MNT March 2026 Update
Fresh news from MNT featuring Reform Next, Quasar (QCS6490 and QCS8550), Pocket Mainboard (2.0), OpenBSD/Blender/postmarketOS on our mini laptop, and so much more!
MNT Developments and Updates
MNT Reform Next
We know that many of you have been excited for the MNT Reform Next and that you're waiting for your device to ship. Therefore, Lucie wrote a detailed post-campaign article on Crowd Supply. It contains valuable information, so we decided to include their full post in this news update:
Dear MNT Reform Next Backers,
Let’s cut to the chase: I had to make the painful decision to break a campaign promise, which concerns the capacity of the SSDs. Maybe you’re aware of the NVMe SSD and DDR RAM market developments of the last months. If not, the short form: prices for memory and storage have exploded due to chip manufacturers de-prioritizing the consumer/PC market in favor of serving AI companies and their huge datacenter buildout gambles, leaving the rest of us in the rain.
The prices for 1 TB SSDs (2242 form factor) in our budget was 50 EUR per piece, and the 2 TB budget was 95 EUR per SSD. My mistake was that I expected these prices to go down, not up, as I assumed that small form factor SSDs would become more popular (i.e. due to the Steam Deck and other handhelds). I did not anticipate the seismic shift in the industry that happened during the end of 2025, and that the companies like Micron would all but abandon the PC and consumer markets.
The bottom line: sourcing the SSDs with the original capacity, regardless of form factor, would bring us at least 33500 EUR over budget, and we unfortunately just don’t have the cash to absorb that kind of hit. So I decided to replace the 2 TB SSDs with 1 TB, and the 1 TB with 500 GB. Sourcing these was still ~5000 EUR more expensive than planned, but c’est la vie.
I’m extremely sorry to disappoint you with this downgrade, and you always have the option to cancel your order; but I really hope you’ll stay with us. I believe you won’t regret it, because the MNT Reform Next shaped up to be a really exciting and uniquely open machine.
The Upside
Because I wanted something good to come from this crisis, I decided to take the risk and modify the Next’s mainboard so that it gains a full-size 2280 M.2 SSD slot in addition to the existing 2230/2242 M.2 slot. The internal MicroSD Express slot had to go away for this, but if you really need it, you can get it back by installing a passive adapter card in one of the 2 M.2 slots. As 2280 SSDs are more popular, more affordable and in general more available, this change lowers the cost and increases the flexibility you have in regard to upgrading your Reform Next’s storage. You can even combine 2 SSDs, which not many (esp. smaller) laptops allow. Moreover, accessing the "big" 2280 SSD is a lot easier than before, as it resides on the top of the mainboard, under the trackpad:
The previous M.2 slot for smaller size SSDs is still around on the back of the mainboard:
Sourcing and Design Updates
I’ve sourced all the SSDs for backer units, and your RCORE processor modules, even with 32 GB RAM (now also, at least temporarily, unobtainium) are all stocked here, so I don’t expect any more trouble on that front.
We also have all the displays in stock, and recently got a shipment of 1000 new hinge pairs from Smooth, which Rob and Greta had to sort by matching torque (at least the manufacturer labeled them this time).
All the flex PCBs/cable designs are validated, and we’ve sourced small things like the ideal rubber feet (from Bumper Specialties, Inc.).
All the black vegan cactus leather sleeves arrived, designed by Greta and manufactured in Portugal by Nítido, and they’re beautiful.
I did a small test run of the left and right port boards (fully assembled) at JLCPCB and discovered a few bugs which caused some delays, but these are fixed now. I’m preparing a new test production run, incl. the new mainboard design, and if we’re not too unlucky, we should be able to use these for shipping the first units.
In January I traveled to Spain for 12 days and extensively used the MNT Reform Next every day for work and leisure, and came back with a list of small papercuts, like some too-sharp corners or too bright LEDs, or countersunk holes needing to be a bit deeper to not have the screw heads scratch the metal on the opposite side. Ana implemented fixes for all of these issues in the 3D model and I’m preparing a test production run for this hopefully final metal version, so that you’ll have a smooth experience with your Reform Next from the beginning.
Ailurux (of Tangara fame) is working since a few months on porting Linux drivers for the RK3588’s display pipelines to the Barebox bootloader, and already got DSI and HDMI working, and is now making a final push to get DisplayPort working as well, so we’ll hopefully have a bootloader with display/graphics and input support at shipping time.
Wrapping Up
Due to the mentioned roadblocks that we had to overcome, our timeline is a bit delayed again; we expect the first shipment of MNT Reform Nexts to leave our premises in May 2026, and I can’t wait for them to reach you. As always, me and my team are extremely thankful for your patience and support.
Best,
Lucie
MNT Quasar Processor Module
Lucie and Casey (from Linaro) have been hacking further on the MNT Quasar (QCS6490) Processor Module again and they've made good progress. This time, the objectives were:
To tackle power saving, sleep, and resume issues on the MNT Pocket Reform with QCS6490. This motivated Lucie to implement a first draft of automatic powersave in the RP2040 system controller firmware.
