The winner for - how many quarters? - of the best low cost laptop award on Anadtech assaults a somewhat higher price bracket... Looks interesting, I can hardly wait for the review... A reader since the K6-2 review days :)
You don't need to pay anyone to recognize AT recommends Chuwi as best low cost devices since some time. Calin is not expressing any opinion on that. Personally I think the recommendation is partly due to the products providing excellent value, and partly due to a lack of tested competition in this price range. Whoever else is building such machines apparently doesn't want them to be tested properly by AT.
I agree with you. Plus if you have followed Chuwi for a while, you would notice that their products have actually been improving. Would still like to see a USB Type-C in this Laptop and an IP rated screen but for now its good value for money
I do think they provide a lot of value for the money which is why I tend to recommend them. Every quarter for the guide I try to find something else that competes at the same price point and there is not a lot out there - especially by the bigger PC makers.
That being said, and I've told the company this before, as they creep up in price by providing more performance, storage, or whatever, the compromises they made to hit $200 or $300 start to become more glaring if they don't address them. It's one thing for a $200 laptop to have a poor trackpad and really need a USB/Bluetooth mouse, but another for a $500 machine to have the same issues.
I'm very happy to see something with Core M under $500 though, so am looking forward to testing these out.
I'm fed up with 768p displays in Windows - after the Windows taskbar, application menus/ribbons take their place, you are left with a slit where the application can do its work. But on the other side, I'm not entirely sold on 1080p displays (1600x1200 is so much better in Windows productivity applications). However, 1080p on a 13-14" screen makes everything small enough that higher resolutions are dubious. Also, good TN is acceptable but in many cases laptop TN is BAAAAD.
These are so close to being _really_ attractive that their glaring faults stand out all the more. That's frustrating.
The AeroBook: -No USB-C. In 2019, that's a deal breaker. -Charges through a barrel jack. A thin one, which means it's easily broken, and due to not being USB-C, difficult to replace. Yes, there are universal chargers, but they're almost universally clunky and annoying. - Micro HDMI is an absolutely useless connector, having too weak a latching mechanism and too short a plug to stay properly attached. The vast majority of HDMI cables are thick and quite heavy, after all, and the port simply doesn't stand up to its intended use. - A 16:9 display is disappointing on something so clearly aiming to emulate a 16:10 Mac, but I suppose that's down to panel cost and availability. Would be okay if the laptop didn't have poor I/O.
UBook: - It's a 16:9 tablet. Ugh. - Again, Micro HDMI. Ugh. - It has USB-C, but not for charging. Why? There are off-the-shelf USB PD sink setups available that take up just a few mm2 of board space and automatically negotiate voltages and everything else needed, at very low prices.
Outside of these points, both devices look great, particularly for their price points - but there are multiple deal-breakers in there, sadly.
They farm their power cables out to really really cheap manufacturers. They had an issue with cheap partners using two-sided tape to hold the metal connector on, and so 12V power would eventually cross into the data lines if the cable was wiggled too much. I think they chose to go with a barrel connector instead of making expensive power supplies.
This might be a deal breaker for you and all your points are valid, that much is not debatable but for someone who can't afford more mainstream manufacturers, this is a good deal, especially if you include the IndieGoGo promo and free shipping.
The price and shipping makes this a good deal, but I'm sure if enough of us speak out, we might get a USB Type-C connector included before shipping starts. But regardless it is a very good deal
Nope. The fastest Atoms are the Pentium Silver J5005 (10W, 4c4t) and Celeron J4105 (10W, 4c4t) (both Gemini Lake). The current _slowest_ core M is the m3-8100Y, at 5W, 2c4t. Here's a comparison of them from PassMark: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Pentium... The m3 wins by a decent margin both in ST and overall. Passmark isn't the best source of CPU performance, but it's decent.
Also, the m3 has Intel UHD Graphics 615, which is 24EUs, 6 more than the UHD 600/605 of the Atoms.
The N4100 is competitive in CPU performance with the Pentium Gold 4415Y but that is 1.6 GHz CPU with no Turbo boost at all. Core m3-6Y30 does have boost.
On the GPU side on that same review you can see that the Gemini Lake platform really struggles there with its 12 EUs.
I actually _like_ having the the barrel plug option for charging. I don't like having to 'sacrifice' the USB C port for something stupid like charging, though luckily the ubook seems to have 2 of them. I know you can get USB C hubs with PD and if you are lucky they even work correctly with your device, but they are expensive( and will take space, ... ). Ideally you have both options, a PD cable usb C 3.1 connector and a barrel plug.
