The Bitblaze Titan laptop of the Russian company Promobit on the Baikal-M CPU appeared in a "live" photo in a new thinner case. The exterior is made of aluminum and provides for the possibility of customization, for example, the choice of color of the touchpad. To Western experts, the laptop looks like an Apple MacBook Pro. Production of the Bitblaze Titan will begin at the end of 2022.
The Russian company Promobit has completed the development of the Bitblaze Titan laptop and showed it live in the final design. The post was posted on the Vkontakte network by the commercial director of Promobit, Yana Brysh, he was the first to be discovered by the authoritative publication Tom's Hardware.
In her publication, Yana Brysh wrote that the Bitblaze Titan is made in a thin aluminum case, and that its battery lasts for five hours of battery life. In this regard, it can be considered a Russian replacement for MacBooks, which are also made of aluminum, but by Apple's decision are no longer supplied to Russia. Tom's Hardware experts noted that Bitblaze Titan resembles a modern MacBook Pro in appearance.
The laptop is based on the domestic Baikal-M processor of Baikal Electronics, which was produced at the factory of the Taiwanese company TSMC. On February 27, 2022, production was stopped due to current geopolitical events.
According to Yana Brysh, the pre-production laptop sample is able to run "basic user applications", including office software and software for watching YouTube. The latter probably means the browser. "We continue testing in various loads, we are preparing an official release," says her publication in Vkontakte.
Yana Brysh also added that serial production of Bitblaze Titan will begin at the end of 2022. "It is possible to purchase one of the pre–production samples - it is expensive. Or wait for the series, which will be released no earlier than November, we accept orders on prepayment," Yana wrote in response to one of the comments to her publication.
Earlier, representatives of Promobit said that the size of the first batch would be 1000 copies. According to them, this limit is "due to two factors – the number of processors reserved for the company this year and demand testing." Maxim Koposov, the head of Promobit, separately told CNews that the stocks of Baikal-M processors discontinued at TSMC "for this year are enough to produce the first batch of 1000 pcs." "Regarding the next batches, we expect that the processor manufacturer will be able to solve the problem of ensuring the necessary volumes of processor supplies," he added.
As reported Yana Brysh, a completely new case has been made for the laptop. The aluminum used for this purpose received a special oxidized coating. The top versions of the laptop will be made in a titanium case, but you will have to pay extra for this option. In the Bitblaze database, Titan costs about 100 thousand rubles, and the titanium version will cost about twice as much.
The photo shows that the laptop itself has a dark coating, while the touchpad has a white color. This is a feature of this particular laptop sample – a white touchpad is the customer's wish, said Yana Brysh.
Due to the transition to an aluminum case, it was possible to reduce the weight of the laptop. He is still far from the records set by LG Gram laptops, which weigh less than 1 kg, but, nevertheless, the result is decent – 2.2 kg, taking into account the 15.6-inch screen.
"In general, the car looks like a finished product," said the commercial director of Promobit. "The developers are continuing to work on the final version of the laptop, are adapting the software, and are preparing technical documentation."
Yana Brysh did not specify whether the updated version of Bitblaze Titan differs from the previous modification in terms of technical characteristics. Previously, the laptop was offered with a 15.6-inch IPS screen with Full HD resolution, a full-size keyboard with a NumPad and a 250 or 512 GB solid–state drive in the M.2 form factor. The amount of RAM is at least 16 GB and a maximum of 128 GB, DDR4 slats are used. According to representatives of Promobit, the laptop is fully compatible with the Russian operating systems Alt and Astra Linux.
The 5-hour autonomous operation of the laptop is provided by a 6000 mAh battery. Peripherals can be connected via four USB-A 3.0, one USB-C, HDMI and a 3.5mm mini jack. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Ethernet are also available.
As for the Baikal-M, it is a 28-nanometer ARM chip at a frequency of up to 1.5 GHz. Inside it there are eight Cortex A57 cores and an integrated Mali-T628 module with a frequency of up to 700 MHz for graphics processing. There will be no discrete graphics card in the laptop.
