RISC-V laptops: MUSE Book for $299 and DC ROMA II for $399 with SpacemiT processors now available

Two laptops with RISC-V processors developed by Chinese company SpacemiT are now available. The MUSE BOOK was first introduced in April and is now available from ARACE for $299 and up, while the DC-ROMA II was introduced just last week and is now available from Deep Computing for $399 and up.

Both are 14-inch laptops with 1080p displays, 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR4x memory, and SpacemiT processors with 8 RISC-V RVA22 profile CPU cores, Imagination XE-2-32 graphics, and an NPU for on-device AI processing.

Exactly which It’s a bit unclear what processor the laptops use. While the DC-ROMA II clearly has a SpacemiT K1 chip, the MUSE Book’s product page contains references to both the K1 chip and an M1 chip, which is said to be a more powerful version of the K1.

The MUSE Book’s starting price of $299 is for a model with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage, but the laptop can be configured with up to 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. There’s also an M.2 socket that lets you add a PCIe Gen 2 SSD, as well as a microSD card slot for removable storage.

The DC-ROMA II’s starting price of $399 is for a model with 8GB of memory and no built-in storage. Instead, it ships with a 32GB microSD card. However, for an additional cost, you can purchase up to 16GB of RAM and an SSD up to 1TB. There’s a “Dev Kit” add-on that includes additional microSD cards with Ubuntu and Debian software images pre-installed, as well as an optional power bank/charger combo.

Aside from some minor visual differences (like colors and brand logos), the two laptops seem similar enough overall that I suspect they are actually the same notebook (or at least made by the same OEM), so it’s a little unclear why one model has a $100 higher starting price than the other.

Both laptops support WiFi 6 and feature USB Type-C and Type-A ports, headphone jacks, and an exposed 8-pin interface for GPIO, UART, I2C, PWM, and other interfaces. The laptops are clearly positioned as development platforms for people looking to get started with the RISC-V architecture, which is a (relatively) new but fast-growing alternative to ARM and x86_64, at least in part because it’s an open standard that any chipmaker can use without paying a licensing fee. It’s also particularly attractive to Chinese companies like SpacemiT, as US trade restrictions are affecting the country’s supply of chips and related technologies.

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