Should you buy a Chuwi laptop? - My week with the MiniBook X...
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- Опубліковано 5 чер 2024
- Entry-level and affordable are a few words I fear when it comes to laptops, due to bad experiences in the past. Can Chuwi change my mind about mini machines like this? Let's find out.
0:00 Intro and Unboxing
1:19 Price and Specs
2:12 Build Quality
3:45 Noise
4:41 Can it Game?
4:55 GTA V
5:30 Fortnite
5:52 Skyrim
6:21 Minecraft
6:57 Final Thoughts and Battery Life
Chuwi MiniBook X:
hubs.li/Q02hwJnY0
Thanks for watching :) - Наука та технологія
Nice to see a Device like this with a N100 with decent cooling instead of a 5 year old Celeron with a sheet of copper glued to it.
*aluminum, copper would've added another $0.50 to the BOM costs
@@wryd4sound which would make the part $150 more expensive per unit
Someone spent $500 on the Acer 17” Chromebook (that’s is name for real) last year for my grandma.
It works for her cause she just watches UA-cam. I dig a bit and realized it’s so underpowered it has trouble unpacking WiFi data.. lol.
It’s landfill for anyone under the age of 60
These shouldn’t exist.. the garbage they create isn’t close to worth the month of watching porn they get used for lol. Sad stuff.
except that the n100 will still be slower than any older used mid range laptop
and the fact that it has 12gb DDR5 ram!
The Intel N100 is no longer the Celeron processor we hated. It's surprisingly decent for such a low TDP device and it might fit for a budget 2-in-1 devices like this.
Yeah I’d like to see it in more devices. I understand people are skeptical of it but these low end chips have come a long way
@@RandomGaminginHD it was based on Alder Lake architecture and funny enough the Cinebench scores are slightly better than my quad core i5 Skylake laptop so it's really saying something
@@emdotrodlmao the i5 skylake are such jokes. My i5-6200u barely do simple task and hitting 100% cpu most of the time.
I like the N100 in my mini pc. I don't know configurations with this processor, but my mini pc has 16gb ram(single only) & 512gb ssd(soldered I think), so other than being able to go up to 32gb(maybe 64) and add a secondary 2.5 ssd, I probably wouldn't recommend any system laptop or other with less specification even if it's just for normal use.
it speeds up to 25w tdp ;-s i want to seee TRULY 6w cpu ^^
This is the dream Netbook system most from the early 2010s wanted as kids.
this brand has a bit of a market in the Philippines where im from because of the size, portability and affordability for people who like working in cafes who only need basic word processing and internet browsing. it's great that you're covering this from an unbiased POV because a lot of local reviewers only talk about the good talking points. with that said, i'd like to see more of these type of reviews!
It's also good for coding
I experimented with their HeroBook Air and their GemiBook. Both were pretty good machines for their price, but they both had the same major flaw-driver support. Essentially, if you attempted a clean Windows install on these machines, you were in trouble because things like Bluetooth, WiFi, camera, audio, etc., used drivers that Windows couldn't find by itself, and Chuwi also refused to provide them. The only thing they would offer is their complete Windows image.
If you were looking to install a Linux distro, you were even more out of luck because not even the keyboard worked on the Air. And making something simple like sound work of the Gemi was a painful experience. So unless you really don't want to mess with anything and just use then as they are, I would get something else.
very informative and unfortunate
if you poke around in their system long enough (hardware ids and such) [or even looking at the pcb], you can sometimes find the chipsets they use and get a driver for it that way. many of those share the same chips as they all just use whats cheap at that moment
Totally agree with you, made a clean install on my gemibook and it was the worst choice of my entire life
@@tobymarol7329 Yes, but as someone who actually did just that, it's not a fun process, and it's not easy to find the correct drivers by yourself. A lot of them I couldn't make work in a reliable fashion even when I did find them.
So again, it's not that it is impossible to do. It's more that there is really no reason to subject yourself to this sort of unnecessary nonsense.
