Motile 14 M142 UPDATE

When I bought the Ryzen 5 version of the Walmart Motile 14 M142 late last year, I didn't have very high expectations. The word "quality" is probably not the first thing most people think of when purchasing Walmart-branded products.The Motile 14 uses the Chi Mei N140HCA-EAC IPS panel but the outdoor visibility is bad because the backlit is relatively dim. The Motile 14 is limited to single-channel RAM but it is upgradable to 32GB. USB Power Delivery is not supported meaning that the system cannot be recharged via USB Type-C but it has Gigabit Ethernet port. Sound through my Etymotic Research headphones are great. Better than many other laptops. The laptop’s speakers are at the bottom.  If the speakers were placed anywhere other than the underside, the sound would improve drastically.

MY Motile 14 review here..

True it dose NOT come Preinstalled with GNU+Linux but it cost several hundreds of dollars less than more well-known alternatives from System 76, Dell, or Think penguin. To my surprise, however, the Walmart Motile 14 runs most Linux disrtos out of the box. Even Deepin OS worked well, however it did hang on shutdown. I was forced to hold down the power button to cut off the system. I am sure that problem will be fixed with Deepin OS v20 which is delayed because of COVID-19. I loved the fact that it is a rolling distro. Deepin is know for their sleek interface and seamless, streamlined desktop. 

Again, I have no major complaints. While Microsoft Windows 10 Home is preloaded, Manjaro 19 does run fine on it. UEFI Secure Boot can be easily disabled from the BIOS. To enter the BIOS, keep pressing the DELETE key during the boot up. Then disable UEFI Secure Boot.

AMD Ryzen 5 3500u with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics

Manjaro is often called a user-friendly Arch. It is the main OS on my Motile 14. Radeon Vega 8 gamers will be happy with Mesa 19.3.4 and linux kernel 5.4.23-1. Both always make many improvements to the Radeon Vulkan driver. Having an open source driver built in to the kernel  means you can literally install Manjaro and games will just work out of the box. I installed two games Xonotic v0.8.2 and the Shadow run Complete Collection. The Ryzen 5 3500u/Radeon Vega 8 Graphics delivered excellent performance with both games.

The 4 cores and 8 threads allow you to do multiple things at once with no problem. The laptop performed very well with everything I did. This SoC handled Internet, Office Applications and watching Pluto TV  like a champ. Even Darktable and Gimp ran very well. The AMD Ryzen 5 3500u is based on the Zen+ architecture and runs on the more efficient 12nm manufacturing process.