Hardware specs:
Form factor
The shell is mixed aluminum and plastic, very sturdy. Compared to my Lafite IV, it's more heavyweight but also feels more robust.
There are NumLock and CapsLock LEDs on the inside (yay, this is one thing my Lafite IV didn't have) but pretty much no other LEDs: when the lid is closed, there's no telling whether the laptop is switched on and/or whether the battery is charging. That's unfortunate, but not a big deal.
Keyboard
The keyboard backlight is shiny and very configurable. The keyboard features a numeric keypad, which I personally like but I guess it might be considered not a great use of "keyboard estate" by others. The presence of the numeric keypad does take some room from other things, most notably the right shift key is much shorter than you'd find on a normal keyboard, because it's kind of "compacted together" with the arrow keys.
Touchpad
The touchpad is a little shifted to the left of the laptop, which makes it sort-of aligned to the keyboard (the left edge is roughly aligned to the 'F' key; the right edge is orughly aligned to the 'L' key). Compared to my Lafite IV, this is a big quality of life improvement, because it's now much less likely that you'll accidentally tap the touchpad with your right palm while typing. The touchpad doesn't have physically-recognizable buttons for clicking (it looks like a uniform pad). There's no embedded fingerprint reader (I wouldn't use it anyway, so to me that's an advantage).
Screen
The screen is OK, the bezels are in plastic and they are decently-narrow. Keep in mind that this screen is on the cheap side of the spectrum, but for normal use (browsing, working with text editors and IDEs, occasionally playing videos) I'd say it does its job egregiously. I haven't tried any games, but I wouldn't expect high performance there.
Ports and connectivity
Like most Clevo laptops, connectivity is amazing.
* 2 USB 3.1 ports, A-type connector
* 1 USB 2 port, A-type connector
* 1 Thunderbolt port, USB-C connector
* 1 Microphone / Headphones 3mm jack
* 1 HDMI port
* 1 mini-DisplayPort
* 1 SD reader port
* 1 RJ45 Ethernet port
* 1 Kensington lock
* 1 "barrel" port for the power adapter
* WiFi adapter supporting both WiFi 6 and Bluetooth
* Embedded full HD webcam
* Embedded TPM device (I'm not using that)
The "barrel" port for the charger is a bit of a pity, I'd have preferred an additional USB-C / Thunderbolt port, since the laptop does support drawing power from USB-C.
BIOS
Bios is Insyde H20 version 1.07.11iTPCS1.
It's pretty stripped down to the bare essentials, but the most useful options (at least to me) are available.
I didn't have to change any settings to be able to install Linux, except disabling SecureBoot.
Service
As usual, PC Specialist has been very professional handling the order throughout.
The packaging was really good. Compared to my Lafite IV, there's fewer pieces of paper, no CDs, and more links to websites where you can download the material (that's appreciated!).
Software specs:
Installing Manjaro was essentially an exercise in clicking the "Next" button. Most of the things work straight out of the box
* wifi / bluetooth / Ethernet
* power from USB-C
* USB-C / Thunderbolt docking
* sound card
* graphics card
* sensors (battery, thermal, ...)
* Fn+F2, Fn+F8, Fn+F9 (turn off/on the display, adjust display brightness)
* Fn+F3, Fn+F5, Fn+F6 (mute/unmute audio, adjust volume)
* Fn+F10 (turn off/on camera)
* Fn+F11 (turn off/on wifi and bluetooth)
* Fn+F12 (suspend to RAM)
But don't just take my word for it, check out the hw-probe output
Installing the tuxedo-keyboard kernel module also enables
* Fn+F1 (turn touchpad off/on)
* Fn+numeric keypad /, *, -, + (toggle keyboard backlight, rotate colors, adjust brightness)
Overall rating
Great value for the money, I keep being pleased by the items I purchase from PC Specialist. I would definitely recommend this laptop to any Linux user who doesn't have gaming needs.
| Chassis & Display | Initia Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel® Core™ i5 10-Core Processor i5-1235U (3.3GHz) 12MB Cache |
| Memory (RAM) | 16GB PCS PRO SODIMM DDR4 3200MHz (1 x 16GB) |
| Graphics Card | Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (DUAL CHANNEL RAM) OR Intel® UHD Graphics (SINGLE CHANNEL RAM) |
| 1st M.2 SSD Drive | 512GB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 4700MB/sW) |
Form factor
The shell is mixed aluminum and plastic, very sturdy. Compared to my Lafite IV, it's more heavyweight but also feels more robust.