Don't know why my comment disappear: totally agree with you i made a clean install and now i have a pc without touchpad
Tiny laptops have been a fantasy of mine for years, since I first bought a Toshiba Libretto 30 in 1998 (that was a mistake!). Nowadays, we have the joys of USB-C and PD charging, along with a chip that's just about powerful enough to work on. You could use this as a mini pc that you can take from home to work and plug into a decent monitor for power, display and keyboard dock, but still use on the commute in. Chuwi stuff is usually pretty good as well.
Good that you have reviewed this, and nice that you've accepted it for what it is, rather than complaining that it doesn't run everything at 4k!
Surprised with the n100 performance, looking forward to the follow up video
Yeah very surprising for the low power consumption
@@RandomGaminginHDIt's an Alder Lake N E core chip. The N95 is 15w.
If you want some more power at the expense of efficiency, the n97 is the same silicon but clocked higher. Basically having the n95's clocks but with the n100's iGPU
I have some N100 based mini PCs around doing various homelab or light PC workloads on Linux. I personally love them for their lack of noise, very low power requirements, excellent video decode (stream on Moonlight at 4k60 with 5ms delay) and low cost.
For "your parents" PC, these are great.
Linux users: you'll want Kernel 6.2+ for that GPU to do it's magic, just in case you're all installing Debian 12 and wondering why it's not great. :)
Yeah but it won't do 4k 60p HDR. For whatever reason the UHD in these prevents it. I do not know why. 1080p 60 HDR? No problem though.
This was my thought exactly, comes in around the same price as a mini PC. Has a screen, keyboard etc. Would be great for a mini server running home Assistant, jellyfish etc. A cheap alternative to those mini PC's with good little specs. It has peaked my interest for sure.
Really shocking GTA5 performance for this machine; I was thinking 15fps at 720p low was going to be the limit. Obviously not a gaming machine, but the fact it can do light gaming reasonably well means that it'll be able to do the basics quite well.
I love small laptops, honestly. It's such a niche thing, but it's so cool to see something of such small size being able to do nearly anything I'd do on go. Exception being proper gamedev and Blender projects, I dig this. Hope to see the market have more small N100 laptops for people, instead of absolute dumpster fire that the modern budget laptops are.
check out the GPD Win Max 2 if you haven't already, same tiny form factor packed with the best APU currently available which is no slouch
Surprisingly good although the frames were skipping indicating that the processor wasn't keeping up, but for what it is that's nothing to worry about at the right settings on the right games
Yeah will have a full suite with older games soon!
@@RandomGaminginHD Are you going to test something like Mirror's Edge, BioShock and Dishonored ?
I am impressed. I didn't think this could run very much, certainly not as well as it did. I am glad to see tech that works pretty good in this catagory of machine.
Thanks, friend.
I would've loved a laptop like this back when I was in school. Small, lightweight, looks nice, keyboard backlight, and can play games.
The 15" $400 laptop I still have now works great for what I used it for, but life would've been so much nicer to carry less.
It is so much better than I expected!
This gives me such nostalgia for my long-ago owned HP Pavilion x13 (iirc) convertible mini laptop. Loved that thing.
That form factor is pretty slick-nice peek at a much more refined iteration on the netbook concept.
It looks like a nice little laptop. I bought my dad a Chuwi HeroBox mini-PC a while back, to replace his slow desktop. He's had it over a year now, with no issues... so I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Chuwi product that's specs met my needs. As always, great video!
I had a netbook back in the day when I had to get a train to work and I loved it. I never bothered to take the power supply with me as it would still have lots of battery power left when I got home. That thing took a beating. It did eventually die many years later. For what I needed it for it was amazing!
bought a chuwi a few months ago and i'm really blown away, so much computer for the price
Very nice to see the 10inch netbook format again.
I bought this device in one of their recent sales. Chuwi is a pretty good value usually, this is the same for this device
The screen, portability and surprisingly good keyboard are a highlight. It has been my productivity machine on the road quite often, and it has just enough performance for light tasks
It also helps that basic and very light 3d titles work well enough on this device. Overall, 10/10 for the price and 8/10 overall
Fr? i will buy it
Happy to see my guy getting to review things like this.
