The MNT Reform Next, a Next-Generation Fully-Open Laptop, Opens for Crowdfunding "Very Soon"

Slimmer, more powerful, and with battery chemistry flexibility, the MNT Reform Next is looking like a major upgrade.

Gareth Halfacree
2 months agoHW101

MNT Research is to open crowdfunding for its newest fully-open-hardware laptop, the MNT Reform Next, "very soon," founder Lukas Hartmann has confirmed — unveiling images of the final design in three metal finishes.

"Here are some new pictures that i took today for the MNT Reform Next campaign that show the three different case colors," Hartmann writes in an update on Mastodon. "All of these are aluminum: black, purple, and raw (untreated). We're going to launch the crowdfunding for this open hardware 12.5 inch laptop very soon."

The MNT Reform Next was officially unveiled back in September, designed as a larger alternative to the recently-launched Pocket Reform and a slimmer successor to the MNT Reform we reviewed three years back. While not all of the changes will be welcomed — the loss of the laptop's iconic trackball, in particular — what MNT Research is delivering this time around is a lot closer to the design of a modern laptop.

What hasn't changed, though, is the driving force behind the project: a desire to have a laptop as open as possible. As with all models in the family, the MNT Reform Next is permissively licensed across its firmware source code and hardware design files. While entirely usable out-of-the-box as a ready-to-run system, it's also possible to redesign and customize every aspect — or even manufacture your own, from the motherboard and interchangeable systems-on-modules (SOMs) to the metal chassis.

The MNT Reform Next features a 12.5" Full HD display, a Raspberry Pi RP2040-powered mechanical keyboard with a more traditional layout than the original MNT Reform, and a three-button trackpad. Inside the aluminum casing is a redesigned motherboard with modular add-on boards for input/output, housing a system module with a Rockchip RK3588 eight-core processor and the buyer's choice of 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR4 memory — fully cross-compatible with the original MNT Reform and Reform Pocket motherboards and modules to boot.

Another major change in the new model is a dual-chemistry battery system: fans of the safety and longevity of LiFePO4 can continue to use those cells with the MNT Reform Next, while anyone looking for a runtime boost can switch to higher-capacity lithium-ion cells without having to replace the battery charging circuit.

Interested parties can sign up to be notified when crowdfunding opens on the MNT Reform Next Crowd Supply campaign page; hardware design files, meanwhile, are already available on MNT's Git repository under the Strongly Reciprocal variant of the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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