For the last several years, Chuwi has been shaking up the bottom end of the PC market with low-cost alternatives to the big manufacturers that offer significantly more PC for the money than you’d typically see. But, until this year, Chuwi has focused only on the lowest cost notebooks. Their signature over the last couple of years has been more RAM, more storage, and a better display than most other notebooks in their price range, making them an easy recommendation in the value end of the spectrum. Today we are taking a look at the latest notebook from Chuwi, the AeroBook, and here Chuwi has deviated from their norms. Luckily these risks all result in a better user experience, but of course it comes with tradeoffs.

The 13.3-inch Chuwi AeroBook is the first notebook from the company to not use an Atom based processor, with the AeroBook making the leap to an Intel Core based CPU in the Core m3-6Y30. This is a Skylake-Y series CPU, meaning this isn’t the latest generation Amber Lake-Y we just took a look at in the HP Spectre Folio – or even the previous generation Kaby Lake-Y – but a generation farther back still. So even though it’s a step up to Core, it’s not a giant leap. The Core m3-6Y30 offers two Skylake CPUs cores with Hyperthreading, and a base frequency of 900 MHz with a maximum turbo frequency of 2.2 GHz. Compared to the latest Core m3-8100Y, it’s well behind the 1.1-3.4 GHz range that CPU can achieve, but regardless, it’s still a nice step over the previous Atom based Chuwi LapBooks we’ve reviewed.

As a budget device, you’d likely expect budget specifications, but Chuwi, as usual, offers quite a bit of value in the AeroBook. The version sold in North America comes with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD, meaning it’s well-equipped for an Ultrabook with a price of just $499.00 USD. For comparison, that’s twice the storage as the same priced Surface Go, and you don’t need to purchase a keyboard for this laptop either. As a budget device though, there’s always going to be compromise, and that happens here with the RAM being single-channel only, and the SSD being a M.2 SATA version. But it does pair nicely with the Core m3, offering enough RAM and storage to make the system usable for many tasks.

Chuwi also continues to offer an IPS display, and while that is a standout feature on their lower cost devices, once they bump into higher price brackets, it’s no longer the rarity that it is at the $250 range.

Chuwi AeroBook
	Specifications
CPU	Intel Core m3-6Y30 2C / 4T 900 MHz - 2.2 GHz 4.5 W TDP
GPU	Intel HD 515 24 EU 300-850 MHz
Display	13.3-inch 1920x1080 IPS Glossy No Touch
Storage	256 GB SSD Netec SATA M.2
Wireless	Intel Dual Band Wireless AC-3165 1x1 802.11ac with Bluetooth
I/O	2 x USB 3.0 1 x USB Type-C w/PD 1 x Micro HDMI Micro SD 3.5mm headset jack
Webcam	2.0 MP
Battery	38 Wh Li-Ion 24 W AC Adapter
Dimensions	308 x 209 x 15.2 mm 12.1 x 8.2 x 0.6 inches
Weight	1.26 Kg / 2.77 lbs
MSRP	$499 USD

To hit the lower price ranges while still offering reasonable baseline specifications, other portions of the laptop do take a hit, as you’d expect. Chuwi offers only 1x1 Wi-Fi, but it is the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 NIC, so despite being a 1x1 NIC, it’s still a quality one. Chuwi also only offers a 38 Wh battery, which is certainly on the small side for a 13.3-inch notebook.

With a new notebook lineup, and the jump to Core, Chuwi has bumped their price bracket up slightly, but they are still offering the value you’d expect. Let’s dig into how the rest of the notebook fares, starting with the design.

Design

Looking at the Chuwi AeroBook, it becomes clear very quickly that Chuwi has been inspired by the MacBook, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For originality it’s not the best design, but there’s little doubt that it’s a design that works, and looks great.

The AeroBook is thin and light, coming in at just 1.26 kg / 2.77 lbs, making it easy to travel with. The exterior is all-metal offering a great in-hand feel, and also helping with the fanless cooling. The laptop isn’t entirely metal though, with the keyboard deck being made out of plastic, but they’ve nicely matched the coloring to the rest of the unit.

Chuwi also offers a modern looking then-bezel design, with 5 mm bezels on the side and the top and bottom being slightly wider to allow for the webcam. The display is a 16:9 unit, meaning the bottom bezel is quite tall, but it still looks great framed in the black surround.

