Hackable hardware PineBook Pro finally starts shipping again

Pine64 have other goodies in stock too… just not many right now

After a very long delay, Pine64 has once again started shipping its open source devices to hardware and OS hackers.

Shenzen is just starting to emerge from its latest lockdown, and perhaps the most hotly anticipated device that the company offers is available to order online… but don't all hammer the order button at once.

Back in May, Pine64 said the PineBook Pro would start shipping again this month, but stock remains very limited. As the company says on the product ordering page, highlighted in bright red:

Please bear in mind that we are offering the Pinebook Pro at this price as a community service to PINE64, Linux and BSD communities. […] Please do not order the Pinebook Pro if you're seeking a substitute for your X86 laptop, or are just curious and you're ordering it with an intent to file a return/refund return request.

We also note that it's still showing as out of stock on the company's new EU site, along with all the Pine 64's other devices, including the phones that we talked about last year.

Although the PineBook Pro has been described as a "FOSS laptop that doesn't suck", it does seem fair to apply that adjective to its actual availability. In fact, all that Europeans can order right now is the company's "swag".

The device was available for pre-order in 2020 but supply chain disruption has resulted in an uneven delivery process.

This is still not hardware for the impatient. We suggest closely monitoring Pine64's "Availability and shipping status" page. Right now, if cash is really burning a hole in your pocket, your best bet would seem to be to order direct from China, and expect to wait.

The company's July update talks about its new intelligent soldering iron, the "Pinecil v2.0", software updates for the PineTime open smartwatch, and more new hardware: "PineBuds" wireless earphones, and the design status of a new RISC-V single-board computer, the Star64.

Pine64 has also added new models to its Quartz64 range of Arm Cortex-A55 based SBCs. Alongside the existing Quartz64 Model A and B, which are Raspberry Pi sized, developers are starting to receive samples of the QuartzPro 64, which the company announced in March.

The Pro model is a larger board, and the first version has 16GB of RAM, 64GB of eMMC, and multiple ports – including SATA, USB-C, HDMI and a single PCI-E slot. ®