To get the audio working on MNT Pocket Reform and to get the GPU running in EL2. Both worked out, so we're glad that we'll be able to reach the next milestone—the beta version—of this NLnet-funded project soon.
Lucie also tested the even more in-development QCS8550 version of MNT Quasar in MNT Reform Next, to make sure that future CPU modules do indeed work in our soon-to-ship laptop.
Result: speedy; doesn't get too hot. This module will still need a lot of development, though.
MNT Pocket Reform Mainboard 2.0
On March 11th, 2026, Lucie posted:
Not even three weeks later, the MNT Pocket Reform Mainboard 2.0 is being produced.
We'll test it as soon as it arrives and will cover the results in our next update.
OpenBSD ARM64 Bootloader on MNT Pocket Reform
In our Dec 2025/Jan 2026 news update, we first wrote about Daniel's and Lucie's Barebox bootloader project. Both of them have continued working on it and they've made lots of progress. Two weeks ago, they got the OpenBSD ARM64 bootloader running on MNT Pocket Reform with RK3588, making use of EFI services that barebox provides. The next step will be to get EFI GOP to work so that OpenBSD and other OSes can make use of the Pocket Reform's display.
Fulfillment/Shipment Updates
MNT Reform RCORE V2 Shipped to Crowd Supply
We're happy to report that we shipped all of the MNT RCORE RK3588 modules for the Crowd Supply mini campaign at the beginning of March 2026.
MNT Pocket Reform Holographic Sleeves Now Shipping
Greta recently sewed multiple holographic sleeves for MNT Pocket Reform, so some of the orders that included these sleeves can now be shipped.
Order Fulfillment Table
Here's the updated order fulfillment table for you to track our progress on your orders:
| Product | Order Placement Date (Range) | Estimated Shipment Date | Delays / Roadblocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| MNT Reform | ordered until 2025-12-31 | May/June 2026 | Some CNC case parts weren't milled properly, so the magnets don't fit. Smaller-sized magnets are on their way to us, expected in the 2nd week of April 2026. |
| MNT Pocket Reform | ordered until 2025-12-31 | May/June 2026 | waiting for cases (still in production), mainboard 2.0 (shipped, expected to arrive in the first week of April 2026), keyboard 1.5 (in production), plates (in production) |
| MNT Reform | ordered after 2025-12-31 | 4-5 months after order date | Some CNC case parts weren't milled properly, so the magnets don't fit. Smaller-sized magnets are on their way to us, expected in the 2nd week of April 2026. |
| MNT Pocket Reform | ordered after 2025-12-31 | 4-5 months after order date | waiting for cases (in production), motherboard 1.5 (in development), keyboard 1.5 (in production), plates (in production) |
| RK3588 upgrades for MNT Pocket Reform and MNT Reform | ordered after 2025-09-10 | May 2026 | currently in QA |
| ZZ9000 | any | 2-3 months after order date | new batch with PCBs produced by different manufacturer needs debugging |
| ZZ9000AX | any | 2 months after order date | needed an updated manual (A4 instead of A3), now ready to ship |
| HALO-90 Earrings (any color) | any | 2 months after order date | in stock |
| Keyboard (purple case) | any | 3-4 months after order date | still in production |
| Keyboard (black case) | any | 2 months after order date | still in production |
| Other items | any | 1-3 months after order date | in stock |
| Crowd Supply orders | any | please contact Crowd Supply | |
| Mouser orders | any | please contact Mouser |
Table last updated: 2026-04-02
You can also access this table on our FAQ page and in our support system under the category My Order. We aim to update it at least once a month. Note that we have no information about orders placed on Crowd Supply and Mouser. Please contact their customer support if you need information.
Fun Stuff
Fun things we've discovered using MNT devices.
Blender on MNT Pocket Reform
It's been a long-term goal for Lucie to be able to use an MNT laptop to play around with Blender, and now it's finally possible! In the video above, Blender is running on the MNT Quasar (QCS6490) processor module using EL2 with the ARM64 build from postmarketOS. GPU and sound are supported, with no hypervisor nor ADSP needed. Lucie also tested qemu-system-aarch64 with kvm and found it works as well. But that's not all: One day later, Lucie discovered that:
We'll investigate this further, of course, and we'll keep you in the loop!
postmarketOS on MNT Pocket Reform
Casey got postmarketOS running on the MNT Pocket Reform with QCS6490, and Lucie tested some software on it, including an unofficial Signal ARM64 flatpak on Gnome desktop. They reported that, "this cpu isn't getting too hot, and everything is snappy so far." You can read the whole thread with more details on Lucie's/MNT's Mastodon account.
That's it for March 2026. Thanks for reading our news updates and see you on here in one month or (nearly) daily on the Fediverse!