curiouser / gist:68415b0f411f495e90e10774b33305ec

Builds tested

https://system76.com/laptops/galago

i7 ($1,198)

• Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
• i7-1165G7 CPU
• 8GB DDR4 3200MHz (self upgraded to 32GB (2x16) DDR4 3200MHz)
• 500GB NVMe PCIe 3 (WD Blue)

i7 + GPU ($1,447)

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB VRAM (to my surprise, I received a 1650Ti)
• i7-1165G7 CPU
• 8GB DDR4 3200MHz (self upgraded to 32GB (2x16) DDR4 3200MHz)
• 500GB NVMe PCIe 3 (WD Blue)

Pros

1. Port selection

• RJ-45 1GBe
• 2x USB-A 3.1 rev1 (I think...)
• 1x USB-C 3.1 rev2
• 1x Thunderbolt4/USB4
• 1x HDMI (full-size)
• 1x 3.5mm audio combo headset jack
• SDXC card reader

1. Performance (see benchmarks)
2. Open firmware

• keyboard layout customization (I've got mine mimicking my '15 MBP)
• fan curve personalization
• fan smoothing improvements

1. Open OS

• improved power profiles allowing better performance

1. Keyboard
2. Trackpad
3. Customer/User experience

Cons

1. Battery life
2. Screen resolution and quality
3. Speaker volume & quality
4. Trackpad
5. Fan noise (pitch/timbre) While I've updated firmware to make the fan curve and smoothness of adjustment to my liking, it's true that the fan noise is a bit high-pitched.
6. USB headset bug (upstream pulseaudio) If you're USB headset isn't properly recognized, you can run systemctl --user restart pulseaudio after plugging in

Benchmarks

Geekbench 5

• GB5 CPU Single-threaded: 1656
• GB5 CPU Multi-threaded: 5704
• GB5 dGPU Compute (CUDA): 45138
• GB5 dGPU Compute (OpenCL): 44401
• GB5 iGPU Compute (OpenCL): 13295

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test (8K)

• CPU: 19-29fps
• iGPU: 19-21fps
• dGPU: 20fps