In brief: The first Ryzen-powered Pangolin laptop from System76 sold out in just a few days, and now it's back with updated AMD Ryzen 5000U parts that offer much-improved performance in multithreaded workloads. Pair this with the company's Launch mechanical keyboard and an external display, and you have a nifty Linux machine.
Back in March, popular Linux hardware vendor System76 promised to equip its AMD-powered Pangolin laptop with updated internals. It's finally available for fans who have been clamoring for a proper lightweight Linux machine, especially now that there's much better Linux kernel support for Ryzen CPUs.
The company initially launched the device with last-generation Ryzen CPUs, meaning you had a choice between the Ryzen 5 4500U and the Ryzen 7 4700U. You can now pick between the Ryzen 5 5500U and the Ryzen 7 5700U, which are still Zen 2 parts but come with better boost clocks for both the CPU and the integrated Vega 8 GPU.
Despite looking like merely overclocked versions of their predecessors, the new processors also come with an improved memory controller and support for hyperthreading. Reviewers also found the Ryzen 4000-powered Acer Swift 3 equipped with a similarly sized battery as the new Pangolin laptop offered better battery life than Intel-based competitors under a Linux environment, and the same can be expected from AMD's Ryzen 5000 Lucienne parts.
The CPU upgrade takes the Pangolin's starting price from $850 to $1,199 while offering the same 8 gigabytes of dual-channel DDR4 RAM, 240-gigabyte NVMe SSD, and 15.6-inch 1080p display with a matte finish. You can upgrade to 64 gigabytes of RAM and a 2-terabyte SSD, which will bring the total price to $2,446. And just like the Framework laptop, you can easily upgrade these parts and replace the battery yourself.