Collection of System76 Laptop Reviews 2020-2022

This is a compilation of System76 laptop reviews by various authors we found in three years period of 2020-2022. This is the continuation to the First Part. We encourage you to read each one of the reviews in their respective website carefully. If you cannot visit any link, perhaps because the website unavailable, you can revisit the link via the Internet Archive. With this, we hope we help you choosing the best GNU/Linux laptop and computer brand you are looking for. Enjoy!

Gazelle on Linus Tech Tips Forum

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This review is written by Worstcaster. This Gazelle was an i7 16GB 240GB-SSD (NVMe) with NVIDIA 1660 TI Mobile preinstalled with Pop!_OS (but by changing the desktop environment to Cinnamon). He concluded “With System 76 it was nice to have everything work correctly in Linux out of the box. […] Overall I am very happy with my purchase.”

Lemur Pro by Gadget Boy

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This review is written by Gadget Boy.

Lemur Pro is a lightweight model of System76 (and here the author compared it to Google Chromebook). He said it was ligher than both MacBook Pro and Air and even Dell XPS 13″. It was an i7 40GB 512GB-SSD with Intel UHD Graphics preinstalled with Pop!_OS 19.10. The author confirmed that the battery life was very good as after 4 hours of use, it still had 20 hours more to go. The charging departement was also surprising, as it supported USB Type-C charger along with its default charger. This was the best battery report since 2009 review in this list. He concluded “Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase of the Lemur Pro and am now wondering why I didn’t buy a System76 machine sooner.”

Lemur Pro by Android Guys

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This review is written by Andrew Allen. The Lemur Pro here was an i7 40GB 500GB-SSD (GPU model unclear) with Pop!_OS (version unclear). He concluded “I loved my time with System76’s Lemur Pro. This is an amazing Linux workhorse built by Linux people for Linux people. I know it’s not for everyone, but I hope I was able to raise some awareness to some of our Android and Chromebooks fans that may have never considered Linux as a viable option.”

Lemur Pro by Ars Technica

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This article is written by Jim Salter. This Lemur Pro was an i7 40GB 500GB-SSD (NVMe) with Intel UHD 620 preinstalled with Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS. The author stated about the battery life was “crazy long battery life” as it scored 420 minutes (7 hours) playing a BBC’s 10 hour video full screen 1080p with maximum brightness, beating Dell XPS 13 and HP Elite Dragonfly. He concluded “If you’re looking for a solid general-purpose Linux laptop that looks great, feels great to type on, and has crazy-long battery life, the Lemur Pro will suit you nicely.”

Lemur Pro by OSNews

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This review is written by Thom Holwerda. The Lemur Pro here was an i7 16GB 500GB-SSD (NVMe). The author stated about the battery life “I could definitely hit the 10 hour mark at the balanced power setting.” He concluded “If you’re a Linux user looking for a powerful, understated ultraportable with amazing battery life, I honestly don’t know where you can do better than the Lemur Pro.”

Lemur Pro by Part of the Thing

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This article is written by Nick Touran. The Lemur Pro here was an i5 40GB (disk storage unclear) with Intel Graphics (Device 9b41) preinstalled with Pop!_OS 19.10. He did not have a conclusion but state “It’s snappy and glorious. I really, really like this laptop. This is exactly what I was looking for and it was announced at just the right time. “

Lemur Pro

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This review is written by Zohaib Ahsan. The Lemur Pro here was an i7 40GB 500GB-SSD (NVMe) with Intel UHD Graphics preinstalled with Pop!_OS 20.04 full disk encrypted. He reported the battery life lasted for 13 hours with a screenshot showing 11 hours remaining when hitting 84%. He concluded “there aren’t that many Linux-based laptops out there that feature high-end hardware on top of an advanced Linux experience. System76 has taken advantage of this market gap by releasing Lemur Pro. […] There’s no doubting the performance of this machine and the all-day Battery life with ultimate portability.”

