electronics prices are in Indonesia. Where I live, electronics are ridiculously expensive. I actually bought mine while my wife and I were abroad on vacation and it was literally half the cost of what I would have paid at home.
@Zaydan Alfariz I’m actually from the US, but I’ve lived in Iceland for the last 5 and a half years. My wife, who is the reason I moved to Iceland, is from Romania. She’s lived here for about 11 years.
Claim your “here within an hour” ticket right here🏆
Really?
Nice fake verification badge
Here!
No
Sure!?!!???
Great video! I also want to complement you guys on always including the credits for who worked on the video, more channels should do this!
The biggest issue is the amount they use. Woefully inadequate and essentially stops windows being able to be updated.
My problem is that eMMC usually tops out at 64Gb, but usually even less on retail hardware like HP's Stream notebooks. Once once windows or linux is on there, you get essentially no space for user files.
That's not exactly the case for every Linux distro.
Windows hogs up space; Linux doesn't have to. Debian and Lubuntu are two distros that I've used with my 64 GB HP Stream 14. Debian only took up 2GB of storage, while Lubuntu took up about 12 GB. It's more than enough to browse sites, watch UA-cam, touch up pics on GIMP, and get some C++ coding done among other things. It handles lightweight Linux distros a LOT better than it handled Windows 10.
I'd rather have the mechanical sata drive over the eMMC storage, as it can easily be swapped out with a $20 SSD.
Agree, i put sata ssd on external hdd enclosure ,even though the ssd is slow because it dont have dram it stil way faster than my external hdd. just make sure i use high quality external hdd cable
Offering laptops with only 32/64gb of non-upgradeable storage is incredibly wasteful... Those drives will fill up and become unusable pretty fast. That's just not enough space for a device to last very long.
I would say yes, eMMC should be avoided like the plauge, I don't know if things have improved but really when I tried it on an old windows tablet, it was just barely any faster than a 2.5mm hdd, the atom processor wasn't actually completely terrible, the storage was still the main bottleneck.
At least the cheap laptops with eMMC usually have a free m2 slot. Bought my gf a Jumper Ezbook Pro 3 in 2018 and after adding an SSD it ended up being a snappy and reliable machine that lasted her through nursing school. It’s still going strong today.
Thanks for the gen . 👍👍
I got one cracked from a liquidation auction and resold it. Had an m.2 in it already. Wish I would've seen your comment sooner as I would've set the m.2 as the boot drive for the older gentleman who bought it from me.
Yea but it can still be annoying since all the windows related stuff and some other programs will use the cd drive only and if its full it will cause issues even if your other drives have plenty of space.
Yes, it's a cost cutting and planned obsolescence measure that you need to avoid like the plague.
It's bad for consumers, doesn't give any benefit and makes your machine obsolete and not upgradeable way sooner than you'd want.
Just like soldered on RAM modules, which aren't even mentioned in spec sheets.
Avoid avoid
Having that little amount of non-upgradeable storage means you are gauranteed to run out of space one day when performing an update. It happened to a friend of mine and the laptop was basically useless for it's intended purpose (for school, required Windows and some base programs).
Even Windows 11 says it needs 64GB of minimum storage for OS installation only, with recommended storage of 120GB or higher
Soldered onto the motherboard and shorter lifespan should be more than enough to scream NO at anyone wanting to buy one of these types of "laptops"
At least with a SSD and even a normal HDD, when the drive dies you can easily replace it.
Not with eMMC!
A less tech-minded person would either end up taking to a repair centre who's probably solder a new chip in, or buy a full new laptop!
Both would be more than the cost of simply replacing a SSD/HDD.
This just contributes more to e-waste
TL;DR: shitty SSD’s for crappy laptops
Thank god, no fucking Waffle House in sight
In my experience eMMC is even slower than a decent mechanical drive. Although the newer eMMC standards have upped the bandwidth a bit, bottom of the barrel computers do not opt for the faster chips, and go for the same old eMMC 1.0 junk.
eMMC has killed my 75inch Android TV.
eMMC should not be used for any kind of devices that are expected to have any kind of long-term use.