Chuwi has done a great job on the keyboard, with a very wide keyboard layout pushing the keys all the way to the edges, and the keys themselves offer reasonable good travel and are quite easy to type on. Generally a power button integrated in the keyboard is a negative, but Chuwi has put it off to the side far enough that it’s less likely to be accidentally hit, and the button is bright red so you can’t miss it. Chuwi also offers two levels of white LED backlighting on the AeroBook, which isn’t something they always offer on their LapBooks, but is certainly an expectation as they creep into higher price brackets.

The trackpad is quite good. The size is just right and it seems very responsive. This is one area where Chuwi has traditionally done quite poorly on, so it’s great to see them focus some attention here. It’s not a glass trackpad though, and the plastic coating is a bit rough, but it registers taps and multi-touch well and this is likely the first Chuwi where the money saved on the notebook didn’t have to be spent on an external mouse.

For expansion, there’s a USB 3.0 port on the right side, along with the headset jack and a micro SD card slot. The left side offers a somewhat strange assortment, with a USB 3.0 port, a micro HDMI port, and a USB Type-C port. There’s no Thunderbolt 3, It does provide power delivery, but despite this Chuwi has a dedicated barrel connector, also on the left side, for charging. It's a strange decision to integrate a separate charging connector when they could just use the USB-C they've already installed.

Overall though, the design of the AreoBook is easily Chuwi’s best effort yet. The metal exterior feels great in the hand, and the laptop offers very little flex. It’s still thin and light as well, and the thin-bezel design keeps the AeroBook looking modern, while at the same time reducing its overall size. No one is going to confuse the AeroBook for the laptop it so clearly is themed after, but for the price, it exceeds expectations.

System Performance

It’s been a long time coming for Chuwi to make the leap from Atom to Core. Intel historically also likes to ensure it has strong product separation in its lineup, so the jump from Atom to Core comes with more performance, but also a sharply higher price. That being said, the latest Gemini Lake based Celerons have made some significant gains, so there is a question of what kind of performance delta there will be between a dual-core Skylake-Y based Core m3 compared to a Goldmont Plus Celeron with four actual cores.

To see how the Chuwi AeroBook performs, it was run through our Laptop workload. For our graphs a variety of devices were chosen to compare it to. The Chuwi LapBook 12.3 is the older Apollo Lake N3450, with four Atom cores from 1.1 to 2.2 GHz. The Chuwi LapBook SE is the latest Gemini Lake N4100, featuring four updated Atom cores from 1.1 to 2.4 GHz. Both of these notebooks cost less. The Microsoft Surface Go features a Y-Series Kaby Lake Pentium 4415Y, but being a Pentium it offers no Turbo at all, so it’s just a 1.6 GHz CPU. The HP Spectre Folio is a Core i7-8500Y, and while being far more expensive, it should show the maximum capabilities of the latest Amber Lake Y Series processor. Finally, the Surface Pro 6 is there to give a reference as to where these fanless devices stack up against a 15-Watt U series Kaby Lake-R with four cores. Once again it’s not direct competition, but was included just to see where these Y series compare against a U series that is also fanless.

PCMark

UL’s PCMark suite tests all aspects of a system, with varying workloads depending on the scenario. Some are more stressful on the GPU, such as the Content Creation, and it gives a nice overall look at total system performance including the memory and storage subsystems. There’s no doubt that the move to a Core m3 processor has been a nice bump in performance, easily outclassing the earlier Atom powered Chuwi notebooks. Performance is well off the Amber Lake Spectre Folio though, so while it’s great to see Chuwi move to Core, it would have been nice to see them utilize a more recent version.

Cinebench

Cinebench is a purely CPU task, and is a great tool because it offers both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads. The AeroBook once again surpasses the older Atom based Chuwi laptops handily, especially in single-threaded where Core is so much more powerful. On the multi-threaded test the Gemini Lake claws back some of that gap though since it does offer four cores compared to just two on the AeroBook. Four Gemini Lake cores are quicker than two Kaby Lake cores in the Surface Go because the Pentium, despite being a Core architecture, offers no Turbo, but the Core m3 in the AeroBook does offer some boost up to 2.2 GHz and can win the day. However, all of these Y series and Atom powered notebooks are far below the performance of a quad-core U series.

x264

Similar to Cinebench, x264 uses the CPU to encode video and works well with more cores. Once again the Core m3 in the AeroBook offers a nice performance bump over the previous models, but all of these are surpassed dramatically by the Core i5-8250U in the Surface Pro 6.