If you have a barrel socket for a charger you are still giving up a USB-C port for charging because yu could fit a USB-C port in there instead. A barrel socket for charging is wasting space as it can only do charging and nothing else, furthermore it's not standard either. A USB-C port in the same place however can do both data and charging plus it's standard as well.
The flaw is any design that only has a single USB-C port as an option for charging, the solution is to ensure there are at least two USB-C ports not to add a proprietary charging socket which offers no advantage.
A barrel plug can be a fraction of the size of and USB-C plug. I assume it is also much cheaper to add. And it is much more robust too (not sure about the robustness of USB-C, microusb is horrible in any case). If i have to choose between 2 PD enabled USB-C connectors or 1 USB-C and one barrel, I 100% agree with you. But most likely it is between USB-C + the barrel plug or just USB-C (aka any smartphone out there) in which case I very much like the one with the barrel plug. I am now thinking mostly of older mobile phones that had USB and a barrel, and allowed to charge the phone from either of them (which is my ideal scenario mentioned above).
I bought an Anandtech recommended Chuwi lapbook. It was the worst piece of technology that I have ever purchased. Battery stopped holding a charge after 3 months. Basic things like the trackpad had no drivers and was completely unusable. I would stay far away.
I bought the very same 12.3 lapbook twice and was happy with the second one.
I returned the first, because the touch pad was super sensitive and the spacebar wouldn't react on the right hand side, where my thumb tends to strike when typing. When it didn't, I'd just bang harder, eventually hurting after an hour or so of typing.
The compelling poing was the super hi-res display and absolutely no moving parts and since nobody else was offering and the price had dropped €100, I went back for a second round (good thing you can return mail-order purchases for 14 days w/o questions asked around here).
That one turned out to be quite a bit better: The keyboard was rather good, the touchpad still slightly sensitive, but since I prefer mice any day and was planning to use it with a BT mouse from Logitech, I simply disabled the default mouse/touchpad device. Now that can be awkward to re-enable if the BT mouse is running out of juice, but I managed.
Since then I am loving it and it's a constant travel companion. Sure, battery life is nothing to write home about, but it manages my most extended brunches quite well and that's enough. It's primarily a reader and communicator, I won't run Linux compiles on it.
BTW: Ubuntu 18.04 and PhoenixOS (Android-x86) work quite well, too.
The built-in storage eMMC isn't breaking any speed or capcity records, so I went for a 128GB M.2 module instead (Ubuntu has the eMMC all to itself now).
Of course ChuWi cheats like hell: The only Aluminum in that body is power coating on the plastic shell. Inside, where the battery could take up so much more space, they have put a steel weight instead, to give the device that "premium" feel an empty plastic shell just cannot deliver...
And the rendered images have very little resemblance with the actual device, where the gaps are much bigger and the lid won't open nearly as far as you'd be inclined to believe from the renders.
But at €280 it quite simply delivers sufficient value for the money in a space where the iThing of that girl sitting next to you adds a zero at the end.
If Intel wasn't under ARM-attack, they'd never let a Core-CPU happen at Chuwi prices, so I am glad to see it happen, just because of that.
Intel & Apple have been overcharging like crazy for thin+light and now these things are nearing commodity pricing.
need edit: That powder coating... some kind of aluminum "paint", that actually has a bit of aluminum feel to it. But when you open the case, it's all plastic from the inside... which is actually quite fine!
There simply is no real advantage to having metal chassis, except when you need to disperse heat. My Chuwi is typically accompanied by a big full metal Gigabyte notebook sporting a GTX1070 GPU, basically a 150Watt monster I leave in the remote office, while the Chuwi stays in the hotel.
That one got bent all out of shape two weeks ago, evidently by some mishandling at airport security or by the madmen who cram suitcases in overhead lockers with everything they got. It's been wobly ever since and I hardly dare to "bend it back" now, because there is millions if not billions of things that can break in that unit.
Good old plastic Lenovo's take a lot more abuse, but don't deliver that type of GPGPU compute, unfortunately.
Ha, looks like they were burned by their USB C problems. In 2017, they released a tablet system (the Hi13) with USB PD. It worked great, but they farmed the power supplies out to a third party, KEYU. KEYU made the cables poorly, using tape to keep the metal connector on. The pins would wiggle and cross, and the 12V power would end up slamming into the data lines and frying the chip. Chuwi basically refused to issue replacements, since the problem was too common.
