So, after spending almost a week with my Sage i5 Laptop 12, here are my own initial thoughts:
- I love it! I like the form factor, the color, the fact that it’s way faster than my (very old) desktop PC, the ability to hot swap expansion cards depending on my needs, the sturdiness…
- Config:
- Sage i5 DIY with a bunch of expansion cards
- Storage: I’m using a Corsair MP600 Mini 2TB SSD. Works great.
- Memory: I tried 2 different modules, Kingston FURY Impact PnP 32GB (KF556S40IB-32) and Crucial 64GB (CT64G56C46S5). Both worked without problem, but I ended up keeping the Crucial 64GB, here’s why:
- The Kingston has lower latency, so while I really wanted more than 32GB, if the latency made a big difference on performance I might have gone with the Kingston.
- I ran some benchmarks/tests: memtestx86, running games and looking at FPS, running a built-in benchmark in a game, building a fairly big C++/QT6 project (QGIS), processing a fairly big photogrammetry project (with webodm)…
- While the Kingston was faster in most tests, it was only by about 1%. But things like photogrammetry are limited by available memory. I had to set a lower processing memory cap when processing with the 32GB and it was actually slower than with the 64GB, and ended up crashing because the cap I’d set was too high and didn’t leave enough memory for the rest of the system. I could have tried with a lower cap, but it was slower already so my mind was made.
- I’m using a UGREEN Revodok Pro 313 docking station with 2 monitors (it has 2 HDMI and 1 DP). It works ok in Windows 11, Fedora KDE and Bazzite. No drivers to install. Sometimes I need to unplug/replug it into the laptop to get ethernet/USB ports to work (displays always work the first time), not sure if that’s just in Linux or also in Windows (I’ve been mostly using Linux).
- Just like @BigT’s, the touchpad was “crunchy”.
- In my case it was on the bottom-right: Right-clicking was really bad, so bad I used the 2-finger tap gesture instead to avoid using the physical right-click.
- It was pretty simple to fix: Remove the input cover, slightly untighten the screws that hold the touchpad in place, realign it, re-tighten the screws, test, repeat until it works, then put the input cover back in place. The Touchpad guide can help (although it’s a guide to replace the touchpad, not just realign it).
- While it was easy to fix for someone who doesn’t mind doing this kind of thing, I guess it does go in the category of “probably should not have shipped like that” (unless it moved during transport, but I doubt that).
- Those T5 screws are tiny! I use Torx screws all the time, but T10 is the smallest I’d encountered so far. The T5 bit and the “hole” in the screw head are very, very small, and I’m scared that one day I’ll strip one of the screw heads (i.e. not the screw thread or the thread on the other side, but the T5 hole itself). Anyway, I probably won’t open the laptop very often for that reason.
- I’m triple-booting Windows 11, Fedora 42 KDE, and Bazzite-DX KDE 42 (Bazzite first, then rebased to Bazzite-DX because I wanted easy Docker usage :-))
- I was going to use Fedora KDE, which I’ve been using on my desktop for a little while, because for some reason I thought atomic Fedora couldn’t be used in a multi-boot environment, and I had zero experience with atomic distros so they scared me. Turns out they can be used in a multi-boot environment so I gave it a go. So far everything I need seems to work perfectly well in Bazzite-DX, so it’s going to be my main OS on this laptop.
- Secure boot is turned on, Windows is using Bitlocker, Fedora and Bazzite are using LUKS encryption on their BTRFS filesystems, and Windows and Bazzite automatically unlock their encryption with the TPM. For Bazzite, see dual boot setup guide, secure boot instructions and ujust setup-luks-tpm-unlock. I haven’t yet made it work on Fedora, but since I’ll be using Bazzite, I probably won’t bother.
- No issues with tablet mode so far, but I haven’t used it a lot yet, I was mostly doing setup and testing, connected to the docking station or in laptop mode.
- Screen color: Yeah, reds are a bit orange. @BigT’s color profile 2 made it a bit better..
- I’ve tried a (borrowed) Microsoft Surface Pro pen (not sure which version) and it works fine as others have reported already.
So, yeah. I haven’t tried/tested everything yet but so far I’m VERY happy with this laptop 
(I’ll post in specific threads about the SSD, memory, and dock)