Web Results

Web workloads tend to be short, and Intel’s aggressive pursuit of ramping up to their maximum Turbo via their Speed Shift mechanism has helped tremendously here. Web is influenced heavily by the browser as well, so for consistency we test with Microsoft Edge. Microsoft is currently migrating away from their EdgeHTML rendering engine to Chromium though, and once they do that we’ll refresh our tests with updated ones.

There is a definite gap where the AeroBook slots in. The 2.2 GHz maximum Turbo helps ensure that in light workloads the Core m3 can stay ahead of the Pentium and Celerons, but there’s also a massive gap to the latest Amber Lake Y series in the HP Spectre.

System Performance Conclusion

Despite Chuwi not leveraging the latest Amber Lake processors in the AeroBook, they’ve still added in some noticeable performance with the move away from Atom. Unlike the Surface Go, which offers a Kaby Lake based Pentium, the Core m3-6Y30 does offer a mild Turbo boost to 2.2 GHz, which makes all of the difference compared to Atom. The Pentium 4415Y with just two Kaby Lake cores at 1.6 GHz would trade blows with the four Goldmont Plus Atom cores in the LapBook SE, but the AeroBook, with even just that slight Turbo, easily jumps ahead and stays ahead in pretty much every task.

GPU Performance

With just a 4.5-Watt Thermal Design Power for the entire SoC inside the Chuwi AeroBook, graphics demands are going to be a challenge, but if we compare the AeroBook to the previous Chuwi models, there’s still a substantial increase in raw performance available.

The Core m3-6Y30 features the Intel HD 515 graphics, which is several generations behind Intel’s latest, but the differences are minor since they’ve not really refreshed their GPU architecture for some time. The big difference between the HD 515 and the UHD 600 found in the latest Gemini Lake SoC Chuwi had leveraged before is that the HD 515 features 24 execution units compared to just 12 in the Celeron N4100. The HD 515 in the Core m3-6Y30 also has a higher Turbo frequency for the GPU – up to 850 MHz – compared to just 700 MHz on the N4100.

Still, as we’ve seen many times before, even with more TDP available, the integrated GPU on the Intel CPUs is really showing its age. To see how the Chuwi AeroBook performs, it was run through our Ultrabook GPU suite, which consists of a couple of synthetic tests, and one game which can be playable on an iGPU. We’ll see how the Chuwi performs though, and Chuwi’s decision to use single-channel RAM is likely to hurt the GPU scores the most.

3DMark

UL’s 3Dmark offers several tests of varying complexity, all the way from Ice Storm Unlimited which can be run on a smartphone, up to Fire Strike which can challenge even the latest GPUs. This test instantly shows the gap between the Atom powered Celerons and the Core powered devices, and even though none of these are powerful GPUs, even at a 5-Watt TDP the Core m3 offers double the performance of the Celeron.

GFXBench

The latest Aztec Ruins test from Kishonti finally dumps OpenGL on the PC and offers DX12. Unfortunately the older Atom powered devices weren’t tested on this newer benchmark, but it does show the detriment that single-channel RAM plays since the Chuwi is the only device in the graph to not offer dual-channel memory.

Dota 2

Valve’s Dota 2 continues to be our real-world game of choice for low-end devices because the game is one of the few that is actually playable even on an integrated GPU. Unfortunately the Chuwi is barely playable even at our lowest tested settings. The single-channel RAM is certainly a big factor, as is likely the lower CPU performance, since Dota 2 can be a CPU limited game as well.

GPU Summary

The move from Atom to Core brings with it a much larger GPU, and that improvement is clearly demonstrated in our results, but Chuwi’s decision to go with single-channel RAM definitely hurts overall performance. Intel’s integrated GPU really needs an update though, since even properly equipped and with a 15-Watt TDP like on the Surface Pro 6, it still struggles to offer much in the way of performance.

Storage Performance

Chuwi has also made a step up in storage. On most of their other low-end notebooks, they tend to offer eMMC storage, and although they generally offer more flash storage at the same price point as their competitors, eMMC doesn’t offer the performance of a SSD. The Chuwi AeroBook which is sold in North America comes with a single storage offering, and that is a 256 GB SSD, and in this case it’s a Netac model. Chuwi has offered a SSD before, but not as the boot drive, so this is a welcome change.

