Tiny ‘Colorpunk’ Laptop brings fun and flavor to the world of boring ‘metallic’ laptops

The MacBook, while incredibly powerful, ruined laptops for everyone. Somehow, every single laptop has the exact same design and finish, and without the logo on the lid, it’s practically impossible to tell one laptop apart from another. Back in the day, companies like Alienware truly made some earth-shatteringly beautiful laptops, but even gaming laptops today are all just slick sheets of metal with just the smallest amount of RGB lighting to make them qualify as a gaming laptop. This needs to change.

Designer Braz de Pina made the a_77 laptop as purely a design exercise, but he did manage to stumble across something rather unique in his design approach. de Pina started off first by modeling a keyboard in 3D, but then decided to add a screen and a few ports to it. This strangely bottom-up approach resulted in a laptop that looks fun, funky, and something a trueblue tech-lover would enjoy. Think Flipper Zero, but in laptop form.

Designer: Braz de Pina

Look at the size and format and you instantly understand how the keyboard was the pivotal first-piece in the laptop’s design. Everything is hyper-compact, giving you a laptop that doesn’t try to do or be too much. No extra real estate around the bottom of the keyboard, no massive mousepad, no 16:9 screen. The keyboard’s slim layout defines every element of the laptop. The screen is touch-enabled, but in case you want familiar cursor-style movement, there’s a nub-shaped key right underneath the Enter button that you can use IBM Thinkpad-style.

The keyboard itself comes with a 65% payout, sporting function keys on the top, an enlarged escape key, an orange power button, and even a dedicated CoPilot key beside the spacebar. The keys have low-travel laptop-style caps in the interest of compactness, but there’s also enough space at the bottom for a speaker grill so that it doesn’t eat into the sides like you’d see on a larger MacBook.

While the keyboard is the laptop’s most crucial design element, its overall aesthetic is what I’m impressed by. Use of plastic and funky colors like yellow, blue, and white gives it a fresh appeal. Sort of like the Capcom color palette but a little more cyberpunk-meets-fun. You’ve got 4 USB-C ports divided equally among the left and right sides, a power outlet on one side, and even fan vents on the sides and back.

Yes, the a_77 laptop has a weird screen, but to be honest, that aspect ratio is almost exactly as much as a smartphone, only slightly larger in size. There’s really no cardinal sin to deviate from the 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio, so for people who want a laptop that’s compact and interesting, this might just be the right flavor.

Its fun-loving aesthetic aside, the a_77 really does make the laptop hyper-portable, allowing it to fit not just in bags, but maybe even in a large jacket pocket. Power it via USB-C so you aren’t stuck with a charger, and you have yourself the ultimate on-the-go productivity machine. Sure, don’t expect massive specs in something this small (it’s conceptual anyway), but then again, something so handy would be perfect for coders, pen-testers, and tech-geeks. Plus, wouldn’t we all want a laptop with just a little bit of character? Something that isn’t clad in boring, run-of-the-mill Jony-Ive-Anodized-Aluminium?

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