Buying a “Nokia” PC will soon be possible! Like the Finns from HMD who acquired the Nokia license to produce smartphones under this brand, the French from Global OFF did the same in the computer field. In liaison with the parent company of Nokia, holder of the rights and which manages certain aspects of third-party products – design elements, logo, colors, product quality – the French company is taking advantage of the upcoming opening of the MWC to launch its first two machines. : the Nokia PureBook Pro 15.6 and PureBook Pro 17.3.
Two machines whose first element of surprise is the processor: a Core i3 processor. More powerful than the Pentiums, the Core i3 is the least efficient of the “Cores”, but this is a model of 12and generation. A chip that the Nokia/OffGlobal teams describe as ” sufficient for all daily tasks “. The two bikes are not at all designed for video games, but for office automation + web. And the latest batch of mobile chips from Intel being quite vitaminized, there should be no problem fulfilling this contract.
Especially since the reference chosen, a Core i3-1220P (28W, 64W in Turbo), seems very interesting on paper: it incorporates two high-performance cores (P-Core, the classic “Core” cores) and no less than eight efficient cores (E-Core, less powerful cores, but already equivalent to Cores of 9and Gen and very energy efficient).
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If the Thread Director does the job, the chip’s ten CPU cores should provide good performance in all common tasks. Even the graphics chip seems correct, since it is a Xe with 64 execution units clocked at up to 1.1 GHz (against 32, or even sometimes 24 for certain references). On the memory side, it’s 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of NVMe SSD for the two machines.
Going against the current of American and Asian machines, which seek to push high-end chips or the finesse of machines, Nokia/OffGlobal has therefore ensured a sufficient level of performance on the “computing” side to focus on elements that are too often neglected: comfort of use and equipment.
Promises of comfort for long working days
As much as the processor (and its small integrated Xe GPU) will not be able to tease heavy video editing tasks, it is quite difficult to fault the two machines on the equipment side. The two USB-C sockets allow recharging as well as the connection of a secondary screen, the power button incorporates a fingerprint reader, the keyboard is backlit, the RAM and the SSD are replaceable, the sound is rendered not not by two, but by four loudspeakers, etc. If there are shortcomings (no HDMI, Micro SD reader rather SD, Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi 6, etc.) none seem to harm or limit the target use of the machines: promise a workstation functional and comfortable.
Among the comfort elements, we must also add a Full HD screen treated without reflections almost edge to edge, a backlit keyboard, a very large touchpad, a Full HD webcam (which we hope will be sensitive enough for half-light homes), a USB A socket, or even a jack socket for wired headphones. All in rather elegant frames, colored on the back (4 colors to choose from) and stable.
This comfort and this stability have a cost: that of weight. The 15.6-inch version weighs 1.7 kg and the 17.3-inch version 2.5 kg. If they are transportable, they are still rather sedentary workstations.
Nokia PCs, future worldwide success of “French” PCs?
Designed in France under a Finnish license with offices in Thailand, OffGlobal’s Nokia PCs are, precisely, “global” machines. And this is also the ambition of the French, since they intend to distribute their PCs in all markets – “ except India, where an IT license agreement already exists with a local player », explained the team to us. A team that presents its first babies as ” real developments started from scratch, because we refuse to simple brand slapping (buy the rights to use a chassis and just choose a few components and stick a logo on it, ed). ATWith Nokia’s very strict rules, it was impossible anyway: the level of quality required is high, both in terms of color charts and product quality or communication media. “, continue the French.
This explains why the prices are not slaughtered: at €699 for the 15.6-inch PureBook Pro and €799 for the 17.3-inch, we are ahead of the mid-range prices that we see with a number of recognized players. – Dell, HP, Asus, etc. The difficulty for Nokia/OffGlobal? Convince a public accustomed to comparing only chip classes (Core i3/5/7), RAM or hard disk capacity, that its Core i3/8GB/512GB machines are both sufficient in terms of power, but more comfortable to use than other frames. The kind of element that can only be verified during a test or in-store manipulation. And who will also come up against the fame of the actors in place.
Also see video:
Also see video:
The tests will wait for April on 01net.com. As for the stores, the first months of distribution will be online only at first, even if ” discussions are underway for a physical distribution “, we were assured.
Both references will be available for sale between April and May.
The Nokia PureBook 15.6 will launch at €699.
The Nokia PureBook 17.3 will launch at €799.