I have a 11" Samsung chromebook 4, which is only used for daily tasks. Looking up recipies, watching a bit of youtube, home banking and so on. Works perfectly for that, and with around 9-11 hours of battery, i can take it with me on for example holidays as a movie watching device. I really do like these small laptops, as i am not a tablet kind of guy(Neither android or iOs). Just fits perfectly for sitting in the couch or on the go. More of them please!
Want to try new recipe
I recommend this
"Shahi paneer with butter naan "
As a linux nerd I really like compact units to use (and carry around) as terminals and communicators and tools. Big points for not using ancient old chips, too. I might get one of these and offload the old 11.6" thinkpad. Waaaait that performance wow! Feels like I could do some Blender and on-site editing with this
Keyboard is the most important factor for me, followed by battery life,
As far I know the only thing isn't working under Linux is the Bluetooth (which is a familiar thing with Linux, sadly). There were issues with suspend but they are gone with recent kernels.
I hope you release your budget pc video soon, iceberg got his out and I'm excited to see yours
Nice review, as always! 👌 Do you mind if I try your list of 4 games on my CHUWI UBook-X as a comparison? I picked it up recently and I was actually looking at the Minibook X as an option prior to my other purchase.
Very interesting machine for the form factor and nice review. One question if I may; at one point you mentioned that upgrading the ssd is easy. Does it actually, as the Chuwi website seems to suggest, have an additional empty m2 ssd slot? In their website they also mention the existence of a micro sd card slot, which most certainly is not the case, so I am wondering if the additional m2 port is also just a mistake in the specifications.
Looking forward to your response to IcebergTechs video! Great video as always!
Thanks so much for your excellent review! Two questions... 1) I've seen reviews that describe the Windows 11 OS as "unlicensed"??? Is the OS clean or is back-filling / patching necessary after purchase necessary? 2) Is there any reason to believe that the computer might not be compatible with the MS Office programs? Thanks again.
love the video keep it up man
My first reaction without having watched the vid is NO!
*nice vid!
I just bought one of these a few weeks ago to use exactly as you said, as a companion machine to my main desktop, with the main advantage of the Minibook being the extreme portability while still maintaining a keyboard size that's still viable for me to type on at full speed. I use it in my car on my lunch breaks to watch youtube, play PS2 emulators, etc. It's been a fantastic value.
Also, you mentioned the screen is 50hz, but I learned from a thread on the chuwi forums that it is possible to set the screen to refresh at either 60 or 90 hz using a tool called "Custom Resolution Utility", but beware, you have to use exact reduced mode, and some units may not be able to achieve over 50 and it may require a complete re-imaging of the SSD in order to get the display working again (or an external monitor I guess).
It feels so much better to use at 90hz, especially for web browsing, scrolling through pages etc. Mouse movement alone is way better. Not everyone will have a golden sample that can do it, but if you don't mind tweaking and a little risk of having to reinstall chuwi's image, it's worth a shot for the improved user experience.
but why would they limit it at 50hz instead of 60hz? it makes no sense - especially if the panel can even do 90hz
@@Rain_Addict0 Sorry if I wasn't clear, but they're limited because not every panel can hit 60hz, some really only can do 50. It's like processor binning, not every chip from a given batch can hit the same speeds, so they set a lowest common speed and lock them all to that even though some can go higher. I speculate that they ordered a lower grade shipment of panels and just put them all at 50hz to waste as few as possible.
@@JosephWall117 i never even saw 50hz on a laptop I thought 99% are all 60hz or more
This is a nice little laptop! I wouldnt mind lugging this around with me on business trips. Specially knowing i can load it up with classic games and emulators. Can you test the performance with the dolphin and ps2 emulator
I would actually love one of these cause I could work on my art & animations anywhere.
Netbooks are back!!!
Also, just for some perspective regarding the CPU CB20 multi score...
