Mike Warner has posted a few images of his new shiny Teclast F5 on his twitter account that he was lucky enough to get already. From the photos posted and what Mike has confirmed, the fully laminated display is rather decent for 1080p, the bottom bezel as expected is rather large and the build quality overall is good.
He also checked the SSD and confirmed it’s only the 2242 SATA3 M.2 size, no room for 2260 and the 2280 ones. It’s Teclast’s own brand of SSD but it will be easy to upgrade to a 256GB or 512GB one if you want more than the 102GB or so free you get.
A shot of the Teclast F5 in tablet mode, screen folded over.
Mike ordered the first pre-order pack so it came with a few goodies. The stylus, a case, mouse with mousepad and a screen protector. The laptop is back on sale at Gearbest for $329 but no more free pre-order items thrown in.
And how the Teclast F5 fairs in size compared to other laptops.
On top of each other to see the size difference and a view from the side to see the thickness of the laptops. The F5 is very dinky. pic.twitter.com/iV2rZD1RQJ
— Michael Warner (@mikekwarner) August 29, 2018
Mine still hasn’t shipped out, but I’m told it’s this week so look for a video on it then. Full credits to Mike for these images. So far it seems the main weakness of this laptop is the small 29Wh battery and lack of full USB ports.
ChubChubKitty
Everything seems to work out of the box in Ubuntu 18.04.1 MATE (wifi, touchscreen, trackpad) except waking from suspend. I’m on 4.18.10-041810-generic I’ve used the stock 18.04.1 kernel and it seems to work the same as 4.18. Is suspend to ram working for people? I may have mucked up my bios settings – there’s so many options!
G
hello, I tried various distro, even rolling with last kernel, tried live Ubuntu 18.04.1 MATE but to me touchscreen and wifi still do not work.
Did you change something on the bios or settings? which version of Bios do you use?
Thanks G
CEN
DON’T try changing the BIOS settings for the wifi-card!
I now have a bricked Teclast F5 in doing so 🙁
After changing some settings for the wifi-card in order to get it detected in linux I end up with a black screen on boot and nothing more (than the right blue LED showing that it has power). No BIOS information or anything. I have no idea what to do.
primo
What version in bios do you have is it 3.05?
CEN
Mine from the first batch:
on starting screen it says: Version 2.20.1270. Copyright (C) 2018 American Megatrend, Inc. BIOS Date 06/06/2018 14:45:18 Ver: 3BAP3003
In the BIOS menu it states the following:
BIOD Vendor: TECLAST
Core Version: 5.13
Compliancy: UEFI 2.6: PI 1.4
Project Version: tPAD 3.05
Build Date and Time: 06/06/2018 14:45:18
Carlos Barbosa
@chrisg have received your Teclast F5 yet?
I´m freaking out with the Gearbest after sale service, i have ordered mine on September 6 and it hasn’t been shipped yet, consecutive delays and postponed shipping dates? Does anyone have a different feedback. The latest information is that they will probably ship it In October!! probably wont get the notebook till November.
filn
Did anyone else noticed the coating coming off from the plastic top cover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuIHWbAC1Ic
Translated:
(-) On the loops some kind of crappy coating – it’s removed with a fingernail ..
(-) The top cover of the keyboard unit is similar to plastic and sold around the edges for a week of use.
(-) The screen is covered with plastic – there were small scratches. There is no oleophobic coating. It is advisable to glue the protective glass.
() In the tablet mode, the keyboard is blocked (for some reason it behaved differently when unpacking).
Carlos Barbosa
Hello.
I´m thinking of buying this notebook and trying to find out what is the charger standard. Now in the unboxing and reviews that i found on Youtube it´s EU Plug, but Gearbest could not confirm that.
Those of you that bought from Gearbest, and already received it what can you tell me?
Thanks
CEN
it uses the USB-C port for charging. I use the charger I had for my hi13. If you use your own charger be sure it has Power Delivery (PD).
Carlos Barbosa
I know it uses de USB-C, i want to know if it is EU Plug or some other type. Those of you that bought it from Gearbest, and already received it what can you tell me?
Chris G
I think it’s an EU plug but will confirm next week.
Xfade
German reviewer got one from Gearbest and he got EU plug charger.
Carlos Barbosa
@xfade i saw that review on Youtube.
Abdulaziz Najmi
I bought one from Gearbest and I got EU.
Étienne
Hello Carlos, it comes with a EU plug and by default of my country they added a U.S.Plug.. it’s an incredible PC. You will be overly surprised and happy with this purchase. I think it’s great!
CEN
correction: two finger scrolling on touchpad works since last software update today.
davidlt
That’s for Windows or Linux? Also post information about your distro (and kernel) so that people would know what to test.
CEN
That is on KUbuntu 18.04.1 using kernel 4.18.5 … meanwhile using 4.18.6 but still no wifi and no touchscreen…
Xfade
Hey Chris, i was browsing a local grocery store’s site for deals and found this one: https://aldi.medion.com/md62450/nl/?wt_mc=nl.coop.md62450.anl.hp_txtl oddly similar to this F5. Same manfucaturer i guess. The specs are a bit below the F5.
Xfade
Aw never mind, it’s also bigger. Does remind me of another laptop though.
CEN
Hi, I got them both (right now writing on the E3222) but will discard this device again in favor of the Teclast F5. The E3222 is just a big too big for me after using the F5. Oh and the F5 is wonderfully light.
One advantage of the E3222 is the slightly better keyboard. Apart from having my language keys the travel of the keys and their dampening is better. In Kubuntu the Wifi works out of the box (which does not on the F5). Trackpad does register touch but no clicks. Touchscreen works out of the box.