In short, you have to be careful with these ultra-cheap systems. The Hi13 was bulky, heavy, and poorly weighted, too.
Cheap but with sometimes questionable engineering. Xiaomi moved on from making cheap, cheerful and reliable devices to expensive, well-built and reliable devices. Chuwi and other second-tier Chinese assemblers put out a lot of products with questionable QC. I bought one of their products, had plenty of issues with it and decided to buy a proper name-brand tablet instead of dealing with a warranty nightmare.
Seen a lot of laptop within this spec range coming out from Tier 2 manufacturers but with the current price and look this system has, plus the free shipping in the IndieGoGo campaign. It gives the best value for money I have seen so far. Unless someone can show me an alternative, I will be buying this one.
If you do not need your CPU to be Ultra low power, the 14inch Ryzen equipped Huawei Matebook D is actually a sweet deal for €599. Just started selling in Europe and it really is a very attractive value proposition.
Is the Ubook SSD also user upgradable? The step from 128 GB to 1 TB leaves a large hole in the middle, and I have a 480 GB SATA m.2 that could fill it. If yes, I might be interested in trying one.
So I have a Chuwi CoreBook I got through their Indiegogo campaign last year and it's ok for general use, but it also has horrible backlight bleed. I probably wouldn't go with them if I knew the quality they provide. At least the CoreBook has a 7th gen m3 instead of a 6th gen m3 as listed.
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Calin - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
The winner for - how many quarters? - of the best low cost laptop award on Anadtech assaults a somewhat higher price bracket... Looks interesting, I can hardly wait for the review...A reader since the K6-2 review days :)
nunya112 - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
lol. hi there Mr PR man, paid commenter ?? heheMrSpadge - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
You don't need to pay anyone to recognize AT recommends Chuwi as best low cost devices since some time. Calin is not expressing any opinion on that. Personally I think the recommendation is partly due to the products providing excellent value, and partly due to a lack of tested competition in this price range. Whoever else is building such machines apparently doesn't want them to be tested properly by AT.janqueen - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
I agree with you. Plus if you have followed Chuwi for a while, you would notice that their products have actually been improving. Would still like to see a USB Type-C in this Laptop and an IP rated screen but for now its good value for moneyBrett Howse - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
I do think they provide a lot of value for the money which is why I tend to recommend them. Every quarter for the guide I try to find something else that competes at the same price point and there is not a lot out there - especially by the bigger PC makers.That being said, and I've told the company this before, as they creep up in price by providing more performance, storage, or whatever, the compromises they made to hit $200 or $300 start to become more glaring if they don't address them. It's one thing for a $200 laptop to have a poor trackpad and really need a USB/Bluetooth mouse, but another for a $500 machine to have the same issues.
I'm very happy to see something with Core M under $500 though, so am looking forward to testing these out.
Calin - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
I'm fed up with 768p displays in Windows - after the Windows taskbar, application menus/ribbons take their place, you are left with a slit where the application can do its work.But on the other side, I'm not entirely sold on 1080p displays (1600x1200 is so much better in Windows productivity applications).
However, 1080p on a 13-14" screen makes everything small enough that higher resolutions are dubious.
Also, good TN is acceptable but in many cases laptop TN is BAAAAD.
Valantar - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
These are so close to being _really_ attractive that their glaring faults stand out all the more. That's frustrating.The AeroBook:
-No USB-C. In 2019, that's a deal breaker.
-Charges through a barrel jack. A thin one, which means it's easily broken, and due to not being USB-C, difficult to replace. Yes, there are universal chargers, but they're almost universally clunky and annoying.
- Micro HDMI is an absolutely useless connector, having too weak a latching mechanism and too short a plug to stay properly attached. The vast majority of HDMI cables are thick and quite heavy, after all, and the port simply doesn't stand up to its intended use.
- A 16:9 display is disappointing on something so clearly aiming to emulate a 16:10 Mac, but I suppose that's down to panel cost and availability. Would be okay if the laptop didn't have poor I/O.
UBook:
- It's a 16:9 tablet. Ugh.
- Again, Micro HDMI. Ugh.
- It has USB-C, but not for charging. Why? There are off-the-shelf USB PD sink setups available that take up just a few mm2 of board space and automatically negotiate voltages and everything else needed, at very low prices.