The performance is not fantastic, but still a step beyond what eMMC offers. The SSD is also accessible on the bottom of the notebook by removing two screws, so if you want to swap in a larger SATA SSD, it’s possible, which isn’t the case on most Ultrabooks without a lot of deconstruction.

Display Analysis

One of the main reasons Chuwi has been easy to recommend at the low-end of the PC price scale is that they generally offer an IPS display, meaning great viewing angles, on many of their budget offerings. The Chuwi AeroBook continues this trend, although at the $499 price point, it’s less of a luxury and more of an expectation.

The 13.3-inch panel offers a 1920x1080 resolution, which is perfect for this size of notebook, and although a 3:2 offering would possibly be better, the panel choices are slimmer for the company trying to hit a price target when you move away from 16:9.

To see how the Chuwi AeroBook display performs, we tested it with Portrait Display’s CalMAN software with a custom workflow. For contrast and brightness readings, and X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter was used, and for color accuracy testing, the X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer gets the call.

Brightness and Contrast

At 305 nits peak brightness, the AeroBook is well under the average for laptops in this price range, but still reasonable bright. The black levels though are quite high, meaning the panel isn’t doing a great job of blocking the backlight when requested, and this means the contrast ratio is quite a bit lower than the other notebooks. At one point, 1000:1 was pretty good for an IPS display on a notebook, but improvements to panel design and aligned displays have moved the bar. So on this result, the display is OK but not great. For those that are curious, the display goes down to 19 nits at its lowest brightness, which is likely fine for a notebook, but quite a bit higher than many models which can offer sub-10 nit levels at 0% brightness.

Grayscale

Portrait Displays CalMAN

We often discuss factory calibrated displays, like Microsoft does on the Surface lineup, and that most companies do not individually calibrate displays. But that doesn’t mean no effort is spent on calibration, since some work can be done at the batch level, and while it won’t lead to perfect results, it can still get a display in the range. Unfortunately, Chuwi doesn’t appear to do batch calibration either, which a horrendous result on the grayscale test. The red levels drop away dramatically, and the gamma level is not even close to the desired 2.2 level. As a budget device, this can be somewhat forgiven, but as Chuwi creeps up the price range with higher-priced options, it’s a negative against this device.

Gamut

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Some devices in this price range skimp on the backlighting, meaning they can’t even do the full sRGB gamut. That is not the case here, with Chwui able to achieve a good result on sRGB, although the actual colors don’t quite hit the mark.

Saturation

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Gamut tests the primary and secondary colors at 100% levels, but the saturation test checks the primary and secondary colors across the entire range, in 4-bit steps. On the primary colors, blue and red do a reasonable job hitting the correct axis, but green is quite a bit off. On the secondary colors, magenta is the one that is most affected. The end result isn’t great.

Gretag Macbeth

Portrait Displays CalMAN

The Gretag Macbeth tests an assortment of colors rather than just focusing on the primary and secondary results, and includes the important skin tones. With no calibration at all, the AeroBook struggles here on almost every target.

Display Conclusion

As mentioned previously, offering an IPS display on Chuwi’s budget offerings makes them stand out against the competition which often still includes TN displays in those price ranges, but the AeroBook is no longer competing against $200 notebooks. The inclusion of an IPS display at the $500 range that this notebook hits is an expectation, so just offering one isn’t enough to make your product stand out. Unfortunately, Chuwi hasn’t put any effort into the display at all, other than ensuring the backlight can hit the entire sRGB gamut.

Battery Life

The AeroBook offers a 38 Wh battery capacity, which is certainly on the low side for a 13.3-inch notebook. As a comparison, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 squeezes a 45 Wh battery into a 12.3-inch tablet. But, the battery size is only one side of the equation, with the other being how efficient the device is. To see how Chuwi’s AeroBook performed, we ran it against several tests. As usual, all devices are calibrated to 200 nits of display brightness.

Light Battery

Our lightest test cycles four web pages per minute. On a modern laptop, it’s almost a test of idle, since the device is only working for a fraction of the time. Chuwi doesn’t fare well here. At just over five hours of runtime, it’s well below the average for this class of notebook.

Web

Our newer web test is much more demanding, and as such can drop the results significantly. That isn’t really the case with the AeroBook, which almost has the same runtime as the previous test, which hints that the main power drain isn’t the CPU at all.