I just benched my Xeon W3690 hex core overclocked to 3.8GHz in CB20 and the multi got a score of 1249
That's how capable the Chuwi CPU is.
loved my old netbook back in the day, upgraded it to 2g ram. was perfect for reading, videos, little games and oddly enough wow lol
Best Netbook I cobbled together was an Asus with detachable screen. It had a 2 core 4 thread Atom, 2 x 2GB DDR3 1066, and a 120GB SSD. I gave it to my daughter for her 4th Birthday. It lasted about 2 months. One day the battery ran out and she threw it on the floor. I asked her why an she told me when her brothers controller batteries dies they'd throw them to the floor and she thought it would make it work. 12 year old logic through the lens of a 4 year old. Lol. It was a nice machine though. It even played old school minecraft. I would place it on a shelf at night and connect it to the flatscreen I hung in her room (32" 1080p, nothing fancy) so she could watch her favorite movie, Frozen, while she fell asleep. I set it to shutdown when the movie was done. She loved it for as long as it worked. She cried when she realized it was dead. But of course, I got her a wireless gamepad, mouse, and keyboard, a normal laptop, and placed it on the shelf permanently. It worked out a lot better.
I'm more impressed that you've been filming your videos with your phone.
Decided to buy one because of this vid, it's excellent.
I think where this thing would really shine is as a little portable emulation machine. The N100 is surprisingly capable for emulation and with a small bluetooth controller this could make for a really great little travel emulation set up that could also be used for basic productivity if needed
When you're testing Minecraft (I suppose it's java edition) you can install sodium mod and you should see a massive performance increase with lower end and high end systems even.
I’ve actually been eyeing the chuwi line for a while but could never find a great review of it
Me living on the sea coast, i kept wanting \ expecting you to put the pieces of paper from the unboxing back in the box, so they wouldn't blow away in the imaginary breeze i kept expecting.
Nice to see Chewie.
Maybe Han Solo or Jabba will stop by next time.
What a weird coincidence that I recently ordered this and now you've made a video on it! It's nice when you don't have to pry open the bottom panel after already taking out the screws! Have you tried re pasting it to see if you can get better thermals?
Thermals in my unit is not a problem, in fact it already does what I would do to practically every laptop I buy: using the back (or under) panel as a heatsink. Hardware monitor shows 60-70°C at full all 4 cores 100% load, at ambient of 27°C or so. And oh, you won't hear the fans even at that condition, impressive.
In other words, while the CPU inside can keep up with demanding loads, your hands or lap might not. That back panel gets toasty, though I haven't checked with a thermometer,mat least the feeling of 45°C is there as I use it with my left hand holding the bottom and my right hand navigating and typing.
And now I have a 10" laptop with a Ryzen 7840U, 32GB of 7500Mt/s RAM, a 2TB NVMe SSD, and a 67wh battery.
How far we've come. I wish this form factor would get more love. This Chuwi deserves a much better battery.
out of curiosity, what do you use that form factor for with these specs ?
Everything under 13" seems impractical for real life use, except tablets, which 10-11" is the perfect form factor for.
@@TheScepticalThinker GPD Win Max 2 (2023 revision)
@@kawafahra I use it for everything. 10" means it's actually portable, unlike a 13" or larger device. When I get home I'm one cable away from having a 34" ultra wide desktop. It's perfect.
Sounds like the GPD win max 2
@@ninjason57 yep yep!
I loved my Aspire One. Played Mechwarrior 3 while on desk duty. XP was nice to have.
I had one of those in college and it was awesome!
Ayo! Another Mechwarrior 3 enjoyer. Truly you are a being of refined culture.
That glass table is clean.
This laptop looks better than i thought.
The performance of the N100 is also great if you don't need that much power for games / rendering etc.
