sabrinardc / gpd-before-buying

What you should know if you are purchasing a GPD product for the first time.

Things to take note of before purchasing.

Do not expect stellar customer service or quality control like you would get from Amazon, Apple or Microsoft

The handheld computer market is tiny compared to the market of regular laptops or consoles, and GPD is just ONE of the companies in this already small market. They are not a tech giants that can dump money into R&D for every single device they release, they simply do not have the resources to test every possible scenarios the device might encounter. The solution GPD has chosen for this problem is to release the new products domestically first, AKA in mainland China.

Due to the difficulties of RMAing the device for overseas buyers, GPD has opted to let domestic users be the early large scale tester due to them being able to return and replace their devices much more easily than overseas buyers. This will lead to domestic batches always having more issues crop up at first, but most of the time, those are just issues that can be fixed by the end user themselves with a software update. And even in the worse case scenario that the device itself has to be replaced or repaired by GPD, domestic users will have a much easier time doing that.

There will always be issues early on in the device's release, but most will be fixed by the time GPD starts shipping out international order.

There is no one single "flagship" device

There is no one GPD device that is "the best", each line up is designed for a different use case and will suit different people.

There WILL be delays.

As there will always be SOME issues with the device during release, there are times that a major issues might not have been fixed yet by the time it's supposed to release. In those cases, GPD might have to delay the release to fix those issues before shipping out the devices to lower the chance that an overseas buyer will have to RMA the device.

Many other factors can also contribute to delays. For example, shortage of parts like the processor can happen when the processor is still quite new, as GPD is a small company and isnt a major customer of chips manufacturers, often times GPD might not be the priority when there is a shortage and will have to wait until they are supplied with the chips they need to assemble the device.

Community resources are your best friends. Try to use google or search in the discord first and you might find your questions already answered by someone before.

With how niche the market is for products like these, often times you will be able to solve whatever problems you may encounter by asking in communties such as the unofficial GPD discord or the GPD subreddit. A lot of the members of these communities make and releases a lot of unoffical resoureces that can be extremely helpful for troubleshooting, upgrading, modifying or just the regular usage of the device.

Do remember that the majority of the people who provide these resources are just end users themselves who are just passionate about the products, they are often volunteer and do not get paid to help you with your problems, so please be understanding when someone doesn't reply qucikly or can't help you with a specific problem, as different people have different knowledge about different field, one user might be knowledgable about OSes and can help you with problems related to windows, but they wouldn't be able to help you much with hardware problems such as a broken cooling fan, and the reverse also applies, another user might be knowledgable about hardware but not software and they wouldn't be able to help you much about software related troubles.

And don't be lazy and ask every time you have a problem and expect everyone to serve everything to you on a silver platter. Use Google or the search function of Discord and see if your specific question has been answered before and save yourself and everyone some time. There are a lot of common questions that people have answered a lot of times repeatedly and saving that time could free up that time for community members to help people with more specific issues that can't be answered with a google search.

Prepare to get your hands dirty

The devices are not perfect and often require some tinkering to get some things working, don't expect apple level of "it just works", you will most likely have to tinker with the deivce somewhat during your usage of the devices over time.

In regard to hardware modification

GPD is quite tolerant in regard to hardware modifications, if you have to RMA your device, as long as you can prove nothing you did caused the issues you are trying to fix, they will allow it. So feel free to open up the device to swap out the SSD or thermal paste or even just to admire the hardware inside! And about the "warrenty void if removed" sticker you might see on one of the screws, GPD doesn't really care about those and you can feel free to destory the sticker and open the device up as long as you do not damage the device.

Replacement parts

GPD is quite generous with replacement parts, if a part of the device is dead on arrival and you think you can swap the broken part out yourself without sending the device back to GPD, they will gladly send you the parts to repair it yourself. As for parts that could gets broken by the users or just die over time like the screen or keyboard assembly, you can contact GPD via email to request to purchase replacement parts easily.

Many people even try to "upgrade" their cooling system by adding extra thermal pads or even heatpipes! Just be careful not to scratch the motherboard or break any fragile connectors when you are modding the device!