Movie Playback

Our movie playback test simply cycles a movie until the battery quits. This test allows the device to move the work to fixed function hardware in the GPU, and lets the rest of the CPU sleep, so movie playback tends to be the longest running time of any of our tests. That is the case here as well, although the gain still isn’t enough to bring the AeroBook up from last place.

Our Tesseract score divides the movie playback by the length of a long movie, to give a quick and easy reference of how many movies can be played before the system runs out of power. If you’re on a long flight and want to watch some films to pass the time, you have to hope there’s a power outlet because the AeroBook doesn’t score well here.

Normalized Results

By removing the battery capacity from the total run time, we can see how efficient each device is, in a result of minutes of runtime per Wh of battery. The AeroBook is well off the best results here, meaning it’s the least efficient of the devices compared against. The worst part for the AeroBook is that it also offers one of the smallest batteries, so the battery life is impacted on both sides of this equation.

Platform Power

There’s more to making a laptop have great battery life than choosing a CPU. Every single decision made in the design has an impact on the battery life one way or another. Chuwi choosing a smaller battery capacity wouldn’t be a big issue if they also focuses on platform efficiency and display power draw, but it appears they did neither.

The power usage was checked with the machine idling at 200 nits display brightness, and also with the display off, to separate the power of the motherboard from the display, which tends to be the biggest draw on any notebook.

The display power on the AeroBook at 200 nits was 3.66 Watts, which is quite high. The HP Spectre Folio offers one of the new “1W” displays, and at maximum brightness it only draws 1.71 Watts, or half of what the Chuwi draws at 67% brightness to hit 200 nits. On top of that, the rest of the Chuwi draws 2.85 Watts at idle, which is at least 50% higher than expected. The same HP Spectre Folio with a Y-Series processor draws just 750 mW, and a much more powerful Surface Book 2 15 draws only 2 W at idle.

There could be many factors why. The Netac SSD may just offer terrible idle power management, or some other component that was chosen just has a high base power draw. The end result though is poor power management on a device with a small battery, meaning poor battery life.

Charge Time

The other side of the equation is charge time, and Chuwi ships the AeroBook with a 24-Watt AC Adapter. Unfortunately, the charging adapter is fitted with a barrel connector since the AeroBook, despite offering USB Type-C with power delivery, it doesn't ship with a USB-C charger, but if you ever do lose or break the flimsy barrel connector charger, you can utilize a USB Type-C charger in its place.

The overall charge time isn’t extremely fast, despite the small battery, but it does slot in about average with most notebooks.

Wireless

One area where Chuwi clearly focused on their price target was the wireless. We don’t often see a 1x1 solution anymore, but the AeroBook features just a single stream for Wi-Fi. Luckily that wireless card is an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165, and with Intel’s track record on network cards, at least some solace can be found in the connecting being rock solid.

As expected, the performance of just a single 5 GHz AC stream is much lower than what you’d get in any 2x2 wireless offering, which is the standard for most notebooks. But the connection was as solid as expected, with zero dropouts or reboots required to establish a Wi-Fi connection, which tends to be the case with Intel wireless adapters. The transfer rate is generally enough for most internet access, but if you want to copy files over the network, you’d likely be better off using USB.

Audio

The Chuwi AeroBook contains speakers. We could pretty much wrap it up there. Most notebooks don’t offer much in the way of dynamic range on their incredibly small speakers, but the AeroBook offers almost no bass at all. The speakers get reasonably loud, with around 80 dB(A) measured one inch over the trackpad, but there was little in the way of stereo separation and the speakers sound very poor. Luckily the 3.5 mm jack seemed to function well.

Thermals

One of the benefits of sticking with a low TDP processor is that Chuwi can continue to offer a completely fanless device. With only a 4.5-Watt TDP, the Core m3 is even a bit less TDP than a Gemini Lake Atom, which has a 6-Watt TDP, although the scenario design power is closer at 4.8 Watts.

To see how the AeroBook handles load, it was run at 100% CPU while monitoring the temperatures and power draw.

The AeroBook had no issues maintaining maximum performance. It quickly jumped to the 2.2 GHz maximum, drawing 7.56 Watts in the process, and then once its PL1 was exhausted it moved into a steady PL2 draw averaging about 6.8 Watts, and maintaining almost a 2.0 GHz frequency for the duration of the run.

The maximum CPU temperature was 85°C, but averaged closer to 75°C in steady state, and the notebook itself got warm on the bottom but never hot to the touch. Chuwi have had issues in the past with cooling, but it looks like they’ve got them sorted out on the AeroBook.