Every time someone brings me a cheaper note/netbook with an EMMC, It's almost always unfixable because the main thing that goes is the built in flash storage. Either I install windows on a usb external drive and tape it to the machine (or use a usb flash device that must stay plugged in) or I tell them it's a paper weight. Once it goes then most the system aside from the ram and perhaps screen is useless and cannot be replaced.
I'm not sure how it is today, but when these became common in 2017-2018 a lot of retailers would advertise these cheaper laptops having SSD's when infact they had much inferior eMMC, quite infuriating.
I had a Chromebook with this type of storage. It's still doing it's thing about 5 years later... Though I barely ever use it.
Honestly, id rather just save up a few more dollars and get a proper SSD in the laptop/Steam deck. It just ain't worth it imho.
Anthony is a great host - well paced and articulate enough for novice users even with complex topics
eMMC computers are literally just dirt cheap laptops manufacturers to try and get consumers to just buy, use for maybe a year or two, then toss away and buy another when they fail. More to the point the Windows versions were made specifically to try and compete with Chromebooks when the later became so popular with consumers who only really needed just a browsing machine with a few extra features. The problem is, Windows eMMC systems are running the same hardware as Chromebooks (Celeron or maybe Pentium processors if you're willing to pay an extra $100-$200), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, but they're also running an OS that is monstrous in size compared to Chromebooks. Yes, they come preloaded with Windows S Mode, but that's still fundamentally a full version of windows in terms of OS functionality. The only difference is S Mode will only allow you to run MS Store apps, but the core of the OS itself is the same, and eMMC combined with the extremely weak processors and RAM simply aren't good enough. It's basically a con run by PC manufacturers to get consumers to buy cheap laptops knowing they have no longevity and the consumer will be spending even more money on a different PC MUCH sooner than if they just spent a little more to get a decent PC to begin with. Honestly, Celeron and Pentium processors shouldn't even be used in Windows computers at all anymore, nor should 4GB of RAM. They only make for extremely slow computers right from the moment you turn them on for the very first time and only get worse as time goes on. Really the only good use for any of these cheap Windows computers with this kind of hardware in it is to convert them either into a Chromebook (which isn't ideal since you don't get the Play Store option) or just make them Linux machines which are far more usable as an actual computer.
One important thing to note with eMMC storage is that 32 GB and 64 GB is nowhere nearly enough for modern (Windows) usage. Microsoft's OS will never let you miss an update and if you happen to use the 32 GB model, that space is gone in a matter of seconds. If you reduce the amount of BloatOS by deleting Microsoft Office and various components you never intended to use, the next update will install them right back up and 5 minutes later (because Windows update will throttle everything so hard, it will take at least 5 minutes to download your regular BloatOS) it will ask you if you have some spare USB device to download more BloatOS for update. And Windows updates regularly so be prepared for the same shit to happen next month. If you plan on using the cheap laptop in the long run, consider replacing the Windows it usually comes with, with any light Linux distro.
True i think 32gb is actually 28gb on windows and believe or not, just windows folder in my c partition already around 27gb
@@mrbobgamingmemes9558 Yeah, that's another thing. The advertised 32 GB is actually less, as per ThioJoe explanation. (ua-cam.com/video/M04JlWTRQEA/v-deo.html)
@@mac1991seth i know about that byte nonsense, i dont understand why would you(laptop brand) built a product that unusable out of the box, it is like buying car that use scooter engine
@@mrbobgamingmemes9558 For the same reason people buy them. It's cheap, it's easy to market and you can always blame the user.
@@mac1991seth i think they buy it without knowing how terrible it is , they expect it to be atleast usable when in reality it is not becaus ethey are soo noob in tech
These laptops aren’t an issue running chrome OS but any version of windows 7-11 completely overwhelmed the process with Windows updates
i have one that was given to me by a friend, a lil DellI Inspiron with an a6 9220e and a 32gb Emmc and has 4gb ram. i managed to make it tolerable by using a script to shave down the Win10 install image, cutting out things like telemetry etc, and adding a 64gb MicroSD. It's tolerable and can even play games like Untitled Goose Game and older stuff like Prince Of Persia Two Thrones, but i mainly use it as an 'Edgebook', adding sites as an app. But it's great on vacation, had it up to the cabin for Thanksgiving and was not bored, to say the least.
