Jio Book hands-on: take a closer look at this Rs 20,000 laptop

October 3rd saw Jio quietly launch its first laptop in India, the Jio Book, at the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022. This pioneering step from Jio to enter the laptop space is a crucial development in the company’s portfolio. Jio partnered up with Qualcomm and Microsoft to manufacture the Jio Book, which, by the way, is ‘Made in India.’ We talked about the Jio Book price in India and its availability details. We also got a chance to lay our hands on a unit. Here’s a closer look at this Rs 20,000 Jio laptop.

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Jio crafted its first laptop with a compact minimalistic design language: It’s built with ABS Plastic chassis with metallic hinges to hold it in one piece. The smooth, rubberised, matt finish surface flaunts a shiny Jio logo. It’s a flat cover with curved edges.

The left side houses a proprietary charging port, a USB Type-A socket, and one full-sized HDMI port. At the right spine, you’ll find a microSD card slot, one more USB Type-A port, and a 3.5mm audio port. The laptop rests on four rubber pads and has two cutouts for better ventilation inside the system.

On lifting the lid, you’ll witness an 11.6-inch 1366×768 pixels resolution HD screen with chunky bezels around the display, a 2MP webcam on the top, and Jio Book branding at the bottom. Under the hinge, there’s a slew of indicators: Power, Capslock on/off, Number lock, and dual Microphone (Right – Left).

It features a full-sized keyboard, minus the number keys, with decent space between the keys, which aren’t backlit. The first row includes an Esc key on the left, function keys in between, and a power button on the right. Since this device runs on Jio’s in-house OS, there’s a ‘Jio key’ instead of the traditional Windows key. Underneath the keyboard, you get a fair-sized trackpad aligned in the centre.

Under the hood, the Jio Book draws power from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset, and an Adreno 610 GPU takes care of graphical needs. A 55.1 to 60 AH battery keeps the lights on for up to eight hours on a single charge. It packs 2GB LPDDR4x RAM with 32GB eMMC storage, expandable via microSD card.

You get a dual-speaker setup and dual-integrated mic on Jio Book. For connectivity, it has Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and supports 4G. The laptop comes pre-loaded with Jio Cloud PC apps, Microsoft Office, Outlook, YouTube application, and a Microsoft Ad browser.

The Jio Book laptop is currently only available at the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), selling at Rs 19,500. Sadly, only government employees can purchase the device at the moment. Jio is still mum about its plans to bring this pocket-friendly laptop to the general public.