Software

Chuwi offers no additional software over the base install of Windows 10, which is something they’ve been consistent at, and a welcome change over many of the manufacturers who bundle in unwanted applications and bloat. That’s not to say that Windows 10 doesn’t offer bloat itself – because it does – but Chuwi at least isn’t adding on to that.

For some reason the company tends to put shortcuts on the desktop for This PC, Network, Control Panel, and your user profile, which gives the look a bit of an XP-era feel, and if a guess had to be made, it would be because XP was so popular in their native China. Luckily they can be deleted off the desktop if you like a clean desktop.

Final Words

Chuwi took a bit of a gamble moving from the Atom platform they were comfortable with, to Intel’s Y series of Core processors, and overall, it is a gamble that has paid off well. Even the Skylake-era Core m3-6Y30 found in the AeroBook offers a noticeable improvement in performance compared to the previous LapBooks we have tested from the manufacturer, which featured Atom-based processors. The GPU gets an especially large bump, moving from 12 Execution Units on Atom, to 24 on Core, and although the GPU is still anemic for gaming tasks, the extra performance is still welcome.

Chuwi has mimicked the MacBook with their design, and it’s hard to fault them on the execution. The aluminum exterior offers a premium feel, even though some of the notebook is still plastic. Chuwi also offers a modern slim-bezel design, which shrinks the 13.3-inch notebook and makes it even more portable. They’ve done that while keeping the webcam in the correct location though, so it’s nicely achieved.

The laptop is very light, coming in at 1.26 kg / 2.77 lbs, and coupled with the thin design and small bezels, makes the AeroBook very easy to take with you. When you consider the price, it’s very impressive that they’ve designed such a great looking device while still keeping it thin and light.

Not all was done well though. The display, while continuing to be a 1920x1080 IPS panel like they offer on some of their other notebooks, is well off the mark in terms of color accuracy. Its only real saving grace is that it is able to achieve the sRGB gamut, but that’s a low bar. A similarly priced Surface Go from Microsoft comes with an individually calibrated display. Coupled with the poor accuracy is mediocre contrast. The 1920x1080 IPS is appreciated, but also expected in this price range; and other than the resolution and wide viewing angles, the rest of the display is sub-par.

Chuwi has often struggled with battery life, which could be somewhat attributed to smaller battery capacities to hit their price target. That is certainly the case here again, with just a 38 Wh battery when the typical 13.3-inch Ultrabook has closer to 50 Wh or more. Furthermore, Chuwi has not done any real work on the platform power draw, and the Chuwi AeroBook has some of the highest idle power draw of any notebook in its class, so when coupled with a smaller than average battery, overall battery life is well off the mark.

There are other areas where Chuwi has saved money, but they aren’t as big of an impact. The 1x1 wireless solution is there as a cost-savings measure, but they’ve at least gone with the Intel Wireless adapter, meaning it’s slow, but rock solid. Chuwi has also opted for a slower SATA SSD, but considering most of the competition in this price range would still offer a spinning drive, or eMMC storage, the 256 GB SSD is most certainly welcome. Chuwi also makes it incredibly easy to replace the SSD with a dedicated cover on the bottom of the laptop for easy access. The single-channel RAM is also a cost-saving measure, but at least there’s a solid 8 GB of memory, meaning this laptop isn’t going to run out of RAM on most light tasks.

There’s no doubt that the AeroBook is an improvement over some of the other Chuwi models, while still keeping a great design, but, and this is always the key, Chuwi has to be especially careful when their price creeps up, because they are no longer competing against poor machines. But they’ve continued to offer the value-add bonues compared to their competition. The AeroBook would be something I would compare against the original ASUS Core M laptop – the UX305 – where they offer enough RAM and storage to make this device usable, but keep the price down. The AeroBook doesn’t quite hit the same level of fit and finish of the ASUS Zenbook, but offers similar performance and specifications at hundreds of dollars less.

If you need great battery life, this Chuwi AeroBook is not for you. But for a general purpose laptop, it offers a great design, reasonable performance, and as much RAM and SSD storage as machines that cost quite a bit more. So when you factor that in, the $499 MSRP is still rather attractive. If Chuwi is going to continue to try and compete in higher brackets, they will need to address some of their faults, but at the $500 range, the Chuwi AeroBook still offers a lot for the price.