There is a certain subset of buyers that don’t need the latest top spec laptop from HP or Lenovo. They need to be able to do general tasks and do them well or they just need a second machine for school or around the house. The CHUWI LapBook Windows 10 Laptop is a great choice for these buyers and I think that the conversation around this machine needs to always be shrouded in the context of its value.
Design
The chiclet keys have decent travel and the trackpad was responsive but both of them revealed that this is a budget machine. They both felt soft and mushy, nothing that would get in the way of hashing out hundreds of words but it is noticeable.
Performance
These new Cherry Trail processors have also allowed for twice the RAM of the Bay Trail processors which capped out at 2gb. The CHUWI LapBook takes full use of this and packs in 4gb of DDR3L ram which should be the bare minimum for anyone looking in this category as running windows on 2gb of memory will show serious performance issues.
Storage
Many of the machines in this category shipped with 32GB of flash storage. After installing windows at 15gb and updates, users were sometimes stuck with less than 17gb left for everything else on these smaller machines. The CHUWI LapBook is equipped with 64 GB of storage. While this is less than many phones come with now, for a laptop in this category this is an improvement of almost 3 times of useable storage vs a 32GB machine. This can be supported with an additional microSD card and is expandable to another 128 GB.
In order to keep the machine as slim as possible, the CHUWI LapBook is equipped with two ports on either side. A micro SD card, micro HDMI, and one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0. It would have been nice to have two USB 3.0 ports and that’s something I hope they add to the next generation. This may mean that you have to carry a micro SD to SD adapter if you are going to be porting over images from your camera.
The front-facing camera is a 2.0 MP for video conferencing or selfies and unlike the iphone 7, this does have a 3.5mm headphone jack! It also supports Bluetooth 4.0 for various peripherals (wireless headphones, mice etc).
Battery life
Bottom line
The budget laptop market is a crowded place and is full of many unknown names. The CHUWI LapBook is a great contender in this space. As I stated earlier, each of its pros and cons needs to be stated in the context of its price. It has enough ports and standard specs to be a primary machine and this is where I think the real silver bullet of the CHUWI LapBook lies.
Its beautiful design is reminiscent of higher end machines and they’ve managed to squeeze a huge display and some powerful tech into a smaller package. It’s gleaming white case boasts a nobility usually found on much more expensive machines. It comes in at just over 4 pounds ruling it out of the ‘ultrabook’ classification (marketing semantics I say), but not enough to deter someone from slipping it into their bag or briefcase and using it all day. The lack of ports, and the softness of the keys are small arguments against the great value of the CHUWI LapBook Windows 10 Laptop and I look forward to more hardware by CHUWI in the future.