I got my MNT Pocket Reform. In short, it's an absolutely gorgeous device and lovely for doing some light hacking or chiptune tracking or etc. It's incredibly built and also feels like it has a lot of potential. It's very clearly upgradeable which is a refreshing change of pace from modern electronics. On the downside, if you get an MNT reform today, you will probably find that you will need an upgrade or two because there are some rough edges, and you will need to be willing to spend some time hacking and on community support forums.

But maybe you're into that kind of thing. If you're willing to go with those caveats, it's hard to imagine a better future for computing than the stuff that MNT Research puts out. It's a cost and time investment, but it does feel like a cost and time investment moving towards a better computing future.

A bit more of a bulleted list set of impressions appear below.

The good stuff:

• It's hard to understate how beautiful this device is and all its packaging and etc. It feels like it was put together by a bunch of indie artist queers because oh, it was. Lovely.
• Despite the name pocket, it's more purse sized (which I was expecting). It's a bit hefty but it feels okay that it is because it feels very well built. It's a chonker, but it definitely feels like a device where if you pull it out and show it to your friends they're all going to gasp, and they should.
• The manual is incredibly informative; it feels like parts of it really could be extracted for a general "intro to running a linux'y system" book. The schematics are also beautiful.
• The keyboard feels incredible to use. Hard to believe a portable device is allowed to have a keyboard this good. Every click and clack warms my heart. And CTRL is in the right place! Amazing.
• For me, it was the right decision to pick the purple version; it looks so good.
• The installer is really good and just works, leaving you with a lightly customized Debian environment.

The rough stuff:

• None of the rough things here feel insurmountable, but they all feel like things that are not ready yet, and you have to expect to pour time into them.
• While the construction of the exterior is nigh perfect and a thing of beauty, there's a lot of rough edges in terms of the intersection of hardware things and software things. Expect to spend time on the community forum, expect to spend time tinkering, and maybe you find you'll want to upgrade it (but at least you can upgrade it pretty easily, and that's encouraged). For instance, there's a wifi upgrade kit already, and you can even swap out the whole main processor module.
• It's running Debian Unstable which is an incredibly anxiety-inducing thing to upgrade. A couple things got worse after doing a system upgrade. Found myself missing Guix's rollback features. Would really like to see Guix running on these things.
• Wifi is disconnecting pretty much constantly for me after upgrading Debian, but is it a driver issiue or hardware? It didn't have a problem before, but now it disconnects after seconds and then refuses to connect again. It seems there are known issues around wifi stuff generally and some upgrade kits coming. One way or another it's solvable, but I raise this as the type of issue that one can expect to run into. UPDATE: Also it seems fine when tethering to my phone. So I guess that probably there is a hardware component to it.
• Battery life isn't super phenomenal, but more concerning, using a generic usb-c wall charger I seem to drain the battery faster than it charges. I hear that better USB-C chargers do better, maybe I will try to get one.

So that's my feelings so far. The Pocket Reform has only just recently started making its way into users' hands. It feels like something that could have a long life ahead of it, and the fact that all the schematics are right there and in the open (and in the manual and on a gorgeous poster, did I mention the gorgeous poster) means that all your eggs aren't necessarily in the MNT Research basket. If you want to get one, you have to be aware that you're probably investing your time and money into making that long life of better computing available for others.

What I will say is that it feels like the MNT Pocket Reform feels like carrying around a computer that really is mine, and which has a future to it. I hope more comes from it, and this is just the beginning.