Something interesting I’ve found about about these chips (from a mini PC with a N95), these chips have only a single memory channel, which might be the reason for the odd 12GB of memory. DDR5 offsets the single channel issue by being 2x half-width channels
May I suggest including games like League of legends and Dota 2 in your benchmarks for devices like these? I'm actually considering getting one of this for out of town work and light gaming. Thanks
I bought one a few weeks ago as the price seemed too good to be true for the specs, and it'd be handy as an emergency backup machine to throw in my bag and keep in the car just in case. I generally agree with this review, though I find the keyboard too uncomfortable to want to use for any prolonged period. The trackpad is quite poor. The tablet and tent mode are surprisingly good. I might put Linux on it soon as it would work fine for my uses and should be faster.
wow this looks great. it looks like a mini macbook ipad bybrid. love it.
Wow I love to see this, literally EVERY other mini laptop has a horrible celeron. I hope these micro laptops become popular again there is so much to love.
nice device, how about windows 10 on it? and theres is any suport on drivers?
6 years ago I had a tablet from this manufacturer on windows 10, absolutely loved playing old nfs games on it at school, although the sd card slot broke in the first month
That's very good performance. For so small notebook. I just got Acer Aspire for £549 with i5 and RTX 2050 in Argos after week long research for something to replace my Vivobook.
I just ordered the Onexplayer X1, my dream device! Similar size to this, 10.95 inches. Iremember playing World of Warcraft on a tiny little netbook back in 2009 at like 20 fps 🤣 Now I'll have a machine that is even lighter with 32x the ram, 5x the storage, storage that is like 50x the speed, and a GPU that is 300x faster.
Interesting laptop! I'm not in the market for one at the moment but otherwise i totally would have taken this into consideration.
In a future vid a mini teardown would be good to know if the RAM and SSD can be upgraded?
any recommendations on a laptop for gaming something that is entry level but can handle some games
I have the even smaller version. It isn't for everyone, but it does very nicely for my needs. I use it for PowerPoint with an external monitor as a second screen. I wanted small as it has to travel, but all locations have a power supply, mouse, keyboard, and external monitor.
I used the first one with the m3 8100y. It's not a bad work mini lappie, the only thing that is holding it back is the battery keeps dying and swelling on me. I used 2 batteries and both eventually had the same problems.
surprisingly capable. Do have a suggestion, the power would change significantly with lighter usage, having a browser open or steam decompressing can be really heavy battery hogs.
This brand's name always makes me think of Chewbacca.
Also, my mother apparently bought this exact model, which for her light browsing and office suite uses is more than enough.
This is intresting, the last time I've heard about a netbook sized laptop with good specs was the HP EliteBook 2170p
The 11” MacBook airs are also pretty good…as long as you can find a cheap one. The last and most powerful version with an i7 5650U are basically unobtainium.
I just bought a Chuwi Gemibook XPro with the same processor and it's surprisingly good. My only complaint iso far s that it only has a 256GB SSD as storage.
I had a tiny notebook that I used from 2011 up until now and I loved it so much, maybe I'll buy a minibook so to fill that spot too!
Does it trickle charge/glide on a 5V only USB charger?
Hey! I just watched icebergs $200 build video and came to check if you had posted yours. Will we be getting a video on it soon if you’re participating in the build off?
Kind of the perfect Linux test PC. Been trying to get into it and need something bigger than what I'm currently using, The GPD Win 11th gen Core i7.
Damn, that is a helluva shiny screen.
Your smartphone would run laps around this laptop in terms of capability.
yeah these systems are woeful, even the top end is utter rubbish
but phones dont run x86 programs
@@RestrictedHades you can with winlator
You have a complete and powerful x86 computer in just 10" and
@@vitacell1 powerful.. no, i have daily who have owned these and these systems struggle with any multi tasking and or even office associations. that is not powerful
Don't suppose you would bench palworld with unsupported gpus like the r9 290x and others? interested in if they will work or not lol.
Interesting counter to Iceberg's build!
That Atom cpu era. I just recently started upgrading one of those netbooks. 240GB SSD, Win8.1 32bit version. Later Ram will be doubled. As it is now it's usable as a travel companion. UA-cam 480p playback, no problem. :P Also runs GTA San Andreas on low specs. I didn't benchmarked yet the actual performance of the game. Oh, the reason I used Win8.1, because Win7 couldn't see the SSD and I didn't done a thorough research on it. I went for the 'What If Win8.1' way, and it worked just fine. Good old Atom. Still gives a punch. :)
I like those crazy box sized ones out of japan where they pack like real gpus in em but the things like a shoebox with a screen on it lol. sff style hide away monitor case with a lid on it.