Galago Pro

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This review is written by Ty Tracey and published on Medium.com. In this review, the laptop was returned and refunded with severe hardware issues. Anyone could learn much from his experience despite this review is actually unfinished and does not indicate battery life hours as well as the specifications at all. 

Lemur Pro by StevenPG

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This review is written by a software developer, StevenPG, published at Dev.to. This is a special review (with a second part published the following year) as it is a comparison of performance between Lemur Pro and several other laptop brands using certain programming metrics. About the battery hour, the author did not state anything except “a long-lasting battery ultra-book” in which he disclosed later in second part. Interestingly, the author compared the performance and temperature between Lemur Pro, Clevo, Macbook, HP Envy, Desktop PC and Raspberry Pi among Intel i5, i7, AMD Ryzen 7 and ARM64 and the conclusion was very good in performance but not in temperature for Lemur. He concluded “In my opinion, this fits the same niche as the Macbook Air, except at a way better value and with a much better OS. I love it and happily use it when I’m away from my desktop.”

Oryx Pro by 8th-dev Forum

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This review is written by the forum administrator, ron. Oryx Pro is a performance, high-end model of System76 laptops. The Oryx Pro here was an i7 (according to the manufacturer, but unmentioned by the author) 32GB 1TB-SSD (NVMe) preinstalled with  Pop!_OS (version unmentioned too). The author compared Oryx Pro with MacBook Pro and stated the former’s battery life being 3-4 hours in comparison to the latter’s 7 hours. He concluded “This is a seriously excellent value for a very high-end machine. It’s cheaper than the more or less equivalent Dell or Apple offerings, and the build quality seems to be high enough to be a five-year-of-hard-usage survivor. […] If you’ve got the funds, I highly recommend this as a workhorse machine. It’s light but powerful, and extremely configurable.”

Galago Pro by Boiling Steam

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Written by Mark Douherty in 2021 (aka cow_killer and now owner of Linux Gaming Central), this is a fifth generation Galago Pro with custom order specifications Core i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe storage, 14″ display and dual vga of Intel Iris and NVIDIA GTX 1650. It is a thin, lightweight laptop model. The author says that this laptop is comparable to Dell XPS 13 (the one widely known offered with Ubuntu preinstalled). He tested the battery life to be a little bit more than 4 hours using integrated graphics. He also benchmarked it using Phoronix Test Suite with some results like 200+ seconds to compile the Linux kernel, overall average 30+ fps with highest preset on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. He concluded “[…] I would recommend? Absolutely. […] combined with open-source firmware and the ability to switch graphics modes at will […] makes this an outstanding product […]”.

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Written by Dominick –a fan of System76–, this is his Pangolin laptop review. Its specification goes by AMD Ryzen 7, 64GB RAM and 15″ display with no further details mentioned. He praised that the laptop just works out of the box with no driver issue at all. On the other hand, he complained about the speaker quality being terrible and overall build quality. He concluded that “I am happy with the Pangolin as a work machine” with several criticisms to System76.

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Written by Dale of It’s MOSS (also a host at Distrohoppers’ Digest Podcast), it’s his review of Pangolin laptop. As a note, he is a ThinkPad fan. His specification is AMD Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 240GB storage, 15.6″ display and powered by Pop!_Os 20.10. His test on battery life is decent, as he said 2 hours of use will had left 80-85% battery. He concluded that “I am very pleased with the Pangolin”.

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Written by Mark Doherty again, this is their review of Serval WS, the powerful model of System76 laptops. The specification goes by AMD Ryzen 7, 32GB RAM, RTX 2070 graphics card, and 1TB NVMe and powered by Pop!_Os 20.10. He emphasized that this is a workstation made as a laptop. So, he said about the performance being very good. On the other hand, he said about the battery life being short for about 1 hour or so. He benchmarked it using Phoronix’s again and one of the results was over 80 fps on Ultra High preset on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and that was very good. He concluded that “I really have no complaints. The Serval WS is no joke when it comes to gaming, and it’s a great device.”