The biggest drawback to eMMC is the capacity. 32/64/128G is absolutely nothing
I remember putting an super lite Windows 7 on an sd card and it was emmc of 15 years ago
I know it's been said a million times, but I'll say it a million more. I love Anthony as a TechQuickie host.
techquickie, full LTT episode, shorts, shortcircuit etc
You missed out one of the biggest issues of onboard embedded storage.
If ONE other chip pops on that laptop or it gets a power surge and the laptop doesnt turn on anymore. Your data is toast. Because you cannot simply remove the drive, and plug it into a USB adapter on another machine and rescue the information of it.
Now yes, in the sense of chromebooks where all your data streams to the cloud. And on windows we can have onedrive, dropbox etc.. Users will be users, and will frequently not do this or backup their stuff. I have saved countless amount of peoples information when laptops have failed by removing the drive. So for me, embedded is a big no no no no.
I had experience with one of this laptops it was the 32gb model and after windows updated you had like 4 gigs left i used an usb stick as another storage drive that enabeled more ram and file storage and an external 100gb ssd for games and stuff it had a celeron with integrated graphics and ran sims 4 at 20ish fps civ 4 was better and nfsu1 was quite nice too so in fairness for older or indie games not a bad pc just need to reinstal windows each time instead of updating oh also died in 2 years
dead in 2 years xD, that's pretty bad
Just install Linux. Linux only used able 10GB of the space for itself, leaving you with 20GB. It will also run much faster.
@@bardockshiny i mean it was only 100e at the time so i guess it served its purpose
Cheap a** laptop is great for office work gaming hell no and emmc awesome
AliExpress SDs imo
Anthony is the only reason I watch LTT Media group's Videos 🙏
At least mechanical HDD has capacity of 256/512 GB.... I would avoid this as new plague (recommendation for other ppl). IMHO, booting live Linux distro from the USB is much better option than eMMC.
Link to 256 or 512 GB HDD, please.
(Good luck with that, btw)
A eMMC is just a SD card or usb stick pretending to be a SSD. This is a deciding point for Windows because it is not willing to install on either. It is also not a thing you want to expect to last a while: No SMART or spare sectors whatsoever. If it breaks you can kiss the whole mainboard goodbye, unless manufacturers who actually care, employ a slot for a M.2 SSD. Cheers for the upload!
Its not "random read", random read is as fast as sequencial read, because thats how NAND flash works.
What makes SSD/eMMC fast - is not sequencial blocks access speed, its PARALLELISM. or queue depth. If you can parallel your nand access, you will get full speed.
eMMC has bad latency, which often mistaken with random read speed. 4KQD1 is slow not because of random, its because of QD1.
old eMMC write latency can be a lot worse than HDD seek time(10-20ms).
Meanwhile, back in reality, contiguous read always has and always will be faster than random read on any form of NAND or Optane device.
Also, I'm laughing really hard at you pretending to be smart and spelling it 'sequencial' and 'you can parallel'.
@@tim3172 many times real SSD speed is slow because application wait one chunk of data from ssd to request another.
SSD queue is almost empty most of the time, and full only on large file read/write.
The only point of these laptops to format its storage to F2FS, developed with eMMC flaws in mind, thus stretching its longevity, which requires Linux-based OS.
I find this interesting because the smartphones we all know and love use eMMC for much of their storage… in fact, some versions of eMMC would put perform the competing UFS standard that was also available in both read and write times…
iPhone uses a full and proper SSD. There is an integrated SSD controller in the A and M dies.
finally tossed an ssd into my netbook (the hdd fonally started failing) and OH MY GOD IS IT FAST! who knew an atom n455 was actually capable of being a snappy processor.
It's a ticking time bomb. I have one of those collecting dust once the eMMC crapped out.
I fix and refurbish laptops and PCs as a hobby and I have a laptop with a dead eMMC. I'm in limbo with regards to refurbishing it as the eMMC chip itself is uneconomical to replace (No special equipment, would need to source and configure the correct chip) and because Acer never bothered to solder in circuitry/ports for the absent HDD space I can't just plop one in either (would be a PITA to source the tiny components for that too). I fully support user replaceable parts and repairability as these things are practically e-waste waiting to happen.
