MNT Launches a Crowdfunding Campaign to Give the Reform, Pocket Reform Laptops a Big Boost

Open hardware maker Lucie Lukas Hartmann has released an upgraded CPU module for the MNT Reform and Pocket Reform families of user-upgradeable permissively-licensed laptops — delivering a big boost in performance over the original module, and partnering with Crowd Supply for smooth fulfillment to the US.

"We're finally bringing the MNT RCORE processor module (with [Rockchip] RK3588 and 16/32GB RAM) to Crowd Supply," Hartmann announced this week, "which is a great alternative to buying from our own shop — especially if you're in the US and don't want to deal with the ongoing tariff drama. It's for classic MNT Reforms as well as for Pocket Reform, where it enables a new, third M.2 slot for modern Wi-Fi and BT [Bluetooth]."

Hartmann and colleagues at MNT Research are no strangers to Crowd Supply: both the full-size MNT Reform and the small-form-factor MNT Pocket Reform launched on the platform before becoming available to order from the company's own website. Now, though, it's being used as a way of skirting tariffs that could otherwise impact the import of hardware from Hartmann's native Germany — by shipping them from Crowd Supply's US warehouses instead.

The module is designed to slot in to any MNT Reform or Pocket Reform motherboard, and delivers a big performance upgrade — addressing one of the biggest criticisms we leveled against the open-hardware laptop in our hands-on review. The Rockchip RK3588 delivers four Arm Cortex-A76 cores running at up to 2.4GHz plus four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.8GHz, plus a Mali-G610 MP4 graphics processor. Elsewhere on the module is a choice of 16GB or 32GB of RAM, plus 256GB of eMMC storage.

Installed in a classic MNT Reform, the module — and its stylish new heatsink — delivers a major performance gain; installed in the MNT Pocket Reform, it also adds a third expansion slot for M.2 E-key radio modules courtesy of a bundled expansion board. In all cases, the boards — along with almost everything else that goes into a Reform — are made available under open hardware licenses, though the memory controller and Arm Mali GPU rely on closed-source firmware.

The campaign is now live on Crowd Supply, priced at $500/520 for the 16GB variant and $750/770 for the 32GB variant for the Pocket Reform and Reform respectively; all hardware is expected to ship in January next year.