Pocket Reform first impressions
Thursday, June 12, 2025I first became aware of the 7-inch MNT Pocket Reform laptop through a Blaugust post by Andy Piper. I was immediately intrigued by its mechanical ortholinear keyboard and trackball, and its promise of reparability. But there was no way I could justify it at that price.
Anyway, I was still thinking about it two months later, and ended up buying it, justification be damned.
Fulfillment of the order took over 6 months, apparently due to a large backlog as well as global chuip shortages — as a small producer, I'm guessing MNT are hit hard by these issues. After that wait, the processor module arrived damaged. Bummer. Anyway, MNT replaced it promptly and I was only stuck waiting a couple more weeks while the replacement processor cleared customs again (thanks, Brexit!).
I constructed the DIY device and it is now in my hands. Here's how I've been enjoying it and how I have set it up.
Initial construction
I built the device using the clear instructions provided. The only bit that seemed out of date was the wifi antenna provided was not long enough to affix to the photographed location, but I just stuck it somewhere else and the wifi has been fine. The only customisation I made at this stage was to fix a matte screen protector, as the screen included does not have anti-glare (apparently no one is making open-source 7-inch anti-glare screens). I think I pressed a bit too hard trying to squeeze the bubbles out of the protector as there is some discoloration at the edges of my screen in those spots, but I can really only see it on the initial pure-black screen that appears at boot, can't see it during use so it's not a big deal.
The processor and motherboard are in the lid, for better thermals when used on the lap. The base of the machine houses the batteries.
The keyboard
My first move when I had successfully booted the device was to customise the keyboard layout at the firmware-level. The handbook (yes, it has a physical handbook!) had clear instructions for how to do this (otherwise I'd definitely have had no idea), and it worked first try. The default keyboard layout is fine. However, I have other ortho- keyboards so it makes sense to have the same layout across all of them. My main keyboard is a ZSA Moonlander I picked up second-hand. The Pocket Reform has 60 keys, the Moonlander has 72 keys, but as luck would have it I only use 60 of them, so I have configured the Moonlander firmware and Pocket Reform firmware to have the same layout. The Pocket Reform's keyboard firmware is not as advanced as the Moonlander (which uses QMK) so I've switched to a very basic layout at firmware-level, and then use Kanata — an excellent software-level keyboard configuration tool — to configure the advanced QMK-style features for both of them (the reduced number of keys means some keys do double duty depending on whether tapped or held).
The keyboard feels great quality. The only hump is... this thing is tiny! Typing on it is taking some practice. But I actually kind of love the tiny form factor, as the reason I got into ortho- keyboards in the first placed was to reduce the amount of pain from stretching my hands, and obviously a smaller keyboard takes less stretching. The keycaps are all the same, there are no home-row bumps, so I put stickers on my F and J keys to feel them out, which is working fine. Changing the colour of the key-switch LEDs is a pleasure — just hold down a particular key and roll the trackball to change the colour! So cute.
Software
Due to being novel hardware, the MNT Pocket Reform currently runs on Debian Unstable with kernel patches. This means I'm being a little more careful with what I install than usual, and using apt-listbugs to avoid buggy updates. Hopefully one day we'll be able to switch to something more stable.
Another difficulty is the ARM64 architecture of the processor. Some applications I rely on don't have ARM64 builds, so I'm having to find workarounds. Bitwarden I can use from the browser, and I'm working on adapting a script to wrap the CLI version with an fzf interface. pCloud is more of a problem as I simply cannot mount the cloud storage as a drive without the native app. For Linux they only provide an x64 AppImage.
When I first got the device it had two options for desktop environments: Wayfire and sway. Since I already use sway as my main desktop, this was an obvious choice, especially as my system immediately felt cosy and familiar by just copying over a couple of config files. Then after a week I ran my first update, which also installed GNOME. I wasn't too keen on this just being installed as part of a regular software update, as it means my device now had 3 desktop environments installed. I removed GNOME pretty much immediately, and I'll probably do the same for Wayfire. However, I do think including GNOME as an option from the get-go is a good thing. It is a popular desktop for a reason and makes the device more accessible to people who haven't convinced themselves that sway is a good idea.
Due to being a 7-inch fanless laptop with relatively limited battery life (a size constraint), I'm trying to keep my software requirements minimal, in terms of both quantity and resource use. I'm using some great TUI applications as replacements for stuff I'd usually do on GUI.
Current default applications are
rmpc, an excellent TUI music player (with album art!)- Claws Mail, lightweight email client.
ncspot, a TUI Spotify client (as I don't yet have enough of my own music to not rely on Spotify for some things)newsboat, TUI feed readerneovim, natch, which I'm currently writing this post in- Syncthing, for syncing things.
yazi, TUI file browseryadm, a dotfiles manager that wraps git. This one has been great as it allows you to create dotfile templates, with similar syntax to jinja or nunjucks. These are evaluated dynamically on each device, so I can maintain a single file (e.g my sway or kanata config) that will appear with minor differences on each machine when I pull from my dotfile repo.- Zathura, minimal pdf viewer.
- KOreader, ebook reader
- Librewolf, web browser with my vimified setup.
I'm trying to keep things like chat applications off the device to make a it a bit more intentional, for readng, writing, coding for fun, and so on. And obviously the tiny screen makes it unsuitable for some tasks like photo editing.
It's not for everyone
The trailer for the device on the MNT website claims it is suitable for a "beginner" or "advanced user". In its present state, it's certainly not a device for a beginner, though being a very advanced user is probably not necessary either. I'd say it's currently suitable for an enthusiast of Linux and/or fun hardware. Until we have, say, Linux Mint or Ubuntu running on this thing, I don't think we can claim to be super beginner friendly. I am also not sure what the situation is with accessibility (I didn't notice any accessibility options during the initial setup but I may have overlooked them).
There's one major feature that is still missing. The processor module, the powerful Rockchip RK3588, does not currently have support for power management options like suspend and hibernate. From what I can gather, people who understand this kind of thing are working on it. But given the battery life isn't fantastic in the first place, this feature can't come quick enough.
I do consider suspend and/or hibernate to be essential, and their absence would be a dealbreaker if I didn't enjoy using this machine so much. Tapping away on my tiny laptop with its tiny ortholinear keyboard feels great, even if I am still making typos all the time. I love how boxy and robust it feels, and how it easy it was to put together (and hence how easy it will be to repair when the time comes). My other laptop is now docked for the foreseeable future — for all my on-the-go needs now I reach for the Pocket.