Lmao 🤣 I don't watch sports. I don't think many of us watch sports. 😂
Capacity is way too small if you're doing anything more than web browsing. And even then, it's not really enough over time. IMO the minimum storage capacity is 256GB
When review channels don't even know what they're talking about. I, too, thought EMMC is soldered to the mobo, but sometimes it ISNT. Like with the 64gb steam deck, the "emmc" isn't soldered in WHATSOEVER because it still uses the pcie m.2 interface.
Yeah but the eMMC chip is soldered onto a breakaway board that converts its pinout to m.2, just like the Switch has a separate board to its eMMC chip that converts it to a proprietary pinout
I bought a cheap ASUS E410-MA Celeron N4020 laptop which has a 64GB eMMC drive. I installed a cheap PCI-E NVME SSD and cloned the eMMC drive to it. Then, I made the SSD the boot drive. I left the eMMC drive intact as a backup boot drive in case the SSD fails prematurely. Plus, I took off the eMMC drive's letter in Disk Manager so that it's invisible to other users.
😊 I don't watch sports either, except for F1 NHRA, etc but it's surprising I might be able to on one of these . But the TV is my choice.
Thanks for the info 👍 😀
I remember when them painfully slow mechanical hard drives were considered not just fast but super fast… I’m old lol
I'd rather it all be on a removable SD card. It might be even slower, but at least I can swap it out when it reaches it's lifespan limit, upgrade it, etc. Permanently soldered components sucks.
I called b******* on the fact that the steam deck uses EMMC because it's been reported that you can remove the 64 GB module and put a different SSD in there if you want to so therefore if it's removable it can't be embedded.
Having moved from a laptop with a HDD to one with a SSD and a laptop with eMMC, I am much happier with both options since startup is just that much faster, as well as most programs opening.
When it comes to laptops, specially the cheaper ones, I'd rather get one with one of those old small hard drives rather than soldered components that don't need to be and are easy to replace, I can live with a soldered CPU or GPU, but soldered ram or system storage just cuts down the system's life expectancy with no real upsides in my economy, maybe in a country where hardware is easy to replace and a cheap laptop is not worth more than double the minimum wage I could justify buying something like that purely as a web browsing/remote access tool.
Just noo... they're horriable for the every day customer. I tell people to stay away from it like rat trying to bite you. The fact is if it fails its done... there is no upgrading or fixing that issue once its done and dead. The other fact is that it does die faster ! Like that isnt a good design at all for something that is design to be "cheap" when you have to replace it every other year. The issues it that it is small in size. I've seen windows have issues just doing update on the smaller versions. Sorry, I have to disagree with this video with my thumbs down... this should've never went up man.
Emmc was common on Android smartphone. I am using my note 5 pro for 4+ years with heavy use it's still working just perfectly finely.
64 GB of storage is just not enough for modern Windows, the OS itself can fill that up. These extremely cheap laptops are a trap for older people.
I didn't even know eMMC was used in anything but Raspberry pis and other SBCs until this video. It is great for limited space that you want to or need to remove the SD card slot used for the boot media to fit into
How many websites can 64 gb storage hold...?
Do a more informative video.
Before watching this video I have to say that usually E stands for external so I'm very confused.
My USB 3 hard drive is faster than my emmc storage in my Chromebook.
eMMC laptops are fine for a console machine, streaming media, or a basic emulator box if the processor is decent enough, but outside that I can't see much use for them
it doesn't seem too bad as it allows people to cheaply get a modern laptop, however im concerned that creating such "disposable" devices will just create a ton of e-waste
Downvote, because various eMMC modules are as slow as older SD cards and slow down a system even more compared to a HDD. Yes, avoid eMMC at all cost
It would literally be better if they just soldered an sd card adapter on the motherboard and gave the ability of changing the sd card out when it dies.
These are just landfill e-waste
you also forgot that the longer you use it the slower it becomes.
i have a few old laptops at work that have these 32gb emmc chips and they are now beaten in terms of speed by a 5200rpm hard drive