The mnt is far more open as well, but there's no comparison in the performance department... you'd have to treat the mnt more like a very underpowered, memory-constrained netbook.
I was in a similar boat until last year when I switched from a modded x61s to an x220 i7 then x230 i7 w/16GB which I'm still using and cost under $300 on ebay. The HD4000 iGPU is at least Vulkan capable.
It's really unfortunate the imx8 SoC didn't have even an 8GB variant. The fact that you can get a raspberry pi with more memory than the Reform is such a bummer.
Also, I will be able to upgrade that part as it comes available. Plenty of room!