Tomasz Tylenda
Hi, do you have any possibility to check the colours of the screen (e.g. with a colorimeter)? From what I saw in Michael Warner’s twitter, it seemed the display has a blueish colour cast.
CEN
I do not have a colorimeter, sorry. My glasses have a bluelight filter (good for working on the screen in the evening) so I wouldn’t see a blueish screen.
gianluca della pietà
Hi, does F5 suffer of thermal throttling? have you tried some stress test?
thanks
Chris G
I’ll be sure to test this out when I finally get mine.
Simon
I’m pretty sure they suffer from thermal throttling because even macbook does. The only way to solve this problem is use the software previously available to apollo lake to unlock the tdp (6w).
CEN
Hi there, ALDI ist going to bring out a device quite similar to the Teclast F5 at the end of september next week. It is the:
MEDION AKOYA E2294
also a 12inch convertible with a N5000 CPU but only 4 GB RAM – else I would have got it and sold my F5 where I still cannot get the Wifi-Module to work under KUbuntu :/
Chris G
Interesting must from the same ODM I think they are South Korean.
Chris G
Oh that is the Jumper X1 I think!
filn
Some owners in a Russian forum talk about 3h 4h ou battery. They also see high temps in some workloads.
CEN
I get 5 – 8 h in KUbuntu with low screen brightness depending on tasks. Windows also states 5 – 8 h in the taskbar but haven’t tried Windows that long yet.
davidlt
Does keyboard turn off once you got into tablet mode?
Does screen rotation work properly?
CEN
In Windows (fresh installation onto new m.2 ssd had problems but once the updates were through) that works without problems. Keyboard turns off and rotation is working in all directions.
In KUbuntu: no (not yet).
Rob
Looking forward to your review on this, Chris. I’m thinking of getting this one, in spite of my comments below.
That lower bezel, wow! Can you use it for post-it notes, or install a small whiteboard with some double sided tape? Chris, you’re handy on opening these things up, maybe you can offer a video on turning that space into a cable storage compartment, lol.
Chris G
Cable storage management 🙂 Well mine still hasn’t shipped it seems. Not sure what is going on with Gearbests stock.
Rob
Personally, I’ve quit ordering from GearBest. Their “in stock” status is very flexible. It *might* be in stock within the next two weeks is a better translation. If you make the mistake of ordering multiple items, they will drag your whole order out. I’ve also had problems with them on items not arriving and bad service with defective items, requiring a paypal dispute to get them to actually communicate. No more GearBest for me.
BangGood, on the other hand, seems to actually ship items and has something in stock when they say they do. I have switched to them, although they don’t seem to get the tablets and laptops first like GearBest. So, not first, but I can rely on them when I can order it. I checked the Teclast F5 and they had it in stock, but the pricing engine had it at a ridiculous $400US. Oddly they had the Cube iWork3x (12″ N3450 including keyboard) for $319US so that thing actually appeared, but it’s a chip back (Apollo vs Gemini Lake) so maybe they are blowing them out to get ready for a new Cube model.
davidlt
There are a couple more unboxing videos on YouTube, incl. one tear down of the device, 15 min stress testing to check throttling and temperatures on the device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5erQerC-pM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blm76V9hrHs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiguW89hykQ
For the Linux you want to use the latest kernel (not Ubuntu 18.04 LTS).
There are few things I noticed:
– They keyboard didn’t disable in tablet mode (?)
– Is there a gyro to rotate the screen to various positions? I haven’t seen that in videos, I think.
CEN
I tried KUbuntu 18.04.1 on it and it does not load the wifi module. Touchscreen also does not work. Is this better with a newer kernel?
davidlt
There was a report 2017 March on Ubuntu about GDIX1001 not working (touch screen). It used to work with 16.04 LTS (you can verify that). Someone tested the kernel with the following results: “Seems to stop working after kernel 4.5.0, But works on 4.4.58.”
Now based on that report I see that kernel had a fix potentially related to this issue. That landed in 2018 Jan. so touchscreen might be fixed. I would suggest grabbing a daily Ubuntu or Fedora builds with 4.18 / 4.19 kernel to test it out.
Touchpad (HTIX5288) seems to be common for Chinese brands (Chuwi, Jumper, etc.) It seem to work expect for the buttons. There are several reports on buttons not working, but scrolling, etc works. (e.g. using Linux Mint).
Sometime with the actual device should dig deeper to understand the situation.
CEN
tried kernel 4.18.5 with no luck. Did not help for touchscreen or for wifi (which would be more important since sitting in the living room with the 5m LAN-cable attached to a usb-c to ethernet adapter is not fun).
davidlt
Looking at tear down video WiFi / BT module seems to be Intel Dual band Wireless-AC3165 (3165D2W). Also seem to be used by Chuwi a lot. It’s listed as supported by Linux on Intel page: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005511/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html
It’s Intel thus as expected is supported 🙂
I would suggest looking into dmesg output + xinput / libinput to see what’s happening with WiFi, touchscreen and touchpad. You could also inc. loglevel to 7 in boot args to get debug messages out.
Also ensure that your distro has enabled the support, e.g:
CONFIG_TOUCHSCREEN_GOODIX
I see on the internet that people report touchpad working with Antergos 18.6 (kernel 4.16.X). Could you test that?
CEN
My touchpad is working. Only thing not working on touchpad is stuff like “tap to click” (hardware clicks are working) and two finger scroll… but I’ll get to that once my wifi is working.
I already tried the iwlwifi-7265-ucode-25.30.14.0.tgz from that intel site. I guess it kind of works since the bluetooth connection to my mouse works without problems so far. ‘dmesg | grep iwl’ gives me nothing.