Awesome yeah haha
When you do the more detailed benchmarks, can you please test something other than Cinebench? I don't think that anybody will be doing video editing on a $350 laptop.
I bought a laptop on Amazon named “Koosmile” with these exact same specs. Although it’s smaller and screen is 800p. The screen flips and folds down to become a “tablet”. It can play basically any 2D game. It can run Skyrim at all low settings 30 fps but it was a terrible experience. It’s definitely not made for that but I wanted to see what it could handle. It’s actually a great little travel laptop for basic use. I think I got it on sale for $450 for the 1TB version.
Did you tweak any settings to get said performance on GTA or not really
The N100 outperforms the i5-2520 from the first laptop I bought for college, a Thinkpad T420, and no one would ever call a Thinkpad a slouch. Granted, the Thinkpad was $150 used, but still, 10 years is a long time for improvement.
Oh these things, seen a few reviews on these always a laugh
Do you know if I can attach external monitor(s) to it? And what resolution an external monitor can be?
oh boi, can you try to install fydeos to those?
Hello my dear friend! Looks interesting to stream from a PC within the home network
Can you please review Chwui UBook X?
I got one of these when they came out but ended up returning it due to the screen being locked to 50 Hz. Is your unit also 50 Hz?
Yes I have one of these it's actually one of the benefits of it in gaming
For games it can run can get close to refresh rate of 50 much easier being able to crank up settings from absolute potato it's monster indie machine
My experience with the netbooks was the same, hated the performance but loved the form factor, for this chuwi laptop I'm actually impressed by the performance, more battery would be better.
This is a nice machine, with better performance than I anticipated when I saw the video title.
Other than that, I think a second hand Lenovo Yoga will be a better value. You can pick up a 5 year old Yoga X380 for example for around 300 bucks (or less). It will perform better (while not for games) and have a better build quality in general. Only if size really matters, this Chuwi laptop is not bad.
i loved my old Chuwi Hi12 for years before i upgraded.
Small netbooks are awesome. If you have a need for a small computer, these are amazing. This is almost as fast as my main rig, it's insane running gta v on a netbook in 2024 :o
Looks the Acer 1810TZ something laptop I had around 2010 when looking at the keyboard actually :)
This seems decent for an everyday task kinda machine. if you want something cheap and portable for gaming i feel something with a ryzen 5 apu would be the way to go instead
Neat little machine. I assume it has no issues playing early 2000s games (like NFS Underground 2, GTA Vice City, etc...) which is all i need in regards of laptop gaming.
Do you only play those 2 games?
I would buy one of these for experiments and modifications to make it better
I had a chuwi tablet/netbook it was terrible, hopefully they are improved. Mine was in the bin within a couple of months.
I wonder what is your camera setup?
Wonder if we'll see any Netbook with a Z1 Extreme, would be cool
Now that would be amazing
I have an n100 mini pc and it's surprising how well it copes with daily tasks and running windows 11. Previous low spec atom/celeron computers seemed to struggle with updating windows or doing anything.
Yeah low end seems to be a lot better than it used to be for laptop processors
Windows Bugdate, one of the worst thing. Use GNU/Linux instead.
This is creepy, been looking into the Chuwi ubook x 12 recently and then you uploaded this lol.
I would have considered it so I can have a small and lightweight laptop to use while doing PCs repairs in customers' homes and such, but I'm apprehensive about the non-replaceable memory. Until I can find a recent one, I'll just try to use my dad's old Dell Inspiron 11 with a Pentium from 2015 (P20T). That CPU is actually still usable in basic tasks in Windows 10, just need to upgrade the RAM from 4 to 8 GB and replace the hard drive with an SSD.
good morning goat