Affordable laptops are always in demand, especially if you are a student who needs a reliable machine for your daily needs. What if we tell you there is a made in India 4G Android laptop that can be useful enough and not cost you over Rs 20,000? That’s where the Primebook 4G Android laptop fits into the picture and priced at Rs 14,990 makes a solid showing which wasn’t the expected outcome when we started testing the laptop and did so for a few weeks. In fact, we even wrote down our experience on the said laptop which looks to vouch for its value and purpose.
The Budget Laptop Design
Yes, the moment you unbox the Primebook 4G laptop you see the budget traits. The plastic body and shiny logo at the front. But the similarities mostly end there and for good reason. The form factor is sleek, lightweight which means you don’t feel the weight in the bag. For most students that is a big plus point.
The fanless design means you don’t feel any heating passing through the non-existent vents. The body gets a matte finish, however, it can easily catch fingerprints that can be tough to clear. The laptop serves with a wide range of connectivity ports on both sides which was a surprise to us.
Functional Display Form
Primebook has opted for a compact 11.6-inch form factor which means you get a HD screen resolution with thick bezels wrapped up on all sides. We do like that the brand has offered an anti-glare display which means the outdoor visibility and readability does not take a hit.
The standard 60Hz refresh rate display offers clear colours but one might find the contrast to be on the lighter side which is generally expected in the lower range.
The laptop has speakers at the bottom but having the headphone jack should negate heavy usage. Having the display with a 16:9 ratio allows you to watch content of any kind without any stretching. However, being an Android laptop, the screen doesn’t get touch input which we did expect, once again for the price.
How It Works
But the biggest question that we looked to answer was, how does an Android laptop perform, that too a budget laptop? Well, to understand that, you need the features. The laptop is powered by a MediaTek Kompanio 500 chipset with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage that is further expandable.
The company has used a custom version of Android called PrimeOS and built its own app store into it which caters to all the popular apps that people need to use on a laptop.
The apps are primarily running on the mobile/tablet version so the features might be limited and apps like YouTube open the way you do it on your phone. You get it running on the Android 11-based platform and we are hoping future upgrades are offered for the device.
The Primebook 4G gets its name thanks to the built-in SIM support which lets you use the laptop on-the-go and we get the purpose of this feature that is also built into Chromebooks by Google. You need the regular SIM card to use that feature on the laptop.
Talking about performance, the hardware does a good job in keeping things ticking. We did notice some lag but that was mostly because of the OS which can be tuned better with the overall setup. The benchmark scores also showed us the limit of the hardware which is suited for basic computing tasks. We didn’t like the way the trackpad behaved and its false moves made it irritating at times, and we would have liked a touch screen to handle such instances.
Having said that, the keys offer decent travel and their feedback might feel spongy but nothing deal breaker about it. Being an Android laptop means you get a different set of functions, which can take some time getting used to. You get a back button, and the Primebook icon instead of the Windows logo which opens the app drawer on the laptop. The ports include two regular USB, one mini HDMI, one USB C, microSD card reader, SIM slot and headphone jack.
And finally, it is about the inbuilt battery on the Primebook 4G laptop and how it performs. Well, the good news is that the battery life on the laptop is reliable and you can get it to last for over 6 hours on a single charge. The other good news is that you get a USB C port for charging which means you don’t need to carry a separate charger.
The Primebook 4G laptop shows that budget should not be a constraint and you can get a reliable machine aimed at students that will get the job done.
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