There are NumLock and CapsLock LEDs on the inside (yay, this is one thing my Lafite IV didn't have) but pretty much no other LEDs: when the lid is closed, there's no telling whether the laptop is switched on and/or whether the battery is charging. That's unfortunate, but not a big deal.
Keyboard
The keyboard backlight is shiny and very configurable. The keyboard features a numeric keypad, which I personally like but I guess it might be considered not a great use of "keyboard estate" by others. The presence of the numeric keypad does take some room from other things, most notably the right shift key is much shorter than you'd find on a normal keyboard, because it's kind of "compacted together" with the arrow keys.
Touchpad
The touchpad is a little shifted to the left of the laptop, which makes it sort-of aligned to the keyboard (the left edge is roughly aligned to the 'F' key; the right edge is orughly aligned to the 'L' key). Compared to my Lafite IV, this is a big quality of life improvement, because it's now much less likely that you'll accidentally tap the touchpad with your right palm while typing. The touchpad doesn't have physically-recognizable buttons for clicking (it looks like a uniform pad). There's no embedded fingerprint reader (I wouldn't use it anyway, so to me that's an advantage).
Screen
The screen is OK, the bezels are in plastic and they are decently-narrow. Keep in mind that this screen is on the cheap side of the spectrum, but for normal use (browsing, working with text editors and IDEs, occasionally playing videos) I'd say it does its job egregiously. I haven't tried any games, but I wouldn't expect high performance there.
Ports and connectivity
Like most Clevo laptops, connectivity is amazing.
* 2 USB 3.1 ports, A-type connector
* 1 USB 2 port, A-type connector
* 1 Thunderbolt port, USB-C connector
* 1 Microphone / Headphones 3mm jack
* 1 HDMI port
* 1 mini-DisplayPort
* 1 SD reader port
* 1 RJ45 Ethernet port
* 1 Kensington lock
* 1 "barrel" port for the power adapter
* WiFi adapter supporting both WiFi 6 and Bluetooth
* Embedded full HD webcam
* Embedded TPM device (I'm not using that)
The "barrel" port for the charger is a bit of a pity, I'd have preferred an additional USB-C / Thunderbolt port, since the laptop does support drawing power from USB-C.
BIOS
Bios is Insyde H20 version 1.07.11iTPCS1.
It's pretty stripped down to the bare essentials, but the most useful options (at least to me) are available.
I didn't have to change any settings to be able to install Linux, except disabling SecureBoot.
Service
As usual, PC Specialist has been very professional handling the order throughout.
The packaging was really good. Compared to my Lafite IV, there's fewer pieces of paper, no CDs, and more links to websites where you can download the material (that's appreciated!).
Software specs:
$ neofetch
██████████████████ ████████
██████████████████ ████████ ----------------
██████████████████ ████████ OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
██████████████████ ████████ Host: Initia Ii 15
████████ ████████ Kernel: 6.9.5-1-MANJARO
████████ ████████ ████████ Uptime: 6 days, 22 hours, 17 mins
████████ ████████ ████████ Packages: 1170 (pacman)
████████ ████████ ████████ Shell: bash 5.2.26
████████ ████████ ████████ Resolution: 1920x1080
████████ ████████ ████████ DE: Plasma 6.0.5
████████ ████████ ████████ WM: KWin
████████ ████████ ████████ Theme: Breeze [GTK2/3]
████████ ████████ ████████ Icons: breeze [GTK2/3]
████████ ████████ ████████ Terminal: konsole
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i5-1235U (12) @ 4.400GHz
GPU: Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [UHD Graphics]
Memory: 6174MiB / 15699MiB
Installing Manjaro was essentially an exercise in clicking the "Next" button. Most of the things work straight out of the box
* wifi / bluetooth / Ethernet
* power from USB-C
* USB-C / Thunderbolt docking
* sound card
* graphics card
* sensors (battery, thermal, ...)
* Fn+F2, Fn+F8, Fn+F9 (turn off/on the display, adjust display brightness)
* Fn+F3, Fn+F5, Fn+F6 (mute/unmute audio, adjust volume)
* Fn+F10 (turn off/on camera)
* Fn+F11 (turn off/on wifi and bluetooth)
* Fn+F12 (suspend to RAM)
But don't just take my word for it, check out the hw-probe output
Installing the tuxedo-keyboard kernel module also enables
* Fn+F1 (turn touchpad off/on)
* Fn+numeric keypad /, *, -, + (toggle keyboard backlight, rotate colors, adjust brightness)
Overall rating
Great value for the money, I keep being pleased by the items I purchase from PC Specialist. I would definitely recommend this laptop to any Linux user who doesn't have gaming needs.
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