There’s a tendency to get a little used to the good life of gadgets when you’re into technology for a living. While I recognize that I’m in a prime position to test out the best laptops or multitask with aplomb on an M2 MacBook Air, that’s not the case for most people. That made a thought arise inside my brain; Can I run Jugo Mobile and everything it entails on a $120 laptop?
Tl;dr: no, no, I can’t. Not even close. But that didn’t stop me from trying one rainy April morning in London.
Given current concerns about the cost of living for millions of people, it’s important not to get carried away by the lure of a premium machine when you don’t need everything it offers. Instead of spending $2,399 on a Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra, would you be better off with one of the best Chromebooks if you only need a machine for light office work and media consumption?
That was the basis for me to wonder whether or not I could employ a really cheap laptop to help me do my day-to-day job of running the Jugo Mobile UK team. The tool I chose for the task was the GeoBook 2E, an education-focused 12.5-inch Windows 10 laptop that sells for (at the time of writing) £135 of my money. That’s equivalent to about $164. Unfortunately for my American friends, the GeoBook 2E is not available in the United States. A close comparison would be the Asus BR1100 ($269, Amazon).
The good things (more or less)
Let’s start with what the Geobook 2E does reasonably well. There is an HDMI and USB-C port located on the side that, with the help of a dongle, allows me to immediately upgrade to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse to aid in productivity. What’s more, at just 2.5 pounds, this thing is actually lighter than a 2.7-pound M2 MacBook Air. So it’s great to put in a bag and transport.
Even the screen is not bad. While it’s just an LCD panel (with a resolution limited to 1366 x 768), the quality didn’t seem too bad and with the brightness at maximum it was more than visible even in broad daylight next to my window in the TG office. The refresh rate is limited to 60Hz, but since I was mostly viewing little more than Slack messages and spreadsheets, that didn’t bother me.
And… that’s where the good ends. The Geobook uses an Intel Celeron N350 CPU with four 1.10Ghz cores, backed by just 4GB of DDR4 RAM. That meant that Photoshop editing (something I occasionally need to do) was totally impossible. It’s not a total failure, but it’s still a pain.
I can’t keep up
Unfortunately, while the practical aspects of my job don’t require a lot of computing power, there are a lot of moving parts and multitasking is an absolute necessity. At any given time, there will be a ton of Slack messages to respond to, usually cross-referencing a spreadsheet or seven, not to mention the various articles I’m editing at any given time. On top of that, the Jugo Mobile team is scattered all over the place, so video calls via Google Meet are commonplace.
Jumping from a Slack message to another browser window would easily warrant a pause of four seconds or more, which adds up pretty quickly. Trying to do that and download a high resolution image file and typing suggestions into a shared Google document would cause the little laptop to become hopelessly overwhelmed. I did what I could by enabling Chrome’s memory saver feature and making sure I stayed on top of my tabs wisely, but pretty soon I maxed out the CPU resource to 100%. And as soon as I had to make a video call, I had to abandon the Geobook 2E.
In total, I managed to get a couple of hours of work done on the machine before having to return to my main work laptop.
To make things more interesting, I decided to work with just the drums. Within two hours I had lowered the battery to 50% which, according to Windows, would only give me another 90 minutes of work time.
It had *some* redeeming qualities.
In my heart of hearts, I always knew that the Geobook 2E would fail at this little challenge I gave it. But that didn’t stop me from liking the little black laptop. Although the trackpad is horrible, the keyboard was comfortable and responsive and there is even a webcam located at the top of the screen. You too could Make a video call on this machine although I wouldn’t trust it to handle much.
As I mentioned above, the availability of multiple ports really made a difference when using this machine. The fact that it has a USB-C port means I can use a dongle to connect an external keyboard, mouse, monitor, and an Ethernet cable internet connection. There’s also a USB-A port and an HDMI slot if you needed to use either of them.
I could see this device as an acceptable “first laptop” for a child to gain basic computer skills, word processing, spreadsheets, and watch YouTube videos. On the other side of the scale, for seniors who need a very low-cost machine to do things like check email or surf the Internet, this could also work. My only hesitation would be that Windows 10 is on its way out and there is no way I would be able to run Windows 11. Also, from a security standpoint, adding a full antivirus suite would certainly slow this machine down even more. What’s more, the measly 64GB of storage space won’t do you much good if you start loading images, videos or software on them.
Buying a laptop is, like so many things in life, a matter of balance. Do most people need the latest and greatest MacBook Pro for their daily tasks? Probably not. But you shouldn’t settle for the Geobook 2E either, just in the hope of saving some money.
A much, much better bet is, of course, to carefully read Jugo Mobile’s guide to the best laptops, as well as check out our full reviews to find the Goldilocks machine that’s priced and performant for your particular needs.
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