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Written by Mark Doherty again, after the Serval WS above, now it’s his review on Darter Pro, the slim-powerful model of System76 laptops. The specification goes by Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, 15.6″ display and Iris graphics card and powered by Pop!_Os 20.10. He said about the battery life test he did was average about 4+ hours used with wifi and 6+ hours used without. He compared this with ThinkPad T590 and he concluded that “[…] Darter Pro is a good choice, […] And at nearly half the price of the T590, it
has a lot more benefits, including a faster processor, faster memory,
open-source firmware, and a pre-installed Linux distribution.”

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Written by Mark Doherty again, this is his 2022’s Kudu review of the powerful model of System76 laptops. Its specification goes by AMD Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM, 500GB NVMe, 15″ display and RTX 3060 graphics card, and powered by Pop!_Os 21.10 with new COSMIC desktop environment. He said about battery life goes by 3-4 hours with integrated, but just 1-1.5 hours with hibryd or discrete grahics (he said it was like his Serval WS previously). He benchmarked it using both Phoronix’s and Proton and among the results was Linux kernel compilation time was 98 seconds. He concluded that “The Kudu, like the other laptops in S76’s lineup, is built with
incredible quality, with a solid plastic palm rest, an aluminum lid, an
easy-to-type-on and attractive keyboard, a decent touchpad, and some
seriously good specs when it comes to gaming.”

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Written by StevenPG, it is a two-parts review of Lemur Pro, an ultraportable model of System76 laptops. In the first part in 2021, he explained the specification was Intel Core i5, 8GB (upgraded to 40GB afterwards), 250GB NVMe, without telling about the graphics card. Basically, he compared this to Macbook Air and as a Java developer he had his own benchmark (not Phoronix, not Proton either) and he concluded that overall Lemur Pro is better (except for the speaker quality). In the second part in 2022, after seven months of use he explained the good and bad like he praised the Pop!_Os being phenomenal and he criticized about how easy the body to smudges by finger touches. He finally concluded “Overall, I’m really happy with the machine and it’s quirks. Much better
than if I’d have gotten a Macbook Air or a similarly small windows
laptop.”

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Written by Sravan Balaji, it is a review of Oryx Pro, a powerful model of System76 laptops. The specification is Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM (later upgraded to 40GB), 240GB NVMe (later added with 2TB NVMe), 15″ display and GTX 3070 graphics card. He said the upgrade experience was good and its official guide was helpful. He tested the performance by playing game Yakuza: Like a Dragon with maximum settings and he got 70 to 80 fps. On the other hand, he reported that battery life is as bad as one hour when he used discrete graphics. Uniquely, he decided to use Arch GNU/Linux instead of the original Pop!_Os and he gave many useful tips there. He concluded “Overall, I am very happy with my purchase.”

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Written by Mark Douherty again but in his own new website, Linux Gaming Central, this is a review of Oryx Pro. The specification is Intel Core i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, with 17.3″ display and RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. He said about battery life being 4 hours in integrated graphics mode and 2 hours in discrete mode. Like in his previous website, here he once again benchmarked the laptop with Phoronix’s and some of the results was 92 seconds for Linux kernel compilation time and 131 FPS for F1 2020 on Ultra settings. He concluded “I’m very impressed with the hardware inside this thing. When it comes to
gaming, you really don’t need to look at anything further than the Oryx
Pro.” with one among other caveats “the 1080p resolution”.

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Written by Mark Doherty again, it is now a Thelio review, a desktop PC choice from System76 hardware. Its specification is Intel Core i5, RTX 3060, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, Mini-ITX motherboard, and 650W PSU. He said a lot of many things in this review that are useful and even educational to everyone, for example, about how bad hardware which depend on proprietary software drivers are, aside from many technical things everyone would expect to learn from a professional reviewer. Like any of Mark’s reviews, he also benchmarked this desktop with Phoronix’s and one of the results was Dirt 5 got 80 FPS on the highest preset. He concluded “So yeah, if you’re looking to game, the Thelio is a great choice.”