I was watching a lot of YouTube videos where people gave Raspberry Pi 4 a try as their primary PC. I got tempted myself but lacking a desk I had to explore the options of building a laptop based on Raspberry Pi 4. I have done a similar test with my Samsung 10-inch tablet in a Bluetooth keyboard case but as it still runs Android Nougat and has 1G of memory only the experience is really slow. The most important match to find was a Bluetooth keyboard case with a monitor. As a pointing device with a computer, the touchpad was a necessity on the keyboard too. In terms of size I was aiming at 10-inch again and found a reasonable match on Amazon:
Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad case
I managed to tie my Raspberry Pi and a big 20,000 mAh power bank to the case and used short USB power and HDMI cables to connect it all.
The overall experience is pretty reasonable on Raspberry Pi OS. Unfortunately Bluetooth is not stable on Ubuntu desktop yet. YouTube in Chromium browser is playing without a noticable drop of frames up to 720p but even 1080p60 is watchable. Email and chat are widely supported with the exception of the Outlook desktop experience and WhatsApp Web. Lack of built in microphone makes it more difficult to test voice calls but even with a USB sound card the result is dubious. Telegram desktop does not recognise the USB sound card and Messenger from Chromium does not provide stable voice calls either. With some hacking even Netflix and Amazon Prime are running fine in Chromium. As the monitor has a second HDMI input the other use case that I am trying is Samsung Dex from my Galaxy S10. First try with a USB-C to HDMI adapter was quite reasonable also however not all apps are working fine. Netflix and BBC iPlayer are notable examples of apps that are not functioning correctly. To minimise the cableing I have a Miracast dongle shipping that I plan to test soon.
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