Outside of these points, both devices look great, particularly for their price points - but there are multiple deal-breakers in there, sadly.
mkozakewich - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
They farm their power cables out to really really cheap manufacturers. They had an issue with cheap partners using two-sided tape to hold the metal connector on, and so 12V power would eventually cross into the data lines if the cable was wiggled too much. I think they chose to go with a barrel connector instead of making expensive power supplies.janqueen - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
This might be a deal breaker for you and all your points are valid, that much is not debatable but for someone who can't afford more mainstream manufacturers, this is a good deal, especially if you include the IndieGoGo promo and free shipping.psychobriggsy - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
Shame about the lack of USB-C on the Aerobook, but $499 isn't a bad price.Shame both use archaic barrel connectors for charging.
patrickjb - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
The price and shipping makes this a good deal, but I'm sure if enough of us speak out, we might get a USB Type-C connector included before shipping starts. But regardless it is a very good dealJorgp2 - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
Pretty sure the higher end atoms outperform core m CPUs.And they have 18 EUs, not 12.
Valantar - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
Nope. The fastest Atoms are the Pentium Silver J5005 (10W, 4c4t) and Celeron J4105 (10W, 4c4t) (both Gemini Lake). The current _slowest_ core M is the m3-8100Y, at 5W, 2c4t. Here's a comparison of them from PassMark:https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Pentium...
The m3 wins by a decent margin both in ST and overall. Passmark isn't the best source of CPU performance, but it's decent.
Also, the m3 has Intel UHD Graphics 615, which is 24EUs, 6 more than the UHD 600/605 of the Atoms.
patrickjb - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
yes very accurate, We want a newer processor but going the Atom route is not it at all.Jorgp2 - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
That doesn't really seem like a decent margin.Plus, is that taking steady state performance into account.
Brett Howse - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
The laptop models (N Series) have 12 EUs - at least in the Celeron N4100 that Chuwi used. If you check out our Surface Go review:https://www.anandtech.com/show/13864/the-microsoft...
The N4100 is competitive in CPU performance with the Pentium Gold 4415Y but that is 1.6 GHz CPU with no Turbo boost at all. Core m3-6Y30 does have boost.
On the GPU side on that same review you can see that the Gemini Lake platform really struggles there with its 12 EUs.
BramEPC - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
I actually _like_ having the the barrel plug option for charging. I don't like having to 'sacrifice' the USB C port for something stupid like charging, though luckily the ubook seems to have 2 of them. I know you can get USB C hubs with PD and if you are lucky they even work correctly with your device, but they are expensive( and will take space, ... ). Ideally you have both options, a PD cable usb C 3.1 connector and a barrel plug.Johnmcl7 - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
If you have a barrel socket for a charger you are still giving up a USB-C port for charging because yu could fit a USB-C port in there instead. A barrel socket for charging is wasting space as it can only do charging and nothing else, furthermore it's not standard either. A USB-C port in the same place however can do both data and charging plus it's standard as well.The flaw is any design that only has a single USB-C port as an option for charging, the solution is to ensure there are at least two USB-C ports not to add a proprietary charging socket which offers no advantage.
BramEPC - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
A barrel plug can be a fraction of the size of and USB-C plug. I assume it is also much cheaper to add. And it is much more robust too (not sure about the robustness of USB-C, microusb is horrible in any case). If i have to choose between 2 PD enabled USB-C connectors or 1 USB-C and one barrel, I 100% agree with you. But most likely it is between USB-C + the barrel plug or just USB-C (aka any smartphone out there) in which case I very much like the one with the barrel plug. I am now thinking mostly of older mobile phones that had USB and a barrel, and allowed to charge the phone from either of them (which is my ideal scenario mentioned above).nwrigley - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
I bought an Anandtech recommended Chuwi lapbook. It was the worst piece of technology that I have ever purchased. Battery stopped holding a charge after 3 months. Basic things like the trackpad had no drivers and was completely unusable. I would stay far away.abufrejoval - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
I bought the very same 12.3 lapbook twice and was happy with the second one.I returned the first, because the touch pad was super sensitive and the spacebar wouldn't react on the right hand side, where my thumb tends to strike when typing. When it didn't, I'd just bang harder, eventually hurting after an hour or so of typing.
The compelling poing was the super hi-res display and absolutely no moving parts and since nobody else was offering and the price had dropped €100, I went back for a second round (good thing you can return mail-order purchases for 14 days w/o questions asked around here).
