u/JaggedJax — reddlx

If you saw my previous post, I was pretty frustrated with my new Pangolin Pro 16. It boiled down to 3 things: Poor hinge, wifi issues, sleep issues. With the wifi and sleep making the device unusable as my main laptop.

I have an update:

My wifi and sleep issues are resolved as-of-today, yay! The version of 24.04 that came with my laptop (including the recovery partition) had some fundamental issues that regular updates could not resolve.
You can update your recovery partition in COSMIC even though there's no way from the settings UI with the command: sudo pop-upgrade recovery upgrade from-release
I still don't think this hinge will last, no update will ever fix that.

Here are my new takeaways about the Pangolin Pro 16 and System76:

The laptop is great (minus the hinge) and I can recommend it with that caveat.
Hopefully you get an updated Pop OS image with yours, if not, you need to update the recovery partition and then refresh it by booting into recovery.
I used to love System76 support. It sucks now. It's just an LLM that you have to bully into actually helping you. It only responds during business hours, I assume so they can "approve" the responses, but as far as I can tell they don't actually bother. Unfortunately System76 has lost one of their previously great selling points.
This was a terrible new laptop setup experience that I wish upon no one else. I hope they have fixed the issues going forward or I was just unlucky.

As a summary, the good parts of this laptop:

Build (outside of the hinges)
Battery
Specs

The Average/Meh:

Screen Brightness
Speakers
COSMIC very under-baked

The Bad:

Proprietary firmware/BIOS. No Coreboot
Mine arrived totally borked
The shitty hinges can't support the screen (I know, I won't shut up about them)
System76 support is no longer a positive experience. The LLM eventually suggested a fresh install. I had to figure out the partition update and refresh myself!

P.S. Before posting this I put the laptop to sleep one last time and woke it to make sure the wifi still worked :-)

Has anyone purchased the new Pangolin Pro 16? If so, what are your thoughts?

It's been a few days with mine and I feel I have more complaints than compliments for a brand new device that doesn't feel like it lives up to what I expect from System76. But maybe I'm alone in that.

My main issues/complaints right now:

Flimsy hinges. My last System76 broke due to flimsy hinges and these feel even worse on day 1
Overall build quality feels meh. Meh trackpad, Meh speakers. Good keyboard and frame. The terrible hinges probably taint my view here.
Wifi disconnects requiring a reboot (I've opened a support ticket)
Not coming back from sleep (I've opened a support ticket)
24.04 is under-cooked. I'm okay with this since I can switch if I need but it's acceptable so far and I'd like to start with the "System76 intended experience."

I was quite excited for this device but the excitement has faded quick and I'm hoping there are some more positive experiences out there to bring me back up. Maybe solving the software issues will bring me back around, but I will forever cry about these hinges.