That one turned out to be quite a bit better: The keyboard was rather good, the touchpad still slightly sensitive, but since I prefer mice any day and was planning to use it with a BT mouse from Logitech, I simply disabled the default mouse/touchpad device. Now that can be awkward to re-enable if the BT mouse is running out of juice, but I managed.
Since then I am loving it and it's a constant travel companion. Sure, battery life is nothing to write home about, but it manages my most extended brunches quite well and that's enough. It's primarily a reader and communicator, I won't run Linux compiles on it.
BTW: Ubuntu 18.04 and PhoenixOS (Android-x86) work quite well, too.
The built-in storage eMMC isn't breaking any speed or capcity records, so I went for a 128GB M.2 module instead (Ubuntu has the eMMC all to itself now).
Of course ChuWi cheats like hell: The only Aluminum in that body is power coating on the plastic shell. Inside, where the battery could take up so much more space, they have put a steel weight instead, to give the device that "premium" feel an empty plastic shell just cannot deliver...
And the rendered images have very little resemblance with the actual device, where the gaps are much bigger and the lid won't open nearly as far as you'd be inclined to believe from the renders.
But at €280 it quite simply delivers sufficient value for the money in a space where the iThing of that girl sitting next to you adds a zero at the end.
If Intel wasn't under ARM-attack, they'd never let a Core-CPU happen at Chuwi prices, so I am glad to see it happen, just because of that.
Intel & Apple have been overcharging like crazy for thin+light and now these things are nearing commodity pricing.
abufrejoval - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
need edit: That powder coating... some kind of aluminum "paint", that actually has a bit of aluminum feel to it. But when you open the case, it's all plastic from the inside... which is actually quite fine!There simply is no real advantage to having metal chassis, except when you need to disperse heat. My Chuwi is typically accompanied by a big full metal Gigabyte notebook sporting a GTX1070 GPU, basically a 150Watt monster I leave in the remote office, while the Chuwi stays in the hotel.
That one got bent all out of shape two weeks ago, evidently by some mishandling at airport security or by the madmen who cram suitcases in overhead lockers with everything they got. It's been wobly ever since and I hardly dare to "bend it back" now, because there is millions if not billions of things that can break in that unit.
Good old plastic Lenovo's take a lot more abuse, but don't deliver that type of GPGPU compute, unfortunately.
mkozakewich - Thursday, February 28, 2019 - link
Ha, looks like they were burned by their USB C problems. In 2017, they released a tablet system (the Hi13) with USB PD. It worked great, but they farmed the power supplies out to a third party, KEYU. KEYU made the cables poorly, using tape to keep the metal connector on. The pins would wiggle and cross, and the 12V power would end up slamming into the data lines and frying the chip. Chuwi basically refused to issue replacements, since the problem was too common.In short, you have to be careful with these ultra-cheap systems. The Hi13 was bulky, heavy, and poorly weighted, too.
boozed - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
[CHEWBACCA NOISES]serendip - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
Cheap but with sometimes questionable engineering. Xiaomi moved on from making cheap, cheerful and reliable devices to expensive, well-built and reliable devices. Chuwi and other second-tier Chinese assemblers put out a lot of products with questionable QC. I bought one of their products, had plenty of issues with it and decided to buy a proper name-brand tablet instead of dealing with a warranty nightmare.janqueen - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
Seen a lot of laptop within this spec range coming out from Tier 2 manufacturers but with the current price and look this system has, plus the free shipping in the IndieGoGo campaign. It gives the best value for money I have seen so far. Unless someone can show me an alternative, I will be buying this one.Irata - Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - link
If you do not need your CPU to be Ultra low power, the 14inch Ryzen equipped Huawei Matebook D is actually a sweet deal for €599. Just started selling in Europe and it really is a very attractive value proposition.eastcoast_pete - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
Is the Ubook SSD also user upgradable? The step from 128 GB to 1 TB leaves a large hole in the middle, and I have a 480 GB SATA m.2 that could fill it. If yes, I might be interested in trying one.zodiacfml - Friday, March 1, 2019 - link
Chuwi is Xiaomi smartphones in the laptop world. Nice all around for the price but not easily available to the rest of the worldwild_one_81 - Saturday, March 2, 2019 - link
So I have a Chuwi CoreBook I got through their Indiegogo campaign last year and it's ok for general use, but it also has horrible backlight bleed. I probably wouldn't go with them if I knew the quality they provide. At least the CoreBook has a 7th gen m3 instead of a 6th gen m3 as listed.